Washington D.C., Apr 26, 2018 / 10:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Religious freedom conditions worsened across the globe in the past year, according to the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom’s 2018 report, released April 25.
Violations against religious freedom were particularly acute under authoritarian regimes in the Eastern Hemisphere. With the exception of Cuba, all of the 28 countries USCIRF designated as the worst perpetrators in 2017 lie east of the prime meridian.
The worst abuses against religious freedom included genocide, enslavement, rape, imprisonment, forced displacement, forced conversions, property destruction, and bans on religious education of children.
The commission recommended that 16 countries be recognized by the State Department as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), a label that identifies foreign governments that engage in or tolerate “systemic, ongoing, and egregious” religious freedom violations. Receiving this designation from the State Department opens the door to consequences including trade and funding sanctions.
These 16 are the same countries that USCIRF recommended last year with the State Department going on to recognize 10 as CPCs in December 2017: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
However, the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom urges that religious freedom violations in Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Nigeria, Vietnam, and the Central African Republic were so severe that these countries also merit CPC designation.
Of these six unrecognized countries, USCIRF Chair Daniel Mark is particularly concerned about the state of religious freedom in Pakistan.
“What we have said for many years is that Pakistan is the worst country in the world that’s not designated for CPC. Pakistan is a world leader in imprisonment and convictions, prosecutions for blasphemy and apostasy, and those sorts of things,” Mark told CNA.
According to the report, approximately 40 people sentenced under blasphemy laws are awaiting the death penalty or serving life sentences, including Asia Bibi, a Christian mother and field laborer.
In December 2017, Islamic State affiliated suicide bombers attacked a church in Quetta, Pakistan killing nine people.
The upcoming national elections in July 2018 have exacerbated religious tensions in the country.
“Conditions in Pakistan are not just bad at the level of law, where for example, Amadis are out in the Constitution for second-class citizenship, but also at the level of civil society where a culture of impunity has grown,” continued Mark, who explained that vigante mobs have been attacking people on the basis of blasphemy accusations.
In lieu of CPC designation, Pakistan was placed on a “Special Watch List” by the State Department in December 2017. This list is a new category created by the 2016 amendments to the International Religious Freedom Act.
“Matters concerning Pakistan are very sensitive on account of the fact that they are a partner of ours in combating terrorism around the world in the war in Afghanistan and so on. But, given the rise of extremism in Pakistan…we really do think that pressure should be kept up, notwithstanding the cooperation that our two countries need,” said Mark.
The USCIRF chairman told CNA that he is concerned that both Russia and China intensified repression of religious freedom over the course of 2017.
“Russia, which we recommended for designation for the very first time last year, continued to deteriorate. The repression in some of the post-Soviet Central Asian states have followed Russia’s model, sadly,” said Mark.
The report notes that Russia is the only country to have expanded its repressive policies to a neighboring territory by means of military invasion. Crimean Tatar Muslims are being kidnapped, tortured, and imprisoned in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
“Russia is such a big player on the world stage. It is really important that the message be sent clearly,” said Mark referring to religious freedom.
The report also mentioned religious persecution in China, including persecution of Catholics, noting that 2017 marked 60 years since the creation of the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
In 2017, China increased government control over its recognized religions as a part of President Xi Jinping’s campaign to “manipulate all aspects of faith into a socialist mold infused with ‘Chinese characteristics.’”
Two regions of China with significant ethnic and religious minority populations, Xinjiang and Tibet, “increasingly resemble police states,” the report said.
“Monks and nuns who refuse to denounce the Dalai Lama or pledge loyalty to Beijing have been expelled from their monasteries, imprisoned, and tortured.”
The report also cites mounting revelations of the Chinese authorities torturing other prisoners of conscience and human rights defenders to force confessions and compel individuals to renounce their faith.
In its 2018 report, USCIRF also recognized 12 additional countries with a Tier 2 status of less severe or systemic religious freedom violations: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, and Turkey.
USCIRF recommends in the report that the U.S. government prioritize efforts to advocate for the release of prisoners of conscience. Chairman Daniel Mark pointed to the recent trip of Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback to Turkey on behalf of imprisoned Christian pastor Andrew Brunson as a good example.
Mark also highlighted that there have been some improvements in international religious freedom efforts during the past year.
“The pushback against ISIS in Iraq and recapturing all or almost all of the territory from them has been absolutely critical in saving lives. And another thing that gets much less noticed is international cooperation. It was great to see that on January 1st Denmark opened a new office with an ambassador representative covering this issue and we hope to see more countries follow,” he said.
The Islamic State was one of the non-state actors that USCIRF report recommended to be designated as an Entity of Particular Concern, along with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and al-Shabaab in Somalia. The Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act passed in December 2016 requires the U.S. government to also identify these non-state actors as Entities of Particular Concern or EPCs.
[…]
Kim Davis talks of her religious objections to same sex marriage, being that same sex marriage is a violation of the sanctity of marriage. She has been divorced three times.
If I remember correctly that’s an option in the Orthodox Church. You get more than one try.
William’s comment was the standard slogan back in the day and it’s still a childish cheap shot. Just because I punched a guy in the nose doesn’t mean I’m disqualified from objecting to murder. He really should try for an original reaction some day if actual thought isn’t in his wheelhouse.
The reality, whether we like it or not, is that Luther (who diminished marriage to an affair of state in his project to truncate the list of sacraments) and Tudor (who despite lending his name to a likely ghost-written defense of the seven Sacraments, gave us an exhibit in ” all heresy begins below the belt”) are the authors both of Davis’ serial monogamy as well as what Anthony Esolen referred to as “pseudonogamy”.
Once the state was made the custodian of the institution, it was likely to do what governments have always attempted to do-establish dominion. While I doubt
that either man could have anticipated that it would ever have been so transmogrified-THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE for ceding marriage to the state, ignoring the injunction to render to God what is God’s.
Nor is Davis’ position completely indefensible. Generally left of center “law professor” (sorry, I’ll never see a JD on par with an MD or a PhD in Chemistry) Eugene Volokh stated maintained that “an employer must try to accommodate religious employees’ beliefs”.
An implied accusation of hypocrisy usually reveals a hypocritical refusal to understand the meaning of the word. Hypocrisy is not the failure to live with fidelity to one’s standards or values. We’re all weak, and everyone fails. Hypocrisy is the presumption of objective moral principles and exercising objective moral outrage as a basis for implicity faulting another for believing in objective moral principles and exercising objective moral outrage.
Could Kim Davis not have just resigned rather than betray her conscience? Or face getting slapped with these fines?
J.M.J.
While it is true that every divorce, invalidates the validity of the marriage contract, no State has the authority to coerce any person into participating in the affirmation of the engaging in of sexual acts that regardless of the actors or the actor’s desires, even if the actors are a man and woman united in marriage as husband and wife, deny the Sanctity of the marital act, which is Life-affirming and Life-sustaining, and can only be consummated by a man and woman who have both the ability and desire to exist in relationship as husband and wife. No State has the authority to coerce any person to render onto Caesar, what Has Always And Will Always Belong To God, “The Most Holy Undivided Trinity”.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-paris
Our Inherent Unalienable Rights , which are grounded in the Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life from the moment we are Created and brought into being at the moment of our conception , are unalienable and cannot be relinquished even if we so desire because these Unalienable Rights are Endowed to us from God, The Most Holy Undivided (Blessed) Trinity, The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, not Caesar.
“The issue with claiming violation to religious freedom is that Davis “was not acting as a private citizen, exercising her right to … religion, she was acting as a public official,” said Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
The Constitution does not provide for the relinquishing of our inherent unalienable Right to Religious Liberty when we are serving as a public official. Our inherent unalienable Rights are endowed to us from God, with the capital G, not Caesar.
Hasson said: “It’s a scandal that 70% of self-described Catholics support so-called same-sex ‘marriage.’”
It is a scandal that those who were Baptized Catholic but no longer desire to fulfill their Baptismal Promises have yet to be Charitably Anathema for the sake of their Redemption, and The Salvation of Souls.
It’s a scandal that 70% of self-described Catholics support so-called same-sex ‘marriage.’”
Do they? Everybody knows what is referred to as “globohomo” has enlisted every institution as a coercive force in requiring the acceptance of non just SSM but the identification as gay.
If you want to work in any company of significance, you will have “diversity, equity and inclusion forcibly shoved down your gullet.
It’s easier to just go with enforced view.
Obergefell, a pet project of Anthony Kennedy, who began his efforts with Lawrence v. Texas by claiming that the prohibited acrs were “customary” among homosexually inclined people (and theft is customary amoung thiefs, so what”, wrote an opinion in Obergefell that was described by commenter and supporter Andrew Koppelman
“All of Kennedy’s worst traits — the ponderous self-importance, the leaps of logic, the worship of state power — were on display. For a decision this important, the Court should have been able to do better.”
Of course in a supreme ipse dixit Koppelman admitted these deficiencies and still claimed the decision was correct.
Now it’s a public franchise you WILL accept and celebrate (for an entire month, unlike military veterans that put their lives on the line who just get 11/11.).
“The issue with claiming violation to religious freedom is that Davis “was not acting as a private citizen, exercising her right to … religion, she was acting as a public official,” said Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Where in the Constitution does it state that public officials must relinquish their Right to Religious Liberty?
I am surprised The Supreme Court did not respond, but I suppose the lack of response on their part in regards to the violation of both The First and Eighth Amendments Of The Constitution Of The United States Of America in this particular case may be due to the erroneous notion that Religious Liberty should be viewed as a States Right issue and is no longer a Human’s Right Issue, which I suppose one could argue is an error in both Substantive and Procedural Due Process Law.
Woe to us!
Once you deny The Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament Of Holy Matrimony, and claim that in order to be married it is no longer necessary for a man and woman to have both the ability and desire to exist in relationship as husband and wife, invalidating the validity of a valid marriage contract, any relationship can be declared a marriage, if one so desires and the State no longer can serve to protect and defend The Marital Contract of husband and wife, making their authority in the defense of the marital contract null and void.
Just a thought:
Perhaps a class action suit filed for the failure of a judge’s fiduciary duty in regards to protecting the marital contract by deliberately changing the marital contract through the removal of the necessary marital clause, so that in order to be married, it is no longer necessary for a man and woman to have both the desire and ability to exist in relationship as husband and wife, in essence promoting adultery while claiming to protect the marital contract, which would be more than just a contradiction in terms?
And how would this happen?
Do you not realize a major part of the campaign to legalize pseudonogamy was financed by lawyers, law firms and bar associations? They all understood that making a new class of legally recognized, inherently unstable unions would create a rich vein of revenue in prenups, legal separations, divorces, wills, estates and inter vivos trusts?
If you ask cui bono? Few profited as much as the Bar. They’ll do nothing to act against their own interest. I once had a Columbia trained lawyer tell me “the law is about equity, not justice”. Once that was explicitly stated, I got over any childish notions about how the law works.
Why all the fuss about same sex marriage? Most of us really don’t care.
William, it sounds like you do not care about affirming the inherent Dignity of those persons who engage in demeaning sexual acts that deny their inherent Dignity, or care about the fact that those who respect the inherent Dignity of every human person are being forced to promote the engaging in or affirmation of demeaning sexual acts that deny the inherent Dignity of all persons. How can anyone claim that marriage, which consists of a man and woman united in marriage as husband and wife discriminates against either a man or a woman because
in order to be married one must have both the ability and desire to exist in relationship as husband and wife, and thus be married to each other.
Re Mrs. Cracker above (9:34 a.m.)
Resigning is a less-than-ideal “solution” to a conflict of conscience like that faced by Kim Davis.
That would pave the way for the forced removal of medical professionals who oppose abortion and euthanasia, for example.
(OTOH, if you make sure certain people aren’t hired for sensitive positions in the first place, you won’t have to worry about them quitting on you.)