FOR YOUR INFORMATION

December 31, 2013 | By Robert P. George & Katrina Lantos Swett

The following op-ed appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 31, 2013.

Please note: This article was republished as A Bad Year for Christians in the Middle East by Real Clear World on January 1, 2014.

During Christmas week, Christians joyously celebrated Christ's birth in a manger. But across parts of the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, followers of Jesus face a rising tide of repression, intimidation, and violence.

In some countries, persecution and the resultant flight of the persecuted clouds the very future of these communities, some of which have existed for nearly two millennia. Even communities that do not face persecution deal with difficult challenges as their congregations try to live out their faith in a conflict-ridden environment. In Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus, many Palestinian Christians, who are part of a small and diminishing minority, feel marginalized and insecure.

In Egypt, persecution against Coptic Christians, the region's largest non-Muslim religious minority, numbering 8 million, has reached critical proportions. While Hosni Mubarak's military-backed regime failed to punish attacks against Copts and other religious minorities, Mohammed Morsi's election to the presidency in 2012 was followed by rhetoric leading to more violence before and since his ouster this July. Since mid-August, following a military crackdown on Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood supporters, Brotherhood sympathizers have assaulted more than 200 Christian religious structures, homes, and businesses.

In Iraq, violence against Christians rose after Saddam Hussein's fall. Christians have endured increasing levels of rape, torture, and murder, driving many away. On Christmas Day, at least 37 people died in bombings in Christian areas, including a car bombing outside of a church. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has failed repeatedly to bring perpetrators to justice. Once home to about one million Christians, Iraq has half that number today.

Many Iraqi Christians sought refuge in Syria, where Christians and Muslims - from Sunnis to Shi'a, including Alawites - once co-existed peacefully. President Bashar Assad, however, treated his people as members of sectarian groups that competed for his favor, not as individual Syrians with equal rights under the law. Once people demonstrated for their rights, Assad's regime fired on them, while turning sectarian groups against each other. The catastrophic civil war that followed has left Christians vulnerable, with the regime failing to protect them and extremist groups on both sides attacking them.

In Saudi Arabia and Iran, it's mainly the government that represses Christians and other religious minorities. Saudi Arabia bans churches and any public religious expression that conflicts with its own interpretation of Sunni Islam. Iran subjects Christians and other religious minorities that contradict its brand of Shi'a Islam to arrests, intense surveillance, imprisonment, and even death. Pastor Saeed Abedini, a U.S. citizen, remains jailed for the "crime" of participating in Iran's underground house church movement.

Clearly, the forces of religious extremism are driving much of the persecution Christians and others endure. These forces seek to defeat pro-freedom movements, dominate and radicalize Muslims across the world, and curb or eliminate non-Muslim influence. Since Christians remain the region's largest non-Muslim community, they are prime targets.

These same extremist forces also threaten Christians and other religious minorities beyond the Mideast.

In Nigeria, the rise of the terrorist group, Boko Haram, has poured fuel onto longtime Muslim/Christian communal fires. For the past three years, extremists have attacked churches on Christmas or Christmas Eve, killing dozens of churchgoers.

In Pakistan, attacks against Christians are escalating. In September 2013, suicide bombers launched the worst attack against Christians in Pakistan's history, assaulting All Saints Church in Peshawar, leaving nearly 100 dead and more than 150 other parishioners wounded.

Clearly, silence is no option, but what can we do to save Christian and other religious minorities?

First, the United States must press governments to bring to justice those who assault religious minorities - not only Christians but Shi'a Muslims in Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, Sunni Muslims and Baha'is in Iran, and Shi'a and Ahmadis in Pakistan.

Second, Washington must urge these governments to cease punishing the innocent. In countries like Egypt and Pakistan, Christians and others face not only violence from extremists who rarely are imprisoned for their misdeeds, but prison at the hands of these same governments, thanks to blasphemy laws which violate freedom of expression as well as religion.

Third, the United States must firmly support religious freedom as an antidote to religious extremism in these countries. By supporting a robust marketplace of beliefs and ideas, religious freedom enables more tolerant beliefs to compete in the struggle for hearts and minds.

While the Christmas season is celebrated by a particular faith, it shares a universal message of "Peace on earth, goodwill to men." The surest way to make progress toward this goal is by building a world in which the precious freedoms of conscience, belief, and religion are safeguarded for everyone. It is both ironic and tragic that in this season of universal goodwill the Christian communities of the ancient Biblical lands should find themselves in grave danger. Let us stand in solidarity with them today, and let us rededicate ourselves to the cause of protecting the religious liberty of men and women everywhere.

Robert P. George and Katrina Lantos Swett serve as chairman and vice chairwoman, respectively, for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

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

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

December 30, 2013 | By Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett

The following op-ed appeared in Real Clear World on December 28, 2013.

December 28, 2013 - With the approach of a new year comes the hope of peace among and within nations. But as our nation explores peace on the nuclear front with Tehran, members of Iran 's diaspora community in the United States and other concerned Americans must wonder when Iran will cease its war against its own people and their rights, including freedom of conscience and religion.

Consider the eight-year jail sentence handed down in January, upheld in September and imposed without due process on the Iranian-born American citizen, Pastor Saeed Abedini. His crime? Somehow, he was "threatening national security" through his involvement in Iran's house church movement. After holding Abedini in solitary confinement in Evin prison, Tehran compounded the injustice, transferring him last month to the forbiddingly harsh Gohardasht prison.

The outrage perpetrated against Abedini reflects Iran's misconduct against religious minorities, especially Christians and Baha'is, but also Zoroastrians, Jews and Sufi and Sunni Muslims, as well as majority Shi'a dissenters. It is with good reason that, since 1999, the United States has designated Iran a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), marking it a world-class religious freedom violator.

Today, decades after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, the regime's radically theocratic character is unchanged. Any Iranian dissenting from its interpretation of Shi'a Islam may be branded an enemy of the state and a potential target for abuse, including detention, torture, imprisonment and even execution. The UN Special Rapporteur's October report found that since 2010 more than 300 Christians have been arrested and detained; as of July, at least 20 Christians were detained or imprisoned.

While all of Iran's Christians face a regime that restricts their rights, Tehran reserves some of its harshest treatment for Protestants. Next to the Baha'is, authorities view the Protestant community, comprised largely of evangelically minded individuals, as their most serious spiritual competitor for Iranian hearts and minds.

The vast majority of Iran's Protestants are, like Abedini, converts from Islam. While conversion to or from a faith is an internationally guaranteed right, Iran's leaders deem conversion from Islam an act of apostasy against Islam and Iran's character as an Islamic state, punishable by death. Revolutionary courts also charge converts with political crimes such as harming national security or contact with a foreign enemy. These courts apply such unfounded charges to innocent religious activities such as meetings with foreign Christians, associations with overseas Christian organizations or attending Christian seminars outside of Iran.

Despite talk of reform since Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, took office in August, Baha'i and Christian prisoners remain in jail and a crackdown on Protestant Christians has brought a new wave of arrests. Conditions are at levels not seen since the early years of the revolution.

In the face of these abuses, what can the United States do?

First, it must keep Iran a Country of Particular Concern.

Further, Congress should reauthorize for multiple years, and President Obama should then sign into law, the Lautenberg Amendment, a lifeline for Iranian religious minorities seeking refuge in the United States.

Tehran must release Pastor Abedini and all other prisoners whose only "crime" is exercising their right to freedom of conscience and religion. We invite members of Congress to join the Defending Freedoms Project, an initiative of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in conjunction with USCIRF and Amnesty International, and "adopt" prisoners of conscience, including Iranian prisoners, becoming their voice and spotlighting Tehran's tyranny.

Finally, as it highlights the innocent, Washington must do more to call out the regime's guilty parties, starting with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It should bar them from the country and freeze their assets. At this point, the European Union is outpacing the United States in sanctioning these abusers. Earlier this month, White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice said, "Our sanctions on Iran's human rights abusers will continue and so will our support for the fundamental rights of all Iranians." These promising words must translate into concrete deeds by our Treasury and State departments.

No government has the right to make war on anyone's conscience. As the New Year approaches, Pastor Abedini and others belong at home with their spouses and children, not in a jail cell for following the call of conscience.

Washington must tell Tehran: Prove your peaceful intentions abroad by ceasing your war against conscience at home.

Katrina Lantos Swett is the Vice Chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

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

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

December 11, 2013 | By Katrina Lantos Swett and Mary Ann Glendon

The following op-ed appeared in Reuters & the Chicago Tribune on December 10, 2013.

December 10 marks Human Rights Day, the 65^th anniversary of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), signed by 48 nations - with just eight abstentions.

Sixty-five years ago, naysayers insisted it was nobody else's business how governments behaved within their borders.The declaration confronted this cynical view - and continues to do so today.Human rights abuses and their consequences spill beyond national borders, darkening prospects for harmony and stability across the globe.Freedom of religion or belief, as well as other human rights, are essential to peace and security.They are everyone's business.

Each signatory nation pledged to honor and protect these rights. For example, the declaration provides the foundation for much of the agenda of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, on which we serve.

Yet 75 percent of the world's population now lives in countries in which this freedom is highly restricted, according to a recent Pew study .

These include countries like Saudi Arabia, which abstained, as well as many that signed the declaration, including China, Iran and Nigeria.

Saudi Arabia originally refused to endorse the declaration, in part because of its ban on all public religious expression besides its own extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam. The Kingdom not only continues on this path, but has exported its religious ideology to other nations, fueling religious freedom abuses, including violence. To grasp the security implications of this approach, Americans need only recall that 15 of the 19 attackers on September 11 were Saudi nationals.

All but one of the other abstaining nations comprised the old Soviet Union or its satellites, long notorious violators of religious liberty and other human rights. Today, Russia continues to engage in serious abuses, as Moscow passes extremism laws against certain Muslim groups and "non-traditional” religious communities, particularly Jehovah's Witnesses. The government orchestrates raids, detains and imprisons people who practice these religions. Mass human rights violations also continue in the North Caucasus region.

Another serious problem, however, are nations that signed the declaration but continue to abuse religious freedom.

In China, the government is persecuting Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims. Beijing is repressing and arresting leaders as well as members of independent Catholic and Protestant churches, shuttering their places of worship and imposing long prison sentences. It is also perpetrating forced renunciations and acts of torture on members of the Falun Gong and other groups deemed "evil cults.”

In Myanmar, the military government's celebrated political reforms have yet to improve religious freedom. Sectarian violence continues with impunity against ethnic minority Christians and Muslims. The plight of the persecuted Rohingya Muslims, for example, is a tragedy.

Egypt, another signatory, also has a history of repressing religious minorities, which continued during the administrations of both Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi. Cairo did not protect Coptic Christians from violence , while prosecuting and jailing Christians and others for "defamation” of religion.

Iran also continues to detain, torture and even kill members of religious minority groups, including Baha'is and Christians, whose beliefs are viewed as a fundamental threat to the theocratic state and its interpretation of Shi'ite Islam. It is still using terrorism to export its extremism.

The Nigerian government, another signatory, has failed to bring to justice the perpetrators of sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians, which has claimed the lives of more than 14,000 Nigerians since 1999. It has not countered the Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, which also fuels sectarian fires.

Pakistan is another signatory facing a rise in sectarian violence. Religious liberty abuses have increased to unprecedented levels. Sunni extremists are targeting religious minorities, including Shi"ites, Christians and Ahmadis. Pakistan's government helps fuel the bloodshed through its anti-blasphemy laws, which foster vigilante violence against perceived transgressors.

These countries have not only betrayed the commitment made in 1948; they have done nothing to advance peace and security within or beyond their borders.

Indeed, study after study confirms that countries that do not protect freedom of conscience produce strife and instability, including terrorism.

The United States and the entire world community have an enormous stake in upholding the UDHR's human rights principles - including religious freedom. On this Human Rights Day, it is time to reaffirm the declaration by holding its signatories accountable.

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