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WASHINGTON-The U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom (USCIRF) today announced its 2008 recommendations to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice on "countries of particular concern," or CPCs. The 1998
International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) requires that the United States
designate as CPCs those countries whose governments have engaged in or
tolerated systematic and egregious violations of the universal right to freedom
of religion or belief.
"Developments of the past decade have strengthened the
importance of freedom of religion or belief, as the U.S. government navigates a
world threatened by religion-based extremism and religion-imbued conflict,"
said Commission Chair Michael Cromartie. "In the past year, violent government
repression of religious communities in China, Burma, and Sudan, among other
countries, confirms that religious freedom is vulnerable human right that must
be protected by the international community."
Today the Commission also released its 2008 Annual Report
with recommendations on U.S. policy for the President, Secretary of State,
and Congress with regard to CPC countries, as well as other countries where the
United States can help to promote freedom of religion or belief.
The Commission's recommendations for CPC designation for 2008
are Burma, Democratic
People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, People's
Republic of China, Saudi
Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and
Vietnam.
In contrast to the State
Department, which removed Vietnam from the CPC list in 2006, the Commission concluded
that Vietnam still merits designation as a CPC. There has been notable progress, but it has occurred alongside
persistent abuses, discrimination, and restrictions. The government continues to imprison and
detain dozens of individuals who advocate for religious freedom reforms in
Vietnam. Ethnic minority Buddhists and Protestants are
often harassed, beaten, detained, arrested, and discriminated against, and they
continue to face some efforts to coerce renunciations of faith.
The Commission has also established a Watch List of
countries where conditions do not rise to the statutory level requiring CPC
designation but which require close monitoring due to the nature and extent of
violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the
governments. Countries on the Commission's Watch List for 2008 are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, and Nigeria.
The Commission remains seriously concerned about religious freedom
conditions in Iraq. In 2007,
the Commission placed Iraq on its Watch List, citing escalating unchecked
sectarian violence, mounting evidence of collusion between Shi'a militias and
Iraqi government ministries, and the severe plight of the country's smallest
religious minorities, including ChaldoAssyrian Christians, Sabean Mandaeans,
and Yazidis, who face widespread violence from Sunni insurgents and foreign
extremists, as well as pervasive violence, discrimination, and marginalization
at the hands of the government officials and para-state militias. The
Commission is traveling to the region later in the month and plans to issue its
report and recommendations on Iraq in the near future, including a
recommendation concerning the appropriate designation of Iraq this year under
IRFA.
The following is the text of the Commission's letter to
Secretary Rice with 2008 CPC recommendations:
May 1, 2008
The Honorable Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
United States Department of State
Washington, DC
Dear Secretary Rice:
This year marks the
tenth anniversary of the adoption of the International Religious Freedom Act
(IRFA), legislation that underscores the importance of religious freedom around
the world and the need to promote this freedom as an integral component of U.S.
foreign policy. Developments of the past
decade have strengthened the significance of this critical freedom, which affects
the political and humanitarian interests of the United States, as well as
America's national security concerns.
As required by IRFA
and pursuant to our review of the facts and circumstances regarding violations
of religious freedom around the world, the United States Commission on
International Religious Freedom continues to recommend that the following 11
countries be designated as "countries of particular concern," or CPCs: Burma,
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan,
People's Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and
Vietnam.
Severe Religious Freedom Violators: the Commission's
CPC List
Re-Designations: Persistently Severe Violators
In November 2006, you
re-designated Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi
Arabia, Sudan, and
Uzbekistan as CPCs. The
Commission agrees that there have been no improvements substantial enough to
warrant the removal of these eight countries from the CPC list. In many of these countries, conditions have
instead deteriorated further.
—The military
junta that governs Burma has
directed increasing repression at
ethnic and religious minorities, democracy activists, and international
humanitarian agencies over the past year.
In September 2007, the Burmese government violently cracked down on
the peaceful "Saffron Revolution" demonstrations by Buddhist monks, killing at least 30 people and
unleashing a wave of killings, arrests, de-frockings, and disappearances. Ethnic minority Christians and
Muslims have encountered the most sustained repression in recent years. Moreover, following the September 2007
unrest, the junta has also increased repression of Burmese Buddhists.
— In China,
severe crackdowns targeting Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, "underground"
Roman Catholics, "house church" Protestants, and various spiritual movements
such as Falun Gong continue unabated.
The recent, concentrated wave of repression in Tibet has thrown a
glaring new spotlight on the repressive policies and practices of the Chinese
government, which continues to restrict religious practice to
government-approved religious associations and tries to control the growth and activities of both registered and
unregistered religious groups. Ethnic
minority religious groups such as Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims,
unregistered groups, and those derided and termed by the government to be
"cults" are subject to the most brutal abuses.
—The
conditions for religious freedom in Eritrea
appear to have worsened over the past year, including arbitrary arrests and
detention without charge of members of unregistered religious groups, and the
torture or other ill-treatment of hundreds of persons on account of their
religion, sometimes resulting in death. The State Department reports that the number of
long-term prisoners continues to grow, noting that at least 160 additional
members of unregistered religious groups were detained without charges by
Eritrean authorities in the past year.
—The already
poor religious freedom record of Iran has
deteriorated further, especially for religious minorities-including Baha'is,
Sufi Muslims, and Evangelical Christians-who face relentless arrests,
imprisonment, and harassment. Fears among Iran's Jews have grown due to
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated denials of the Holocaust and other
anti-Semitic statements. Dissidents and
political reformers continue to be imprisoned on criminal charges of blasphemy
and for criticizing the Islamic regime.
Nearly 150 Baha'is have been subjected to a wave of arrests and
detention since late 2004; some have been sentenced to prison terms ranging
from 90 days to one year on dubious charges that include "spreading propaganda
against the regime," and the fear of arbitrary arrest has grown.
—North Korea affords its
citizens no protections for universal human rights, including religious
freedom; the regime perceives religion as a security threat to be combated at
all costs. The government severely
represses public and private religious activities and maintains a policy of
pervasive control over government-sanctioned religious practice. A new Commission study released in April 2008
confirms that refugees who are forcibly repatriated from China face severe
persecution, including harsh interrogations, long-term imprisonment, and
torture if they are found to have converted to Christianity or have had ongoing
contact with South Korean churches. The
report also revealed that new efforts are underway to suppress the growth of
religious activity in North Korea spurred by cross-border contacts with China.
—The
government of Saudi Arabia continues
to commit serious violations of freedom of religion and related human rights of
the members of Muslim communities from a variety of schools of Islam, as well
as non-Muslims, by banning all forms of public religious expression other than
that of the government's own interpretation of one school of Sunni Islam and by
interfering with private religious practice.
The government in Saudi Arabia also continues to be a source of funding
used globally to finance religious schools, hate literature, and other
activities that support religious intolerance and, in some cases, violence
toward non-Muslims and disfavored Muslims-actions that are incompatible with
the Saudi government's commitments as a member of the United Nations. In addition, the government's policy of
curtailing universal rights for non-Saudi visitors to the country and
inhibiting the enjoyment of human rights on an equal basis for expatriate
workers, particularly the two - three million non-Muslim workers, including
Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and others, who have gone to Saudi Arabia for
temporary employment, results in severe religious freedom violations.
—In Sudan, an authoritarian
government-which has pursued coercive policies of Arabization and Islamization
resulting in genocide-severely restricts the religious freedom and other human
rights of its population. Most of the
victims of Sudan's decades-long North-South civil war were Christians or
followers of traditional African religions.
With the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in January
2005, religious freedom conditions have improved in southern and central
Sudan. However, there are serious
government-directed obstacles to implementing the CPA, and despite the creation
of the constitutionally-required Commission on the Rights of Non-Muslims in the
National Capital, the CPA agreement has not yet resulted in significant changes
in practice in government-controlled areas of the North. The government's continuing attacks and genocide
in Darfur, as well as its deliberate obstruction of the CPA and in Darfur of
international peacekeepers and humanitarian assistance, including its failure
to cooperate with the Security Council-mandated investigation by the
International Criminal Court of alleged war crimes, impugn the commitment of
Sudanese leaders to support human rights guarantees.
—In Uzbekistan, which was designated in
2006, the government has continued to arrest Muslims and harshly repress groups
and close mosques that do not conform to government-prescribed practices or
that it alleges to be associated with extremist political programs. Thousands of Muslims who reject the state's
control over religious practice have been imprisoned in recent years, many of
them are denied the right to due process, and there are credible reports that
many of those arrested are tortured or beaten in detention. As of 2007, according to your Department's
own estimate, there were at least 5,000 non-conforming Muslims in prison,
including some interned in psychiatric hospitals. Moreover, Uzbekistan has a highly restrictive
law on religion that severely limits the ability of religious communities to
function, leaving more than 100 religious groups currently denied
registration. The Uzbek government faces security threats, but these
threats do not justify the government's harsh abuse of religious believers or
the continued practice of torture, which reportedly remains widespread.
CPCs: the Need
to Designate and Adequately Respond*
The
Commission is concerned that the State Department has not designated any
country as a CPC since November 2006. As you know, IRFA
specifically directs the Secretary of State, as delegated by the President, on
an annual basis, to review religious freedom conditions around the world and,
based on that review, to designate as CPCs those countries in which the
government has engaged in or tolerated "particularly severe violations of
religious freedom." The annual review must occur by September 1 of each
year and, while IRFA does not set a specific deadline for the CPC designations,
the fact that those designations are based on that review indicates that they
should be made in a timely way thereafter. It is now May 2008 and no CPC
designations have yet been made based on the review that had to be completed by
September 1, 2007. The State
Department issued its annual International
Religious Freedom Report in September 2007, as required by statute, but
without making any CPC designations. While the report is extremely
valuable, its purpose is to help the Administration identify the very worst
religious freedom violators as required by IRFA. The CPC designation
process is vital to that legislation. The State Department's delay in
naming CPCs following the annual review deadline undermines IRFA's statutory
scheme, and may send the unfortunate signal that the U.S. government is not
sufficiently committed to the IRFA process, including by seeking improvements
from the most severe religious freedom violators.
IRFA
prescribes a list of actions from which the President can select appropriate
policy responses for each CPC. This was done in the case of Eritrea, to which,
in September 2005, you announced the denial of commercial export of defense
articles and services covered by the Arms Control Export Act, with some items
exempted. This was the first unique presidential action to be undertaken
under IRFA as a result of CPC designation. With respect to Burma, Iran, North
Korea, and Sudan, substantial and important sanctions are in place, initially
imposed on other grounds and then redesignated for religious freedom reasons
under IRFA. In the case of China, the Chinese government's egregious
religious freedom violations have been met with a relatively weak U.S. response,
a redesignation of sanctions restricting exports of crime control and detection
instruments and equipment. The designation of a severe religious freedom
violator as a CPC should be followed by the implementation of a clear policy
response uniquely directed at addressing religious freedom violations such as
the recommendations for each CPC that are provided in the Commission's
report.
Moreover,
the Commission encourages the State Department to comply with the requirements
of IRFA in the case of the most recently named CPC, Uzbekistan. As stated
in the Report on International Religious Freedom, the State Department
has opted "to establish a dialogue aimed at improving religious freedom" in
lieu of a presidential action. The Commission hopes that these negotiations
are directed toward negotiating a binding agreement on Uzbekistan for
measures to improve religious freedom, which would be an acceptable action
provided under IRFA. A single CPC, Saudi Arabia, was granted a 180-day
waiver exempting it from any presidential action whatsoever; first announced in
2005, the waiver was subsequently extended in 2006 for two years, "to further
the purposes of the (International Religious Freedom) Act." With the
waiver, the U.S. has not implemented a single policy response to the denial of
religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most egregious violators.
Vietnam: Severe Religious Freedom Violations Continue
Vietnam was
removed from the State Department's CPC list in November 2006, on the eve of
President Bush's visit to Hanoi for the Asian Pacific Economic Conference. The Commission expressed its concern over the
decision to lift the CPC designation, citing continued arrests and detentions
of individuals in part because of their religious activities and the
persistent, severe religious freedom restrictions targeting some ethnic
minority Protestants and Buddhists, Vietnamese Mennonites, Hao Hoa Buddhists,
and monks and nuns associated with the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam
(UBCV).
A Commission delegation
traveled to Vietnam in October 2007 and found that progress in improving
conditions for religious freedom has been very uneven: improvements for some religious communities
do not extend to others; progress in one province is not similarly realized in
another; national laws are not fully implemented at the local and provincial
levels; and there continue to be far too many abuses and restrictions of
religious freedom, including the imprisonment of individuals for reasons
related to their religious activity or religious freedom advocacy. In view of the overall deterioration of
human rights conditions in Vietnam, which includes continued abuses of
religious freedom and related human rights, the Commission continues to find
that lifting the CPC designation for Vietnam was premature. We recommend that Vietnam be re-designated as
a CPC in 2008.
In contrast to the State
Department, the Commission maintains that there continue to be religious
"prisoners of concern" in Vietnam, the long-term detention of whom should be a
factor in determining whether Vietnam continues to be a severe violator of
religious freedom. Since the CPC
designation was lifted and Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization,
positive religious freedom trends have not kept pace with other elements of the
U.S.-Vietnamese relationship. Arrests,
detentions, discrimination, and other restrictions continue, perpetrated by
recalcitrant provincial officials and abetted by the central government's
suspicion of religious leaders believed to have political motives or the
expansion of religious adherence in some ethnic minority areas. In addition, Vietnam has initiated a severe
crackdown on human rights defenders and advocates for the freedoms of speech,
association assembly, and religion, including many religious leaders.
Saudi Arabia: the U.S. Government Response to an
Important CPC Designation
In
July 2006, you decided to leave in place a waiver "to further the purposes" of
IRFA by announcing that bilateral discussions with Saudi Arabia had enabled the United States to identify and confirm
a number of policies that the Saudi government "is pursuing and will continue
to pursue for the purpose of promoting greater freedom for religious practice
and increased tolerance for religious groups."
The Saudi government's stated reforms, however, have not been
implemented. As a consequence, the
Commission remains seriously concerned about: (1) whether and how the Saudi
policies will be put into effect and (2) how the United States will monitor and
report publicly on them.
A
Commission delegation traveled to Saudi Arabia last summer and found that, in
spite of many promises by government officials, little has changed on the
ground to improve religious freedom conditions.
The Saudi government persists in severely restricting all forms of
public religious expression other than the government's interpretation and
enforcement of its school of Sunni Islam.
It is clear that the government has not substantially revised the
Ministry of Education textbooks used in schools across Saudi Arabia and abroad
to remove material that incites violence and fuels extreme religious
intolerance, even though this pledge for textbook reform was included in the
Department's July 2006 statement confirming Saudi policies.
The Commission therefore continues to
recommend that the State Department report publicly to Congress every 120 days
on the implementation of the policies identified in the bilateral
discussions. The policies in question-if
implemented in full-could advance much-needed efforts to dismantle some of the
institutionalized policies that have promoted severe violations of freedom of
religion or belief in Saudi Arabia and worldwide.
Other Severe Violators Not on the State Department
List
Of the countries not on your
CPC list, in addition to Vietnam, the Commission continues to find that Pakistan and Turkmenistan persist in
engaging in or tolerating particularly severe violations of religious
freedom. We strongly recommend that
these countries be designated as CPCs.
—Despite the
dramatic events in Pakistan in the
past year, the Commission finds that of all of the serious religious freedom
concerns, including violence, on which it has previously reported persist. Sectarian and religiously motivated violence
continues in Pakistan, particularly against Shi'a Muslims, Ahmadis, Christians,
and Hindus, and the government's response remains inadequate. A number of the country's laws, including
legislation restricting the Ahmadi community and laws against blasphemy, have
been used to silence members of religious minorities and dissenters, and they
frequently result in imprisonment on account of religion or belief and/or
vigilante violence against the accused.
The Hudood Ordinances-Islamic decrees predominantly affecting women that
are enforced alongside Pakistan's secular legal system-provide for harsh
punishments, including amputation and death by stoning, for alleged violations
of Islamic law. There is also mounting
evidence from multiple sources that Pakistan's government has been complicit in
providing sanctuary to the Taliban.
Finally, the government of Pakistan has extended its undemocratic
practices into the international arena by promoting measures at the UN to halt
the so-called "defamation of religions," which clearly violate the right to
freedom of expression, as well as freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.
—Significant
religious freedom problems and official harassment of religious adherents
persist in Turkmenistan, where police raids and other forms of
harassment of registered and unregistered religious groups continue more than a
year after the death of longtime dictator Saparmurat Niyazov. The
repressive 2003 religion law remains in force, causing severe difficulties for
the legal functioning of religious groups. The government is still
promoting the former president's personality cult in the form of the Ruhnama in religious affairs and as a
mandatory feature of public education.
Although the new president has taken some isolated steps, including the
release of the country's former chief mufti, systemic legal reforms directly
related to religious freedom and other human rights have not been made. Turkmenistan's removal from the Commission's
CPC list is therefore not warranted.
The Commission's Watch List
In addition to its CPC recommendations, the Commission
has established a Watch List of countries where conditions do not rise to the
statutory level requiring CPC designation but which require close monitoring
due to the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or
tolerated by the governments. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba,
Egypt, Indonesia, and
Nigeria comprise the Commission's Watch List. The Commission is concerned about the serious
abuses in these countries, and that the governments either have not halted
repression and/or violence amounting to severe violations of freedom of
religion, or have failed to punish those responsible for perpetrating those
acts. We urge you to pay particular
attention to the poor situation for religious freedom in these countries,
which, if not reversed, may deteriorate and require CPC designation during the
coming year.
— In Afghanistan,
conditions for freedom of religion or belief continue to be highly
problematic. The country's flawed new
constitution does not protect the right of individuals to dissent from the
prevailing orthodoxy regarding Islamic beliefs and practices, leading in some
cases to serious abuses, including judicial action that violates the rights of
the accused. The Afghan government's
incapacity to exercise authority effectively outside the capital, Kabul,
contributes to a progressively deteriorating situation for religious freedom
and other human rights in many regions, and religious extremism, including
through the return of the Taliban, is an increasingly real threat once again in
Afghanistan.
— In Bangladesh,
Islamist radicalism and violence and the threat of serious violence and
continued discrimination against members of religious minority communities
remain significant concerns. Since the installation of a new caretaker
government, there have been numerous and alarming reports of serious human
rights abuses, including suspected extrajudicial killings by the security
forces, arbitrary detentions, torture, and curbs on press freedom. In addition to violent attacks against
Hindus, Christians, and Ahmadi Muslims, the pre-independence Vested
Property Act continues to be used as justification for some Muslims to seize
Hindu-owned land with impunity.
— Already harsh religious freedom conditions in Belarus deteriorated in 2007, with the
government harassing and imposing the payment of sharply increased fines on
members of certain religious groups, especially those whom officials allege to
have links to foreign entities or political agendas. In January 2008, Belarus issued a decree that
further tightened strict government regulations on foreign religious
workers. The authoritarian government of
President Aleksandr Lukashenko enforces the country's harsh 2002 law on
religion, resulting in serious regulatory obstacles and bureaucratic and legal
restrictions on the activities of many religious communities. In 2007, 50,000 Christians of various
denominations in Belarus signed a petition to reform the 2002 law, but in March
2008 the Belarusian government rejected it.
— In Egypt,
the government has taken inadequate measures to stop repression of minority
religious adherents and "unorthodox Muslims" or, in many cases, to punish those
responsible for violence or other severe violations of religious freedom. Despite some increased public space to
discuss religious freedom issues in the media and other fora as well as some
positive, but limited, judicial rulings on some religious freedom cases,
serious religious freedom violations continue to affect Coptic Orthodox
Christians, Jews, and Baha'is, as well as members of minority Muslim
communities, all of whom are also subject to religiously-motivated
attacks. The government has also done
too little to combat rampant anti-Semitism in the state media.
— Religious belief and practice remain under
tight governmental control in Cuba
despite a change in governmental leadership.
Both registered and unregistered religious groups continue to suffer
official interference, harassment, and repression. Political prisoners and human rights and
pro-democracy activists continue to be denied the right to worship. There are reports of religious leaders being
attacked, beaten, or detained for opposing government actions, and political
prisoners, as well as human rights and pro-democracy activists, are
increasingly limited in their right to practice their religion.
— Although the situation has continued to
improve in Indonesia, concerns
remain about ongoing communal violence and the government's inability or
unwillingness to curb it, the forcible closures of places of worship belonging
to religious minorities, the growing political power and influence of religious
extremists who harass and sometimes instigate violence against moderate Muslim
leaders and members of religious minorities, and the arrests of individuals
considered "deviant" under Indonesian law.
There are persistent fears that Indonesia's commitment to secular
governance, ethnic and religious pluralism, and a culture of tolerance will be
eroded by some who promote extremist interpretations of Islam.
— Nigeria
continues to suffer from violent communal conflicts along religious lines. Other concerns in Nigeria are the expansion
of sharia (Islamic law) into the criminal codes of several northern Nigerian
states and discrimination against minority communities of Christians and
Muslims. At least 29 Christians were
killed and numerous churches burned in religiously motivated rioting in
September and December 2007, which led to the flight of some 3,000 people. In February 2008, riots broke out among a mob
of Muslim youths who torched a police station and looted the homes of Christian
and police officers. One person was
killed and five were seriously wounded.
Serious, Targeted Violence in Iraq
Finally, Madame Secretary,
we wish to highlight the grave situation for religious freedom and other human
rights in Iraq. Since 2003, the Commission has reported on
religious freedom conditions in post-Saddam Iraq. During this period, the Commission pointed to
alarming patterns of religiously-motivated human rights abuses. The Commission has been concerned about the
particularly dire conditions affecting non-Muslims in Iraq, including
ChaldoAssyrian Christians, other Christians, Sabean Mandaeans, Yazidis, and
other minority religious communities, who face widespread violence from Sunni
insurgents and foreign extremists, as well as pervasive violence,
discrimination, and marginalization at the hands of the national government,
regional governments, and para-state militias, including those in Kurdish
areas. The Commission also concluded
that Iraq's government was failing to curb the growing scope and severity of
other religious freedom violations. In
2007, the Commission placed Iraq on its Watch List, citing escalating unchecked
sectarian violence, mounting evidence of collusion between Shi'a militias and
Iraqi government ministries, and the severe plight of the country's smallest
religious minorities. **
We remain seriously concerned about religious freedom
conditions in Iraq. The Commission is
traveling to the region later in the month and plans to issue its report and
recommendations on Iraq in the near future, including a recommendation
concerning the appropriate designation of Iraq this year under IRFA.
* * *
Summaries
of conditions in the countries discussed in this letter can be found in the
Commission's Annual Report, which is enclosed and which will be released to the
public tomorrow concurrently with this letter.
We request that you give special attention to the policy recommendations
contained in this report. We also
respectfully urge the Department of State to take all actions necessary to
implement the IRFA legislation, particularly with regard to the countries
designated as CPCs.
Madame Secretary, the 10 years since the adoption of IRFA
have made clear that promoting religious freedom continues to be vital to our
own political and national security interests.
It is also the right thing to do.
The Commission looks forward to meeting with you to discuss its 2008 CPC
recommendations.
Respectfully yours,
Michael Cromartie
Chair
cc: John
D. Negroponte, Deputy Secretary of State
Daniel Fried, Acting Undersecretary of State for Political
Affairs
Paula J. Dobriansky,
Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs
David J. Kramer, Assistant
Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
John
V. Hanford, III, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom
Stephen Hadley, National
Security Advisor
Michael G. Kozak, Senior Director for Democracy, Human
Rights and International Organizations, National Security Council
* Commissioner Leo declines to join this portion of
the letter. A separate statement setting forth reasons is attached as Appendix
A.
** In the Commission's letter to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice last year, Commissioners Bansal, Gaer, and
Prodromou concluded that based on the severe human rights and religious
freedom conditions extant in the country, and the sovereign government's
complicity with, or toleration of, abuses as outlined in the Iraq chapter
of the Commission's 2007 Annual Report, Iraq should have
been recommended for designation as a CPC.
Appendix A: Separate Statement of
Commissioner Leo Regarding the Need to Designate and Adequately Respond to CPCs
"I
cannot join the portion of the Commission's letter to Secretary Rice that
discusses the need of the Department of State to make CPC designations within
certain time periods, and that further urges the U.S. government to go beyond
pre-existing sanctions and add new and unique presidential actions upon CPC
designation. I shall not express an
opinion one way or the other on these matters.
"I
do not believe it is this Commission's duty to police the executive branch's
compliance with Sections 401 and 405 of the International Religious Freedom Act
(IRFA). That is Congress's
responsibility as part of its oversight role.
The Commission's only responsibilities are those set forth in Section
202 of the Act, and they are essentially confined to evaluating the condition
of religious freedom abroad and making particular recommendations about how to
improve it.
"Section 202 of IRFA sets forth two
‘primary responsibilities.' The first is to review ‘the facts and circumstances
of violations of religious freedom presented in the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the
Annual Report, and the Executive Summary, as well as information from other
sources as appropriate.' In other words,
the Commission is to cull facts and circumstances demonstrating religious
freedom violations from a review of a broader set of human rights practices and
materials.
"The second responsibility is to make
policy recommendations ‘with respect to matters involving international
religious freedom.' This is not a
general mandate, but instead flows naturally from the previous subsection. Specifically, the Commission develops factual
findings about a country's religious freedom violations (Section 202(a)(1)),
and then makes policy recommendations about how to rectify them (Section
202(a)(2)).
"A broad interpretation of the second
responsibility-that the Commission can make general pronouncements about
Executive Branch action (or inaction) under IRFA-is not, in my view, supported
by the language or structure of Section 202.
That reading of Section 202 would be correct if the first responsibility
captured both a command to make findings about violations and a command to make
recommendations for their resolution.
The second responsibility would then stand alone, as a general
mandate. However, as written, the second
responsibility of making policy recommendations is simply a follow-on to the
specific country-by-country findings we are to make. At least that is the reading that I think is
dictated by the plain meaning of the statute's structure and words.
"No other part of Section 202 suggests a
broader charge or mandate. The
Commission is to ‘recommend policies of the United States Government with
respect to each foreign country.' It is
to ‘monitor facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom.' And, the job of ‘evaluating United States
Government policies in response to violations of religious freedom' is tied to
making policy recommendations with respect to ‘each foreign country.' If Congress wanted us to generally police
executive branch compliance with Sections 403 and 405 of IRFA (timely issuance
of reports, decisions to issue sanctions, etc.), it knew how to say that and
should have said so explicitly.
"I agree with the notion that, in a
manner of speaking, the Commission was established to ‘keep State honest.' However, we did not get that job by Congress
having delegated to us in 1998 a piece of its oversight responsibility, which
entails an overall performance review.
Rather, we ‘keep State honest' through the thoroughness of our findings
and the incisiveness of our recommendations in relation to particular
countries, because that gives the President, Congress, and the public a set of
benchmarks from which they can make their judgments about the Department's
performance, and, in particular, the performance of the State Department's
Office of International Religious Freedom.
"There are practical issues here,
also. I have no objection to the
Commission saying that more should be done respecting a particular country (such as Uzbekistan) based upon a review of
the facts on the ground and what we think might be most effective. That can produce specific action by the U.S.
government that improves religious freedom for a specific population or
group. The Commission is at its best,
and works with the greatest amount of unity and collegiality, when this kind of
technical work is tackled. However, a
blanket criticism or review strikes me as not yielding the same value, and I
fear that blanket pronouncements and criticisms are far more susceptible to
being construed as political broadsides."
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