his story initially was printed by Real Clear Wire
By Susan Crabtree
Actual Clear Wire
The Biden administration has rejected suggestions from dozens of main human rights, spiritual freedom, and Christian teams to reverse course and redesignate Nigeria to its blacklist of worst offenders in relation to permitting residents to apply the faith of their alternative.
The State Division on Thursday launched a much-anticipated annual index of designations, sustaining all 12 nations listed on the earlier yr’s blacklist on spiritual freedom and including just one new nation – Azerbaijan – to a particular watchlist. The transfer so as to add Azerbaijan got here simply months after the nation seized back an ethnic Armenian enclave with a predominantly Christian inhabitants.
The 12 nations formally designated as “nations of specific concern,” the official U.S. time period for the worst spiritual liberty offenders, embody Burma, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
“Important violations of spiritual freedom happen in nations that aren’t designated,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken famous in a press release. “Governments should finish abuses resembling assaults on members of spiritual minority communities and their locations of worship, communal violence and prolonged imprisonment for peaceable expression, transnational repression, and calls to violence in opposition to spiritual communities, amongst different violations that happen in too many locations all over the world.”
The State Division additionally designated eight entities of specific concern, non-state actors participating in extreme violations of spiritual freedom. These teams embody al-Shabab, Boko Haram, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Houthis, ISIS-Sahel, ISIS-West Africa, al-Qaida affiliate Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin, and the Taliban. USCIRF advisable the designation of seven of those terrorist and militant teams in its 2023 annual report.
Blinken’s determination to not designate Nigeria and India earned an instantaneous rebuke from the U.S. Fee on Spiritual Freedom, whose leaders are appointed by Congress and make suggestions to the State Division. The fee, which has repeatedly referred to as for each nations to be positioned on the official blacklist, expressed “excessive disappointment” with the choice and referred to as on Congress to carry a listening to on the “failure” of the State Division to observe its suggestions.
“USCIRF rejects the State Division’s determination to omit Nigeria and India as CPCs. We met with the State Division on many events to sound the alarm about these nations however not all of our suggestions have been adopted,” USCIRF Chair Abraham Cooper and Vice Chair Frederick Davie mentioned in a press release. “We is not going to be deterred and can proceed our function as a congressionally mandated watchdog to make sure the U.S. authorities prioritizes spiritual freedom as a key part of U.S. overseas coverage.”
USCIRF, nevertheless, welcomed the State Division’s inclusion of Azerbaijan on the particular watchlist.
The State Division didn’t clarify its determination in opposition to putting Nigeria and India on the official blacklist. The Biden administration has beforehand attributed the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria to not spiritual persecution however to a battle over sources exacerbated by local weather change.
USCIRF and different main human rights organizations ardently disagree. Leaders of the fee met with Blinken final month and pressed him to designate Nigeria and India as CPCs. Blinken eliminated Nigeria from the listing in 2021, reversing a call by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in December 2020 to blacklist the West African nation.
Based mostly on the variety of Christian deaths by the hands of terrorists and militant teams alone, the choice ought to be clear-cut, the advocates have argued. Greater than 5,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed for his or her religion in 2022, in response to a report by Open Doorways, a spiritual freedom watchdog group.
Simply days earlier than Christmas, greater than 100 Christians, along with their pastor, were killed in Plateau, a religiously various state dealing with elevated tensions between Muslim militant herders and Christian farmers.
“That is simply the most recent instance of deadly violence against religious communities in Nigeria that even the State Division has condemned,” Cooper and Davie mentioned. “The vast majority of commissioners have traveled to Nigeria and famous the threats to freedom of faith or perception and the lethal implications to non secular communities.”
Cooper and Davie additionally referred to as out India’s authorities for increasing transnational repression targeting religious minorities abroad and people advocating on their behalf.
Regardless of redesignating Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, the State Division issued waivers on sanctions geared toward enhancing spiritual liberty in these nations. USCIRF advisable the redesignation of all 12 nations with none waivers and likewise advisable that Afghanistan, Syria, and Vietnam be positioned on the blacklist, together with Nigeria and India.
Whereas Blinken adopted USCIRF’s steerage to put Azerbaijan on the particular watchlist, it rejected the fee’s advice so as to add Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Uzbekistan to the identical listing.
“USCIRF formally requests an in depth justification by the State Division as to why our coverage suggestions weren’t totally carried out, together with the waivers,” Cooper and Davie added.
In December, greater than two dozen main spiritual freedom and Christian advocacy teams urged lawmakers to do extra to press the administration into motion to assist cease the slaughter of harmless Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. The signatories included David Curry, president and CEO of International Christian Aid and a present USCIRF commissioner; former Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican and present USCIRF commissioner; former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, who previously served because the ambassador-at-large for Worldwide Spiritual Freedom within the Trump administration; Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Basis for Human Rights & Justice, who co-chairs the annual Worldwide Spiritual Freedom Summit with Brownback; Nina Shea, a senior fellow at, and director of, the Middle for Spiritual Freedom on the Hudson Institute; and plenty of different distinguished voices within the faith-based liberty neighborhood.
Moreover, Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe, the Catholic bishop who heads the Makurdi Diocese in Nigeria’s Benue state within the nation’s north-central area, informed RealClearPolitics that he’s deeply heartened by the efforts of U.S. spiritual freedom advocates to press Washington into motion on behalf of Nigerian Christians. Benue is roughly 90% Christian and underneath relentless assault by Fulani Muslim militants.
Earlier this yr, New Jersey GOP Rep. Chris Smith introduced legislation calling on the Biden administration to designate Nigeria as a CPC and appoint a particular envoy to the nation and the Lake Chad area to observe and fight atrocities there. The measure is co-sponsored by Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat.
This text was initially printed by RealClearPolitics and made obtainable by way of RealClearWire.
