REAL CLEAR POLITICS
The Biden administration has rejected recommendations from dozens of leading human rights, religious freedom, and Christian groups to reverse course and redesignate Nigeria to its blacklist of worst offenders when it comes to allowing citizens to practice the religion of their choice.
The State Department on Thursday released a much-anticipated annual index of designations, maintaining all 12 countries listed on the previous year’s blacklist on religious freedom and adding only one new country – Azerbaijan – to a special watchlist. The move to add Azerbaijan came just months after the country seized back an ethnic Armenian enclave with a predominantly Christian population.
The 12 countries officially designated as “countries of particular concern,” the official U.S. term for the worst religious liberty offenders, include Burma, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
“Significant violations of religious freedom occur in countries that are not designated,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted in a statement. “Governments must end abuses such as attacks on members of religious minority communities and their places of worship, communal violence and lengthy imprisonment for peaceful expression, transnational repression, and calls to violence against religious communities, among other violations that occur in too many places around the world.”
The State Department also designated eight entities of particular concern, non-state actors engaging in severe violations of religious freedom. Those groups include al-Shabab, Boko Haram, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Houthis, ISIS-Sahel, ISIS-West Africa, al-Qaida affiliate Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin, and the Taliban. USCIRF recommended the designation of seven of these terrorist and militant groups in its 2023 annual report.
Blinken’s decision not to designate Nigeria and India earned an immediate rebuke from the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom, whose leaders are appointed by Congress and make recommendations to the State Department. The commission, which has repeatedly called for both countries to be placed on the official blacklist, expressed “extreme disappointment” with the decision and called on Congress to hold a hearing on the “failure” of the State Department to follow its recommendations.
“USCIRF rejects the State Department’s decision to omit Nigeria and India as CPCs. We met with the State Department on many occasions to sound the alarm about these countries but not all of our recommendations have been followed,” USCIRF Chair Abraham Cooper and Vice Chair Frederick Davie said in a statement. “We will not be deterred and will continue our role as a congressionally mandated watchdog to ensure the U.S. government prioritizes religious freedom as a key component of U.S. foreign policy.”
USCIRF, however, welcomed the State Department’s inclusion of Azerbaijan on the special watchlist.
The State Department did not explain its decision against placing Nigeria and India on the official blacklist. The Biden administration has previously attributed the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria not to religious persecution but to a conflict over resources exacerbated by climate change.
USCIRF and other leading human rights organizations ardently disagree. Leaders of the commission met with Blinken last month and pressed him to designate Nigeria and India as CPCs. Blinken removed Nigeria from the list in 2021, reversing a decision by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in December 2020 to blacklist the West African nation.
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