In China, the State Department’s 2014 global Religious Freedom Report said, government authorities “tortured, physically abused, detained, arrested, sentenced to prison, or harassed a number of religious adherents” belonging to both registered and unregistered groups.
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A top American diplomat on religious freedom has said the United States will encourage the Narendra Modi government to turn the ideals of “tolerance and civility” into reality across the country, days after the Prime Minister called the lynching of a Muslim man in Dadri “sad and undesirable” and called for communal harmony. The State Department does not utilise the tools it has to name and shame violators of religious freedom such as the designation of CPC, he said.
The spokesperson urged the U.S.to stop adopting double standards on the issue and stop making irresponsible remarks towards other countries.
I should emphasize that the concept of religious freedom extends way beyond mere tolerance. “It is one of the worst violators of human rights in the entire world”, said David Saperstein, ambassador-at-large for global religious freedom, during a press briefing.
India today downplayed a US Congressional report on global Religious Freedom 2014 which said India witnessed “religiously motivated killings, arrests, riots and coerced religious conversions”.
The State Department designated North Korea a Country of Particular Concern in 2001 for severe violations of religious freedom, and most recently redesignated it in July. We are, and we will continue, to oppose these groups with far more than words of condemnation that are contained in this report.
“We’re not going to rest until people have a right to live out their religious lives back in their home communities in accordance with their conscience”.
“We normally think of that as racism and we feel that when it steps over that line then it constitutes anti-Semitic activity and not just legitimate discourse about Israel’s policies”, he said. A wide range of USA government agencies and offices use the reports for such efforts as shaping policy and conducting diplomacy. A few human rights and religious minority groups said state-level “anti-conversion” laws were created to impede conversion from Hinduism, while not restricting conversion to Hinduism, according to the report.
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Around the world, freedom of religion truly is under a sustained assault, and not only in the extravagant fashion of the Islamic State group.
