Release of the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report

Release of the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/11/151081.htm

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Washington, DC

November 17, 2010

Video: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1705667530?bctid=678942946001

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Good afternoon. It’s my pleasure to join you today for the release of the State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom. Every year, the State Department prepares a comprehensive review of the status of religious freedom in countries and territories around the world. We do this because we believe that religious freedom is both a fundamental human right and an essential element to any stable, peaceful, thriving society.

This is not only the American view; it is the view of nations and people around the world. It is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and it is guaranteed by the laws and constitutions of many nations, including our own, where religious freedom is the first freedom listed in our Bill of Rights.
Because we believe in religious freedom and because we are committed to the right of all people everywhere to live according to their beliefs without government interference and with government protection, we are troubled by what we see happening in many, many places. Religious freedom is under threat from authoritarian regimes that abuse their own citizens. It is under threat from violent extremist groups that exploit and inflame sectarian tensions. It is under threat from the quiet but persistent harm caused by intolerance and mistrust which can leave minority religious groups vulnerable and marginalized.

During the past year, al-Qaida issued calls for further violence against religious minorities in the Middle East. Sufi, Shia, and Ahmadiyya holy sites in Pakistan have been attacked. So was a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad just a few weeks ago. We received reports from China of government harassment of Tibetan Buddhists, house church Christians, and Uighur Muslims. And several European countries have placed harsh restrictions on religious expression.

Religious Freedom World Report 2010- US State Department

International Religious Freedom

The International Religious Freedom report is submitted to Congress annually by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. This report supplements the most recent Human Rights Reports by providing additional detailed information with respect to matters involving international religious freedom. It includes individual country chapters on the status of religious freedom worldwide.

Europe and Eurasia: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2010/c39465.htm

The International Religious Freedom Report for 2010 was released on November 17, 2010.

'Religiouscide' in Iraq targets Christians

 'Religiouscide' in Iraq targets Christians

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http://mnnonline.org/article/14955

Iraq (MNN) ― A series of bombs and mortar attacks are targeting Christians in Iraq. The attacks focused on six districts with strong Christian majorities. President of Open Doors USA Carl Moeller says, "Christians around the world are witnessing what I'm calling a 'religiouscide.' Extremists Sunni and Shia are targeting the Christian community for extinction." 

Moeller says al Qaeda issued threats to Christians asking members to consider Christians as legitimate target.

In Baghdad, Moeller says the situation is desperate. "One of my coworkers wrote to me. He said, 'Yesterday the city was almost closed. Three bridges across the river were closed. That's out of the Christian community, part of the city. I couldn't get across the River.'"

Moeller continues, "There were coordinated roadside bomb attacks within the Christian community there, killing five additional Christians. The situation, he says, is worsening day by day. There's no life for Christians in Baghdad anymore. We will be driven out of town, and nobody is helping us. Everybody, even the army and police, are afraid and not able to help."

Iraq had over one million Christians before the Iraq war. Moeller says, "There are less than 400,000 Christians in the entire country by our last count. And of that, 250,000 of them are living in refugee status within their own country. So, literally a 90 percent decline in the size of the Christian community."

Moeller is encouraging Christians to pray for these believers. "This is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church weekend coming up. We need to be on our knees, even now, for our brothers and sisters there in Baghdad. And we need to be using our voice in Washington, DC to exercise as much pressure as we can on the Iraqi government to protect the Christians there."

Moeller is hoping that pressure will help. If not, "This would be a massive humanitarian tragedy, if this ancient Christian community -- there for two millennia, predating Islam by hundreds of years -- would be extinguished in our time."

Open Doors is helping displaced Christians around Iraq. You can help them, too. Just go to http://www.OpenDoorsUSA.org to help.

“I am a survivor of torture myself”

“I am a survivor of torture myself”
new UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Méndez

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GENEVA (4 November 2010) – Human rights defender Juan E. Méndez, from Argentina, has taken over as the new Special Rapporteur appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on the use torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the world.

“I am a survivor of torture myself, so my approach to the mandate will certainly be victim-centered,” Mr. Méndez said. “By insisting on the absolute prohibition of torture and of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in international law, I hope to make an effective contribution to the enforcement and progressive development of international norms in this area.”

“Beyond law,” the new UN Special Rapporteur stressed, “we need to do battle in the realm of ideas and political discourse, to counter an attitude of relativism about torture, as something that happens to ‘others’ whose faces we don’t see and whose names we can’t pronounce.”

Mr. Méndez has dedicated his long legal career to the defence of human rights and has a distinguished record of advocacy. As a result of his work representing political prisoners, he was subjected to torture, while under an eighteen month long administrative detention, by the Argentinean military dictatorship. During this time, Amnesty International adopted him as a “Prisoner of Conscience.” In 1977, he was expelled from Argentina and moved to the United States, where he worked in different capacities, including as legal counsel for Human Rights Watch.

Mr. Méndez is currently a Visiting Professor of Law at the American University – Washington College of Law, contributes as an advisor on crime prevention to the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court and Co-Chairs the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association. He was formerly, the President of the International Center for Transnational Justice (ICTJ) and Scholar-in-Residence at the Ford Foundation in New York. Mr. Méndez served as UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide from 2004 to 2007.

"Kidnapping and Confinement in the Unification Church" – SBS Video Aired in Seoul, Korea

 "Kidnapping and Confinement in the Unification Church"

Aired on SBS at 11PM Seoul, Korea time on October 6, 2010

People are shocked as cases of oppressive kidnapping and confinement are recurring continuously and systematically within the Unification Church. Unification Church members are having their human rights violated as they are violently coerced to renounce their faith while forcibly confined by their families and a large and organized kidnapping force that uses the families and has ties with Christian ministers and others.


See video-documentary here: http://vimeo.com/16325762

or here: http://www.familyfed.org/news/index.php?id=184&page=1&apage=1
or here: Kidnapping and Confinement in the Unification Church – Kiyomi Returns Home after 13 Years from UC on Vimeo.


To this day, Japanese wives are unable to visit their parents' homes due to concerns and fear of a second or third abduction. A considerable number of them show signs of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

There are a total of about 7,000 Unificationist Japanese wives currently residing in Korea. Around 300 of them claim to be victims of kidnapping and confinement. It is expected that there is a larger number of unaccounted victims.

On SBS's Pursuit of the News on October 6, 2010, a focus report on the reality of inhuman and anti-religious human rights violations against Japanese Unificationist wives living in Korea was aired. Moreover, they covered a disclosure of the inside of the Unification Church.

In particular, changes of the Unification Church in its second generation lead by International President Hyung Jin Moon, the 32-year-old young seventh son of Unification Church founder Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon.

The viewing rate of the focus report was 11.8%, which is double the average viewer rate of other programs, ranging from 5-7%. The reaction to SBS from viewers on the internet also went through the roof. With a normal response of 300 comments, this SBS program received over 7000.

(SBS Internet News Department)

Women Clergy Protest Japan’s Human Rights Violations

Women Clergy Protest Japan’s Human Rights Violations

At Independence Hall, Birthplace of Religious Freedom, 120 Women Clergy Protest Japan’s Human Rights Violations

http://religiousfreedomnews.blogspot.com/2010/11/women-clergy-protest-japans-human.html
Philadelphia, October 29, 2010

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The depth and weight of history is felt at Independence Hall. This is the place where George Washington was chosen to command the Revolutionary Army and is the place that the Declaration of Independence was signed. It is the place where the Constitutional Convention was held over which Benjamin Franklin presided. It is the place that a nation proclaimed that all men are equal and are endowed by God with inalienable rights which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Liberty is so central at this historic place. Just across the green is the Liberty Bell which symbolizes what America fought for – God given rights. The Constitution established in its first Amendment that religious liberty was the most essential right and that all other rights are strengthened when religious freedom is secured.

On Friday, October 29th in front of the Independence Hall, 120 Women Clergy of all denominations of the American Clergy Leadership Conference Women in Ministry gathered to take a stand against the abductions and human rights violations in Japan. Representing all 50 states, the women faith leaders visited and prayed together for Religious Freedom at this hallowed place. Joined by representatives of the Women’s Federation for World Peace, they cried out from Hawaii to Texas, to New York to Chicago to Atlanta. They cried out for the freedom of others have been violently abducted, beaten and held prison under mental and physical abuse to break their faith. Why are they held. Because, they are being persecuted for their faith. The Women in Ministry decried the ongoing abduction and faith breaking of members of the Unification Church in Japan and demanded the release of the victims.

Iraq’s Christians Still Under Siege

Iraq’s Christians Still Under Siege

Nina Shea  Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom
http://religiousfreedomnews.blogspot.com/
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Iraqi Christianity has suffered another catastrophic blow that is likely to hasten the church’s wholesale flight from the country: Last evening, al-Qaeda suicide bombers laid siege to Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad during Sunday Mass while 120 local Chaldean Catholics were worshiping inside. The Washington Post reports that 42 Iraqi worshipers were killed, along with seven Iraqi rescue commandos. Among the dead are two priests, Father Wasim Sabieh and Father Thaier Saad Abdal, while a third, Father Qatin, has a bullet lodged in his head and is in uncertain condition. This is only the latest in a series of direct attacks on Iraqi churches that began in 2004.

Joseph Kassab, executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, wrote to me that “since Iraq has no government, we are calling for the international community to intervene in protecting and saving the indigenous people of Iraq , the Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Community.” He emphasizes, “Things are deteriorating very fast in Iraq , our people are left with no choice but to flee because they are losing hope and there is no serious actions taken to protect them as of today.”

Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana of the Church of the East, another persecuted Christian church with an ancient presence in Iraq , sent a report as well. Apart from the widely covered information that the terrorists demanded prison releases, he documents (with two links) another, directly religious motive that enraged al-Qaeda: the conversion of Muslim girls into another Christian denomination in another country.

The terrorists belong to Al-Qaieda organization in Iraq called: Islamic State of Iraq.They were demanding according to the Iraqi sources the release of their colleagues in Iraq and Egypt . A statement by this terrorist group and circulated on the internet in their websites is warning and demanding the release of the Muslim girls from Christian background who are, according to the statement, prisoners in Egyptian Coptic Church monasteries. The statement is giving 48 hours warning time to release those girls or they will explode the church. The statement, as other cases, is fill [sic] of threats against infidels everywhere.

Christians remain the largest non-Muslim minority in Iraq , but church leaders express a real fear that the light of the faith in Iraq — which is said to have been kindled personally by Thomas, one of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles — could soon be extinguished. Iraq ’s Christian population has been reduced by as much as half; adherents have been driven out by brutal terrorist attacks and government marginalization. Iraq ’s other non-Muslim religions — the much smaller groups of Mandeans (followers of John the Baptist), Yizidis (an ancient angel-centered religion), Bahai’s, and Jews — are also being forced out, and in some cases, their unique languages and cultures may not survive in exile.

Religious persecution in Iraq is so “egregious” that the country has now been included by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on a recommended short list of “Countries of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act, alongside the likes of Iran and China . No group in Iraq, Muslim or non-Muslim, has been spared massive and appalling religiously motivated violence; however, as the independent federal commission found, the one-two punch of extremist ruthlessness and deep governmental discrimination now threatens the “very existence” of Iraq’s Christian churches (some of whom still pray in Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth) and Iraq’s communities of Mandeans and Yizidis, which are even older. As last night’s attack again shows, these smallest minorities are not simply caught in the middle. They are being fiercely targeted for their faith.

As I have written before, this raises an urgent question for the West: Without the experience of living alongside Christians and other non-Muslims at home, what would prepare the Muslim Middle East to peacefully coexist with the West?