Among the atrocities named by the State Department in the worldwide Religious Freedom Report, Al-Qaida assassinated Druze clerics and a Jesuit priest, while militants from Iraq tortured and killed the Sunnis.
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Among these threatened areas, almost 200 other countries are also documented in this years’ report covering their current status of religious freedom policies including “countries of particular concern” such as Korea, China, Eritrea, Iran, Russian Federation and more.
Hundreds of crosses and steeples deemed illegal structures were forcibly removed from churches in Zhejiang province, and in a few cases a number of prominent churches, including Sanjiang Church in Wenzhou city, were demolished, the report said.
“The actions of Islamic authorities, however, increasingly affected non-Muslims”, it said.
“By issuing this report, we hope to give governments an added incentive to honour the rights and the dignity of their citizens; but the report also has the benefit of equipping interested observers with an arsenal of facts”, he said.
The report cited the United Nations Commission of Inquiry’s report on the North’s human rights situation as saying that there was an nearly complete denial of the right to freedom of religion and the North’s leadership should be brought to the global Criminal Court for human rights abuses.
US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday said that religious pluralism encourages and enables contributions from all while religious discrimination is often the source of conflicts that endanger everyone.
“Some government bodies are tasked with encouraging religious harmony and protecting the rights of minority religious groups, but none enjoy the power or influence of those that regulate Islamic religious affairs”, it said.
Protestant denominations in Vietnam’s Central Highlands reported discrimination against them by local authorities, while in June police and state-directed mobs in southern Vietnam’s Binh Duong province launched a campaign of harassment against an unregistered congregation of Mennonites.
A State Department study of global religious freedom in 2014 points to Islamic State engaging in forced conversions, slavery or executions targeting Shia Muslims and religious minorities, including Christians, Yazidis and Sabean-Mandaeans.
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“Even when the central government officials acknowledged certain actions, they often said the actions taken by local officials were not based on religion, but on local officials’ duty to maintain order”.
