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December 10, 2015 | Mary Ann Glendon and Katrina Lantos Swett

The following op-ed appeared in The National Interest on December 10, 2015

December 10 marks Human Rights Day, the sixty-seventh anniversary of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Unfortunately fundamental rights, including religious freedom, are still being violated worldwide.

Among the worst abusers are non-state actors like ISIL and other violent religious extremist groups. In Syria and Iraq, ISIL has persecuted Shia and Sunni Muslims alike, while reserving some of its worst depredations for Yazidis and Christians. From summary executions to forced conversions, rape to sexual enslavement, abducted children to destroyed houses of worship, attacks on these communities—among the oldest in the Middle East—are part of a systematic effort to erase their presence.

State actors from China to Iran to Uzbekistan continue their own assault on freedom: witness the persistent presence and gross mistreatment of prisoners of conscience.

In order to spotlight the plight of these prisoners, as well as the repressive laws and policies of the governments holding them, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives in conjunction with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), on which we serve, and Amnesty International USA, created the Defending Freedoms Project. Through this project, members of Congress select prisoners in order to call culpable governments to account and ultimately help free these prisoners.

Among these governments are those USCIRF has recommended to the State Department for designation as “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs, marking them as some of the world’s worst religious freedom abusers.

China, for example, imposed the draconian sentence of life imprisonment on Ilham Tohti in September 2014 for “separatism,” due to his peaceful activism on behalf of his fellow Uighur Muslims, whom the government persecutes relentlessly. Tohti was an economics professor in Beijing, where he was known for his research on Uighur-Han relations as well as his activism for the implementation of regional autonomy in Xinjiang.

Eritrea has been holding Orthodox Patriarch Abune Antonios since 2007 at an undisclosed location, preventing him from communicating with the outside world while reportedly denying him medical care. In 2006, Eritrea’s government had deposed him from his position as head of the Eritrean Orthodox Church and placed him under house arrest, ironically after he protested meddling in his church’s affairs. Among the accusations against the patriarch were his reluctance to excommunicate 3,000 members of an Orthodox Sunday School movement and his demands that the regime release imprisoned human rights activists accused of treason.

Uzbekistan holds up to 12,000 prisoners, mostly for the independent practice of Islam. In April 2010 it sentenced two sisters, Mehriniso and Zulkhumor Hamdamova, to prison terms of seven and six-and-half years, respectively, and their relative Shahlo Rakhmonova to a six-and-a-half-year term, for conducting private Muslim religious instruction of girls. Mehriniso was sentenced despite being a teacher for a government-approved women’s religion course, and is being held in deplorable conditions while battling cancer.

China, Eritrea and Uzbekistan exemplify nations in which secular authoritarian tyrannies refuse to accept the independence of religious communities, resulting in serious religious freedom violations against members of groups ranging from Catholics and Evangelicals, to Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses, to Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong.

Other nations, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, have religiously authoritarian governments which enthrone a single religious group or interpretation while persecuting dissenting religious communities or individuals.

Iran sentenced Pastor Saeed Abedini in January 2012 to an eight-year prison term for participating in Iran’s house church movement. And for more than seven-and-a-half years, seven leaders of Iran’s Baha’i community have been imprisoned: Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Behrouz Tavakkoli, Vahid Tizfahm, Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet.

In Saudi Arabia, Raif Badawi, founder and editor of the Free Saudi Liberals Web site, was sentenced in 2013 to 600 lashes and seven years in prison, and ordered to shut down his site. After appealing his conviction for blasphemy and other charges, he was given a new sentence in 2014 of ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes. Badawi’s lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair—a human rights activist and the head of the group “Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia”—was given a fifteen-year sentence.

Unfortunately, tyrannies aren’t the only governments which perpetrate or tolerate severe religious freedom abuses. Pakistan, an electoral democracy, has more people on death row or serving life sentences for blasphemy than any other nation. Among them is Aasia Bibi, a Catholic mother sentenced to death in 2010 for blasphemy. In October 2014, her appeal was dismissed and her death sentence upheld. This summer, Pakistan’s Supreme Court accepted her appeal and suspended her death sentence. No hearing date has been set.

As we commemorate Human Rights Day, it is time for the world community to rededicate itself to religious freedom and other rights, hold abusers accountable and demand the release of these and other prisoners of conscience.

Mary Ann Glendon and Katrina Lantos Swett are Commissioners on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

To interview a Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or 202-786-0615.

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December 9, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) commends the United States and eight other countries for requesting a meeting of the UN Security Council, now scheduled for December 10, to resume talks on human rights in North Korea.  USCIRF encourages the Council to include religious freedom in these discussions.  North Korea’s deplorable record on human rights and religious freedom prompted the Security Council to hold similar discussions one year ago, the first time the Council formally deliberated the country’s myriad human rights violations.  Given no improvements, the Security Council’s attention to these abuses is needed now more than ever.

“North Korea’s human rights violations, including the denial of the fundamental right to freedom of religion or belief, are both undeniable and indefensible.  USCIRF commends U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power for her strong support of calling out such abuses in the UN Security Council.  Raising these issues in the premier UN body responsible for international peace and security sends the North Korean government the necessary and high-level reminder that its human rights abuses are known, egregious, and that the world is watching,” said USCIRF Chairman Robert P. George.

North Korea’s government severely restricts religious freedom and harshly punishes individuals attempting to practice their faith outside of the small number of officially recognized groups.  In fact, the February 2014 report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (COI) found “an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association.”

The UN’s Third Committee last month again overwhelmingly approved a resolution urging the Security Council to consider the COI’s recommendations, including North Korea’s referral to the International Criminal Court. The General Assembly is expected similarly to approve the resolution within a few weeks.  As president of the Security Council during December, the United States can draw attention to the COI report and work to generate support from UN Member States for the Security Council to revisit North Korea’s grave human rights abuses.

“The COI report has brought to light what many of us have known all along – that the depredations North Korea inflicts on its own people by denying them their human rights, including religious freedom, makes it one of the world’s most repressive regimes,” said Chairman George.  “In the face of such evil, the North Korean people need the international community’s support.”

USCIRF again recommended in 2015 that North Korea be designated as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, under the International Religious Freedom Act for its particularly severe violations of religious freedom.  The State Department has designated North Korea as a CPC since 2001.  For more information, see the North Korea Chapter (in English and Korean) in USCIRF’s 2015 Annual Report. 

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at [email protected] or 202-786-0613. 

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December 7, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today issued the following statement:  

USCIRF calls on the U.S. government to designate the Christian, Yazidi, Shi’a, Turkmen, and Shabak communities of Iraq and Syria as victims of genocide by ISIL.  USCIRF also urges American and other world leaders to condemn the genocidal actions and crimes against humanity of ISIL that have been directed at these groups and other ethnic and religious groups. USCIRF further urges a firm condemnation of the brutal persecution of, and crimes against humanity committed against, Sunni Muslims by the Assad regime in Syria and by ISIL in the case of Sunni Muslims who refuse to embrace their extremist ideology.

USCIRF also encourages continued and robust efforts by the U.S. and international community to bear witness to these crimes and make additional designations of genocide and crimes against humanity, whether those are committed by ISIL, the Assad regime, or others, as appropriate.

USCIRF recommended in its 2015 Annual Report that the U.S. government should support a referral by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court to investigate ISIL’s atrocities against religious groups in both Iraq and Syria.  USCIRF also noted in its 2015 Report that the al-Assad regime systemically has targeted and massacred Sunni Muslims, thereby creating the environment in which ISIL could rise and spread, threatening the entire region and all religious communities that reject its violent religious ideology, with the smallest religious minority communities facing an existential threat. 

 “The hallmark of genocide is the intent to destroy a national, racial, ethnic, or religious group, in whole or in part.  ISIL’s intent to destroy religious groups that do not subscribe to its extremist ideology in the areas in Iraq and Syria that it controls, or seeks to control, is evident in, not only its barbarous acts, but also its own propaganda,” said USCIRF Chairman Robert P. George. “The al-Assad regime also must be held to account for its targeting primarily of Sunni Muslims and the crimes against humanity that it is committing.” 

For more information, please see USCIRF’s chapters in the 2015 Annual Report on Iraq and Syria.

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact Travis Horne at [email protected] or 202-786-0615.