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WASHINGTON (BP)—A bipartisan U.S. panel has recommended Iraq be returned to a list of the world’s worst violators of religious liberty for the first time since an American-led invasion liberated the Middle East country from Saddam Hussein’s rule in 2003.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) announced Dec. 16 its recommendation that the State Department should designate Iraq as one of its “countries of particular concern” (CPCs), a category reserved for governments that have “engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
Iraq should receive such a designation based on the “ongoing, severe abuses of religious freedom [in the country] and the Iraqi government’s toleration of these abuses, particularly abuses against Iraq’s smallest, most vulnerable religious minorities,” USCIRF Chair Felice Gaer told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference. “The lack of effective government action to protect these communities from abuses has established Iraq among the most dangerous places on earth for religious minorities.”
The lack of protection for these minorities—which include ChaldoAssyrian and other Christians, Sabean Mandaeans and Yazidis—has resulted in many of their members fleeing to other parts of Iraq or into neighboring countries. In addition, problems remain between the Shi’a and Sunni Muslim sects in Iraq, according to USCIRF.
The decision to recommend Iraq as a CPC was the next step in a progression for the commission. In 2003, the State Department redesignated Iraq as a CPC barely two weeks before the U.S.-led offensive began. By the next year, USCIRF declined to recommend Iraq as a CPC, and the State Department obliged by dropping the country from the list.
In 2006, the commission expressed concern about religious liberty conditions in Iraq but refused to recommend it as a CPC or for addition to the “watch list,” which is reserved for regimes the panel does not believe should be designated as CPCs but require close monitoring. USCIRF, however, added Iraq to the “watch list” in 2007 and warned it might recommend it as a CPC the next year.
“[T]here’s no disagreement on this commission when it comes to the serious plight of religious minorities and the fact that they are being abused,” Richard Land, one of the members of the USCIRF minority, told reporters.
“There’s no disagreement about what we think needs to be done,” said Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, who said there was disagreement about who to blame for the conditions.
Religious minorities are in danger of extinction in Iraq, USCIRF said. The Christian population of the country has fallen from as many as 1.4 million Christians in 2003 to a total of 500,000 to 700,000. Nearly 90 percent of Sabean Mandaeans have either left the country or been killed in that time period.
The USCIRF report on Iraq is available at the commission’s website, www.uscirf.gov.