Report: Persecution causing global suffering

WASHINGTON—The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report today, detailing a rise of intolerance, persecution, and violence against persons of faith around the world.

“By any measure, religious freedom abroad has been under serious and sustained assault,” said USCIRF Commissioner Robert P. George. “[Last year] there was no shortage of attendant suffering worldwide.”

USCIRF, a bipartisan and independent government commission, monitors governments and non-state actors to determine which countries and groups should top the U.S. foreign policy agenda. In its annual report, USCRIF provides country-specific recommendations to the president, his State Department, and Congress. This year’s account detailed more than 30 countries committing serious violations and identified 17 nations as severe abusers of religious freedom.

USCIRF found seven countries perpetuate systematic, ongoing, and egregious defilements of religious freedom that the Obama administration has yet to highlight.

The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) requires the U.S. government to designate Countries of Particular Concern (CPC). CPCs are states in which the government engages in or tolerates particularly severe violations of religious freedom.

The State Department recognizes 10 CPCs, including China, North Korea, Iran, and Eritrea. But USCIRF’s report claims that list is incomplete and notes places like Pakistan and Nigeria as gross offenders worthy of CPC designations.

Pakistan is 96 percent Muslim and has the most stringent blasphemy laws in the world. More persons are on death row or serving life sentences for blasphemy in Pakistan than in any other country in the world.

Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Catholic mother of five, has been in prison since 2009 on blasphemy charges. She remains on death row to this day because she refuses to profess Islam.

“This is an absolute outrage,” George said. “We have called and will continue to call for the removal of that law. It is simply used as a pretext to allow persecution.”

In addition to the annual report, USCIRF conducted an investigation into Pakistan’s public schools last month, finding bias and a glorification of war and violence that promotes a national Islamic identity at the expense of Christians and other minorities.

But even greater atrocities against Christians occur in Nigeria.

The Global Terrorism Index lists the Nigerian-based Islamist terror group Boko Haram as the most deadly organization in the world. And USCIRF dedicated an appendix in its 270-page report to listing known Boko Haram attacks in 2015.

More than 75 percent of Boko Haram victims are civilians. The group has killed thousands of Christians and displaced millions more. And in the last year, Boko Haram’s crimes only got uglier.

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund released a report last month that shows Boko Haram is increasingly using young girls and boys as suicide bombers. In the last year, the terror group used 44 child suicide bombers, compared to four in 2014. Some bombers were as young as 8 years old.

In the last year, the Nigerian military successfully reclaimed territory from Boko Haram and arrested its fighters, but that barely slowed the group down. Fueled by an ideology of hate, Boko Haram returned to an asymmetrical warfare campaign and spread out into surrounding countries, including Chad, Niger, and Cameroon.

Today’s report said the Nigerian federal government has failed to implement strategies to prevent or stop terrorism within its borders and has fostered a climate of impunity for Boko Haram.

While much of the news is not good, USCIRF acknowledged several positive steps by Congress and the Obama administration. The report highlighted the House of Representatives’ unanimous vote to designate atrocities in Iraq and Syria as genocide, with Secretary of State John Kerry following suit shortly after.

But George emphasized that in most places around the world, persecution levels remain the same or worse and the U.S. can and should do more to help.

“Things are not going in the right direction,” he said. “We need the public to get behind this and we need to make religious freedom a top priority.”