According to a new report from a bipartisan United States commission that is likely to affect the interests of Muslims, Christians and Jews among others, the right to exercise religion sustained significant assault around the world in 2015.

“By any measure, religious freedom abroad has been under serious and sustained assault since the release of our commission’s last annual report in 2015,” Robert George, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), stated on May 2.

George was speaking at the release of USCIRF’s yearly report on religious freedom.

“At best, in most of the countries we covered,” George noted, the situation of religious freedom “failed to improve or, worse, spiraled downward in 2015. “I fear … that we’re losing the battle of ideas. We need the American people’s support on this. The public needs to get behind this. We believe in religious freedom. It’s enshrined in the very first amendment to our Constitution.”

USCIRF was set up in 1998 under International Religious Freedom Act as a federal bipartisan commission that offers advice to the State Department about religious freedom across the world. One of its primary tasks is to publish a yearly report on the global condition of religious freedom, making special note of those countries that report the worst abuses against their citizens’ freedom to practice a religion or their choice.

Among USCIRF’s recommendations, exists a list of countries where the worst violations against religious freedom have taken place either at the hands of the government or with immunity from the government. This grouping, which is also referred to as Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), currently includes names such as China, North Korea, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Eritrea. Additionally, USCIRF has requested the State Department to include the names of Nigeria, Iraq, Central African Republic, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Vietnam in the above-mentioned list.

According to this recent report, religious freedom sustained significant assault in 2015 because of several factors – violence by terror outfits that led to the death or displacement of millions of people on grounds of religion, imprisonment of people by government bodies which continue to persecute individuals for their faith and a growth of anti-Jewish or anti-Muslim sentiments across Europe and Russia.

The authors of the report advised the United States to serve as a leader by offering refuge to victims of religious persecution.

“The nation should set a goal of accepting 100,000 Syrian refugees and should provide sufficient funding for the vetting of these refugees. Congress should also reauthorize the Lautenberg Amendment to accept beleaguered Iranian religious minorities fleeing persecution by the government there,” the report insisted.

In Asia, thousands of Rohingyas, a Muslim minority group from Burma, have been marginalized by their own government, as they continue to live in hiding and have no legal protection. The report stated there are as many as one million Rohingyas, who have been displaced and need to be rehabilitated.

In Africa, Iraq and Syria, refugees have been fleeing the barbaric onslaught being carried out by terror groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State. Now, they either seek shelter in surrounding countries that have become overpopulated due to the large refugee intake or take on dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea into Europe where they are met with growing hostility.

In Europe, Muslims have been harassed or violently attacked for donning public symbols of their religion.

“Furthermore, the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 produced backlashes against Muslims by members of the wider societies, many of whom blame Muslims collectively, which is, of course, itself a terrible thing,” George said.

In Denmark and Holland, laws restricting religious acts such as halal slaughter and circumcision have surfaced while in Russia, xenophobia and religiously motivated hate crimes, particularly against Muslims and Jews, have increased as well.

“Xenophobia and hate crimes, particularly against Muslims and Jews, are now being committed with ‘impunity’ in Russia and are a problem throughout Europe. They have resulted in an exponential rise in Jewish emigration from Europe,” the report stated, while George said, “Jews are being targeted by secularists, far-right political parties and Islamist extremists who sought recruits from disaffected members of Muslim communities.”

In other countries such as China, Iran, North Korea and Eritrea, governments have been actively persecuting and jailing religious minorities for merely expressing their faith.

“The existence of these prisoners [of conscience], people who are being jailed, beaten, tortured simply for expressing their conscientious religious beliefs or beliefs about religion, are an indictment of every government that holds them,” George stated.

In Uzbekistan, where Muslims constitute 90 percent of the population and all religious groups must register their activities with the government, over 12,000 Muslims have been jailed for organizing unregistered religious activities.

Another problem in the face of religious freedom is the inane anti-extremism laws that are in place in certain countries. These are frequently used to crack down on religious minorities on grounds of their respective governments trying to tackle terrorism or extremism.

In Russia for instance, such laws have been used against not only Muslims but also Jehovah’s Witnesses. Since the laws require no evidence at the time of accusation, any person can be convicted or jailed for professing the superiority of his or her religion.

“Governments, in enforcing these anti-extremism laws, often fuel the very extremism they are purporting to fight,” George explained, “and fighting terrorism becomes a pretext for human-rights abuses.”

This has been witnessed in China, where the government’s actions against Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in the country, have only fueled violence and nothing else.

Blasphemy laws against phrases or actions showing apparent contempt or mockery of religion are yet another pernicious problem in certain countries.

In Pakistan for example, where no evidence is necessary to make an accusation, such crimes can also be punishable by death.

“Blasphemy might be insensitive or hurtful to many,” the report’s summary stated, but blasphemy laws are not the answer. They inappropriately position governments as arbiters of truth or religious rightness, empowering officials to enforce particular views against individuals, minorities and dissenters.”

Apart from making such recommendations for CPCs, the report also provided a Tier 2 list of nations, which may not have been the worst abusers of religious freedom but still continue to report some serious and significant abuses. This list features countries such as Turkey, Russia, Cuba, Azerbaijan, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Afghanistan and India. While the leaders of some of these countries have consistently said politically correct things about religious freedom and the need to protect religious minorities, their administrations have been either complicit in the persecution of religious minorities or clueless about how to end sectarian violence, the report elaborated.

“In a number of nations, there has been a continued gap between the rhetoric of the regime and the reality on the ground,” George said, adding that, “Rhetoric doesn’t really matter unless it is accompanied by action.”

Photo Credits: Wishesh