Paul KeenanViolations of religious freedom are increasing worldwide, a new report from the US State Department has revealed.
Produced annually, the Report on International Freedom for 2015 reveals that in addition to the expected violations committed by non-state actors such as so-called Islamic State and Boko Haram, “amongst the most egregious abusers of religious freedom in the world”, state governments are also increasing pressure on religious communities, not least through enacted legislation and the misuse of existing blasphemy legislation.
Launching the report, the US Ambassador for Religious Freedom David Saperstein pointed out that “more than one in 10 [countries] have laws or policies penalising apostasy, and the existence of these laws has been used by governments in too many cases to intimidate [and] repress religious minorities, and governments have too often failed to take appropriate steps to prevent societal violence sparked by accusations of blasphemy and apostasy.” He added that countries in which 74% of the world’s population now live, have such laws.
Grip
The broad-ranging Report on International Freedom makes clear that, in 2015,“around the world, governments continued to tighten their regulatory grip on religious groups, and particularly on minority religious groups and religions which are viewed as not traditional to that specific country”. Researchers found that “the percentage of countries that required submission of religious doctrine for approval prior to registration increased from 13 to 18% [and] the percentage of countries that sometimes denied registration increased from 22 to 27%.” The report found a strong link “between increasing registration requirements and an overall deterioration in the status of religious freedom in many countries”.
By way of example, among many, the report cited the African nation of Angola, where any religious group seeking legal recognition “must collect 100,000 member signatures from 12 of the 18 provinces and submit them to the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights”.
Unsurprisingly, the report adds: “The state…has not registered a new religious group since 2004, when it established the current registration requirements.”
Ambassador Saperstein said: “No one region, country or religion is immune to the pernicious effects of such legislation.
“In countries where religious minorities have long contributed to their national societies in relative comity for decades, centuries, even millennia, we continue to witness violent upheavals, some of historic proportions, in which entire communities are in danger of being driven out of their homelands based solely on their religious or ethnic identities.”
The Report on International Freedom can be viewed at: http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm#wrapper