FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 29, 2007

Contact:
Judith Ingram, Communications Director,
(202) 523-3240 , ext. 127

WASHINGTON-The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff welcoming the Department's commitment to formally respond to USCIRF's Report on Asylum Seekers in Expedited Removal.

The full text of the letter follows.

June 29, 2007

Dear Secretary Chertoff:

Thank you for meeting with my fellow Commissioners and myself last month. As with our previous meeting, your understanding of the Commission's concerns regarding asylum seekers in the expedited removal process was particularly appreciated.

I particularly welcomed your commitment that the Department of Homeland Security will formally respond to our Report on Asylum Seekers in Expedited Removal. The Commission looks forward to receiving this response, and hopes that it will provide the basis for an ongoing dialogue on the Commission's recommendations between ourselves and the Department.

The Commission and I were pleased to hear more about the positive changes implemented by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). We understand that you are still reviewing the recommendation to allow asylum officers to grant asylum at the credible fear stage. We encourage you to make this policy change, as recommended and justified in the Commission's 2005 Report.

In the context of follow-up to theReport, Assistant Secretary Myers' efforts to reach out to the Commission merit a word of appreciation. The Commission welcomes the efforts that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is making to review national parole criteria and to train detention center personnel on cultural awareness and asylee population issues. We look forward to meeting with Assistant Secretary Myers again to continue the discussion on parole review. Allow me to reiterate the Commission's recommendation that detention standards be developed that are appropriate to the asylum seeker population, including the opening of other facilities based on the Broward County model.

We were pleased that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sent a representative to the meeting. We noted that quality assurance steps have been taken to monitor inspections and urge the agency to consider the further steps outlined in the Report, including the broader use of videotape.

As you know, the situation of Iraqi refugees has been an ongoing concern to the Commission. We applaud your recent decision to allow duress waivers to the material support bar to admission, so that refugee and asylum applicants forced to provide material support to terrorist organizations are no longer barred from the United States for such support solely as a result of such coerced actions. We hope this will be the first of the changes on material support issues that arise during the processing of Iraqi refugees. The Commission urges the Department to clarify that material support will not be a bar to individuals that provided support to groups opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the Commission and I look forward to working with you, CBP, ICE, and USCIS in the future. We consider it essential for the Department to ensure that American values in favor of refugee protection are reflected in the treatment that asylum seekers receive.

Sincerely,

Felice D. Gaer

Chair

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor the status of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief abroad, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international instruments, and to give independent policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and the Congress.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 29, 2007

Contact:
Judith Ingram, Communications Director,
(202) 523-3240, ext. 127

WASHINGTON-A delegation from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan federal agency, returned earlier this month from a nine-day official visit to Saudi Arabia. The delegation, led by Commission Chair Felice D. Gaer, raised issues concerning the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief in the Kingdom that affect both Saudi citizens and the large population of foreign workers, as well as others overseas.

The delegation visited three distinct regions of the country in order to hear differing viewpoints: Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province. Among the Commission's interlocutors were Saudi government officials including the Minister of Islamic Affairs, the Minister of Culture and Information, and deputy ministers from the Interior and Foreign Affairs Ministries, members of the government's newly established National Human Rights Commission and of the non-governmental National Society for Human Rights, as well as legal experts, educators, community leaders, women's rights advocates, and journalists. The Commission regrets that the Saudi government did not grant requests for meetings with top officials at key agencies such as the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice (CPVPV) and the Ministries of Education and Justice.

"We appreciated the opportunity to visit different parts of the country and express our concerns. We are disappointed, however, that many officials with whom we sought to meet were not available for discussion," Gaer said.

The delegation's discussions focused on:

• halting the dissemination of intolerance literature and extremist ideology;

• reform of school textbooks and curricula to remove language encouraging intolerance, hatred, or violence on the basis of religious differences whether dealing with Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus or others;
• protecting the right of private worship;

• curbing harassment of religious practice by the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice; and

• empowering the National Human Rights Commission.

The delegation also explored:

• Saudi government efforts to institute political and social reforms, including through the National Dialogue Centers initiated by King Abdullah;

• the establishment of indigenous human rights institutions;

• the government's efforts to combat religious extremism;

• religious freedom restrictions and discrimination affecting followers of different schools of thought within Islam;

• limitations on the universal human rights of women; and

• freedom of expression, including on religiously sensitive issues in the press and other media.

The Commission was informed of some institutional movement by the Saudi government to address human rights violations. Also, the issue of abuses by the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, known as the mutawaa or religious police, received unprecedented exposure in the Saudi media while the delegation was visiting. The government has recently opened multiple investigations into alleged violations by members of the CPVPV, and at least two cases are going to trial.

On the eve of the USCIRF visit, the National Society for Human Rights published its first ever report, which calls for wide-ranging improvements in human rights practices in the Kingdom.

The Saudi government's Human Rights Commission, which investigates complaints from private citizens and has raised cases with government agencies, has now been operating in earnest for approximately six months. The Human Rights Commission has publicly committed itself to take up the issue of religious discrimination.

The delegation voiced many concerns in meetings with Saudi officials. Since 2004, the Secretary of State has designated Saudi Arabia as a Country of Particular Concern for its systematic and egregious violations of religious freedom. The Commission's concerns are laid out in the chapter on Saudi Arabia in its most recent Annual Report, which was issued on May 2.

Because the delegation could not meet with a number of key government officials and did not receive answers to several of the questions it posed in Saudi Arabia, the Commission has forwarded a list of follow-up queries to the Saudi Embassy in Washington in hopes of receiving further information and continuing to clarify the status of these issues. Later this summer, the Commission plans to issue a detailed report of its findings from the trip. In the meantime, it urges the U.S. government to remain closely and continually engaged in a candid discussion of religious freedom issues with the Saudi government.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor the status of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief abroad, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international instruments, and to give independent policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and the Congress.

Eye on Pakistan
Washington Times, June 21, 2007
By Felice D. Gaer and Michael Cromartie

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met this week in Washington with Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid M. Kasuri, underlining U.S. support for the Pakistani government. Ironically, while the United States is working with Pakistan as part of its broader national security strategy to combat terrorism, the Pakistani government has not only cut a deal with radical Islamist parties, but also perpetuated abuses of religious freedom and other human rights of its citizens, strengthening the very extremists who incite participation in terror activity. Additionally, Pakistan reportedly has provided safe haven to Taliban leaders and fighters who cross into Afghanistan.

It's not just Afghanistan that stands to suffer, of course, but Pakistanis themselves. The alliance between the Musharraf government and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Ammal, a coalition of six Islamist political parties, gives inordinate influence to these extremist groups and has seriously compromised freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief in Pakistan. The Pakistani government commits abuses in the form of laws violating the rights of the Ahmadis, a minority community of heterodox Muslims, the persistent sectarian violence targeting Shi'ite Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Ahmadis, and the Hudood ordinances, which violate the rights of women in Pakistan.

Among the most persistent and insidious instruments of abuse of religious human rights and civil liberties are Pakistan's blasphemy laws, used to punish anyone who has allegedly defamed Islam. Prescribed criminal penalties for blasphemy include life imprisonment and the death penalty. Blasphemy allegations, which are commonly false, result in the lengthy detention of, and sometimes violence against, Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus and members of other religious minorities, as well as Muslims on account of their religious beliefs. Because they neither require proof of intent nor carry any penalty for leveling false allegations, the blasphemy laws are easily used as tools of intimidation and revenge. Often those acquitted of blasphemy have been forced into hiding due to fears of vigilante violence. According to media reports, a Pakistani blasphemy suspect was stabbed to death on his way to court in police custody a year ago, the day after a mob killed a schoolteacher trying to save a blasphemy suspect under attack.

Just last month, a court in Lahore passed a death sentence on Younis Masih, a Christian who has been imprisoned for nearly two years. According to reports from a number of Pakistani and international non-governmental organizations, Mr. Masih angered a group of Muslims by expressing concern about the noise level of their gathering at a time when his nephew had died and his body was lying at home. They later accused Mr. Masih of making derogatory remarks about Islam, which, under Pakistani law, constitutes blasphemy.

The sentence against Mr. Masih was followed quickly by another blasphemy allegation against a group of Christian nurses in a hospital in Islamabad. They were accused of drawing lines through some Koranic verses on a hospital notice board, despite the fact that no one saw them do it and one of the people accused was on leave at the time. Another Christian, Martha Bibi, was charged under the blasphemy laws in January.

At least five Ahmadis are in prison on blasphemy charges, according to the State Department. In the past year, even those attempting to defend people accused of blasphemy have themselves been threatened.

The laws' harm is compounded by the lack of due process. Although these laws were amended in October 2004 to reduce charges applied in malice by stipulating that only a senior police official can bring the indictment, the procedural changes have not had a significant effect on the way the blasphemy laws are exploited in Pakistan.

The Pakistani government has also extended its blasphemy laws into the international arena. In March, Pakistan again presented a resolution at the new U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva supporting measures to halt the "defamation of religions." The resolution's backers claim that their aim is to promote religious tolerance but in practice, such laws routinely criminalize and prosecute what is deemed - often arbitrarily - to be "offensive" or "unacceptable" speech about a particular religion. Regrettably, the resolution again passed the council.

Potentially even harsher than the blasphemy laws is a proposed bill currently before a parliamentary committee that would impose the death penalty for apostasy, which includes converting from Islam.

The United States should clearly and unequivocally press Pakistan to decriminalize blasphemy and meanwhile implement procedural changes to the blasphemy laws that will reduce and ultimately eliminate their abuse.

The Pakistani government must ensure that those accused of blasphemy and their defenders are given adequate protection, including by investigating death threats and other actions against them carried out by militants, and that full due process is followed in investigations and criminal proceedings.

Finally, the United States should urge the Pakistani government to take more serious steps to combat Islamic extremism in the country.

Repressive measures including Pakistan's abuse of blasphemy laws exacerbate religious tension, violate the rights of Pakistanis and fuel extremism. They have no place in a country the United States considers an ally.

Felice D. Gaer is director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights and chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Michael Cromartie is vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a vice chairman of the commission.