Last Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry
released the U.S. State Department's
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013. While the report leaves the assessment of religious liberty around the world to the State Department's annual
International Religious Freedom Report, Thursday's Human Rights report covers religious discrimination concerns for each country. The report's
Introduction summarized these concerns:
Religious and ethnic minorities continued to face extreme restrictions and were targets of repression by governments and subject to societal discrimination across the globe. In China, the government continued to implement repressive policies against ethnic Uighurs and Tibetans.
In Pakistan, religious minorities faced a specter of growing violence during the year, including a deadly September church bombing in Peshawar that claimed more than 80 lives and three other incidents that killed at least 244 Shia Muslims. Religious minorities also faced discriminatory laws, societal intolerance, and a lack of accountability for crimes against them.
In Iran, the government continued its egregious repression of Baha’i whose seven leaders remained in prison as did Christian pastor Saeed Abedini at year’s end. Attacks against Christians and Shia Muslims continued in Egypt as did attacks against Christians, Yezidis, Sabean Mandaeans, and other religious minorities in Iraq, often with a lack of accountability for the perpetrators. Ahmadi Muslims continued to face violence and repression in places such as Indonesia, as well as disenfranchisement in places such as Pakistan.
Anti-Semitism also remained a significant problem in 2013. According to a survey of eight European member states by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, harassment of Jews continued, with one-quarter of respondents stating they experienced some form of anti-Semitic harassment in the 12 months before the survey. In the Middle East, media occasionally contained anti-Semitic articles and cartoons, some of which glorified or denied the Holocaust and blamed all Jews for actions by the state of Israel.
Threats to religious practice also emerged during the year. For example, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a non-binding resolution implying that religious male circumcision – as practiced by Jews and Muslims, and other religions – is a human rights violation.
