Iraq, Afghanistan and China on US “Watch List” for Threats to Religious Freedom

|TOP|Iraq, Afghanistan and China are just some of the countries that have appeared on this year’s list of countries in breach of religious freedoms released by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

In the commission’s 2006 report, Iraq, Afghanistan and China were among the same 11 countries that appeared on the list of the world’s worst persecutors of religious adherents as in 2005.

Afghanistan was added newly to a special watch list of countries recommended for close monitoring which already includes from last year Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria, reports the Baptist Press.

USCIRF member Preeta Bansal said of Afghanistan at a May 3 news conference in Washington: “The defects in the constitution are the principle concerns for the commission, and we continue to believe that the constitution was an important, missed opportunity in our reconstruction work in Afghanistan.”

|AD|Commissioner Richard Land also told reporters that the US had a “special obligation to act vigorously, together with the Iraqi leadership” following its direct involvement in the country’s political reconstruction, in order to “promptly remedy the systematic flaws which continue to undermine the protection of universal human rights in Iraq”.

The report also listed several countries as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) – countries where governments are deemed to have “engaged in or tolerated systemic and egregious violations of religious freedom”.

Countries recommended for CPC status this year include Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Vietnam.

Just days after a fall out with the Vatican over the consecration of bishops, China came out to slam the US report which accused the country of conducting “severe and pervasive violations of religious freedom and related religious rights”.

"The commission ignored what it saw and heard during its visit to China last year and distorted and attacked China's religious and ethnic policies in its report," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said on the ministry's Web site (www.mfa.gov.cn).

Although not on the list, the commission also assured Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that it would maintain close observation of religious freedom in India, Russia and Sri Lanka.