Rep. Chris Smith, a leading human rights champion in Congress, and several other top religious freedom experts are pressing the Biden administration to reverse course and add Nigeria, India, Vietnam, and Afghanistan to its blacklist of worst offenders when it comes to allowing citizens to practice their faith of choice.

Smith and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who chairs a government-created independent body that monitors religious freedom violations around the world, on Tuesday questioned the Biden administration’s decision against placing those countries on the State Department’s list of “Countries of Particular Concern,” or CPCs, citing years of well-documented evidence of “particularly severe” violations.

The omission of those countries, especially Nigeria, from the official U.S. religious freedom blacklist has spurred controversy among many human rights groups. Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed Nigeria from the blacklist in 2021, reversing a decision by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in December 2020 to designate the West African nation as a CPC.

Earlier this year, Smith introduced legislation that calls on the Biden administration to designate Nigeria as a CPC and appoint a special envoy to the country and the Lake Chad region to monitor and combat atrocities there.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, even though Christians make up nearly half of Nigeria’s population of 200 million. Islamist radicals, including terror groups such as Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province, and radicalized Faluni tribesmen, regularly attack entire Christian communities, torching churches and villages, and kidnapping and killing pastors and their congregations.

The violence against Christians has taken place for decades but has escalated in recent years in what Rabbi Cooper on Tuesday described as a “slow-motion genocide.” According to the religious freedom watchdog Open Doors International, more than 5,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria last year alone, accounting for nearly 90% of Christian deaths worldwide.

The Biden administration attributes the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria not to religious persecution but to a conflict over resources exacerbated by climate change.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, which Cooper chairs, and other leading human rights organizations ardently disagree.

“I think that many, many people in this country, including people in positions of responsibility, have difficulty coming to grips with the fact that religion and theology do play a strong role,” Cooper said at Tuesday’s hearing. “The Christians of Nigeria are understandably deeply worried about their future and are deeply concerned about their physical safety.”

Last December, USCIRF, which makes recommendations to the State Department, issued a rare sharply worded statement expressing “outrage” over the agency’s omission of Nigeria and India from the CPC blacklist, accusing Secretary of State Blinken of turning “a blind eye” to the countries’ serious religious freedom violations.

“There is no justification for the State Department’s failure to recognize Nigeria or India as egregious violators of religious freedom, as they clearly meet the standards for designation as CPCs,” the commission wrote.

Smith, who chairs the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on global health, global human rights, and international organizations, didn’t mince words, pressing Rashad Hussain, Biden’s ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom, for an explanation.

“Why was Nigeria taken off the lists just before Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Abuja?” Smith asked Hussain.

“I am concerned that the U.S. State Department is not using all the tools provided to hold guilty parties accountable,” he added.

Hussain appeared to agree with both Smith and Cooper on the countries in question but said his office is just beginning work on its annual report, which provides detailed information about every country’s religious freedom record. The office is expected to issue its findings in November.

“I share your concerns,” Hussain told Smith. “I don’t think we have much disagreement in terms of the substance of what’s happening on the ground.”

Hussain also noted that he and other people in his office have engaged directly with all of the top officials in India, Vietnam, and Nigeria, and that he met with former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, a military leader who was elected in 2015 on a platform of increasing security and curbing corruption.

Many Nigerians say these issues worsened under his watch. Earlier this year, Nigeria elected Bola Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State who fought as a pro-democracy activist in the 1990s, but the election is deeply disputed.

“I want to be clear that the CPC designation is one of the tools that we have, but there is a myriad of tools that we’re using to address the situation,” Hussain added. “And we will continue to do so because we continue to be concerned about the religious freedom conditions of all of these countries.”

Dr. Eric Patterson, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, said violent Islamist extremists have destabilized Nigeria and are accelerating its “downward spiral.”

“In Nigeria’s middle belt, sectarian violence has resulted in abductions, forced conversions, and thousands of deaths, the majority of which are ethnoreligious attacks targeting Christian communities and churches.”

USCIRF, a bipartisan body, has recommended the designation of India, a major U.S. ally, as a CPC for four years. Its most recent report said religious freedom conditions have continued to dip in India, and governments at all levels promoted and enforced discriminatory policies, including through “laws targeting religious conversion, interfaith relationships, the wearing of hijabs, and cow slaughter, which negatively impact Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and Adivasis.”

It also accused India’s government of efforts to suppress the voices of religious minorities through “surveillance, harassment, demolition of property” and detention under its “Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.”

Naming Afghanistan a CPC should be automatic after the Taliban took control of the country on August 15, 2021, and religious freedom conditions immediately deteriorated, Smith argued. The State Department had previously designated the Taliban an “entity of particular concern” for their use of terror to target religious minorities.

Last month, a USCIRF delegation traveled to Vietnam to assess its religious freedom conditions. In its previous annual report, the commission recommended the blacklisting of the Vietnamese government over its law on belief and religion, which requires organizations to register with the state and to harass unregistered religious groups. Religious minorities face “especially egregious” persecution, including physical assault, detention, or banishment for the peaceful practice of their beliefs, according to the commission. (Text, except for amended headline: RealClearPolitics)

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