The department also said the embassy spoke to government representatives, opposition parties and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) during a visit to Sarawak last October about allegations of Putrajaya-backed groups offering money to the indigenous in rural areas to convert to Islam.
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A top American diplomat on religious freedom has said the USA will encourage the Modi government to turn the ideals of “tolerance and civility” into reality across the country, days after the Prime Minister called for communal harmony in the backdrop of the Dadri lynching incident.
The India section of the report, which includes the UPA rule till May 26, says that in 2014, India witnessed religiously motivated killings, arrests, riots and coerced religious conversions and the police in a few cases failed to respond effectively to communal violence.
Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at the United Nations.
The actions by Malaysia’s Islamic authorities have increasingly affected non-Muslims, according to the 2014 worldwide Religious Freedom Report.
In Vietnam, authorities continued during the year to restrict the activities of religious groups operating outside of state control, with group members reporting “various forms of governmental harassment”, the State Department said.
The State Department’s report is issued annually, on orders from Congress.
It said Mennonite pastors in southern Binh Duong Province reported government forces raided a Bible class in June and subsequently detained 29 pastors and 47 students, who were beaten before authorities released them the following day.
Since 2001, the USA government has designated the North as a “country of particular concern” in accordance with the 1998 worldwide Religious Freedom Act.
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“We don’t have direct relations, so we continue through worldwide partners and by mobilizing these global coalitions to put continuing pressure for North Korea to ease its restrictions on religious freedom and to let every one of those prisoners of conscience – and there are far, far too many, and they often face brutal conditions in the prisons – to go”, he said.
