Watchdog panel urges monitoring Iraq on religious freedom violations

Watchdog panel urges monitoring Iraq on religious freedom violations

For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein, ongoing sectarian violence has earned Iraq a place among the world’s worst violators of religious freedoms, a federal watchdog panel said May 2.

Iraq is included with seven other countries, including Afghanistan, on a watch list published in the 2007 report of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.

The list names countries that "require close monitoring" because their governments commit or tolerate religious persecution.

"Despite ongoing efforts to stabilize the country … successive Iraqi governments have not curbed the growing scope and severity of human rights abuses," the report read.

Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, violence between the country’s Sunni and Shiite Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims has become a daily occurrence.

The Shiite-dominated government has recently been accused of collaboration with death squads targeting Sunnis.

The watch list is the commission’s second, lesser tier of religious rights abusers.

The worst are recommended for designation as "countries of particular concern" (CPCs) to the State Department, status carrying the possibility of sanctions or other punitive action by the U.S. government.

Eleven countries received that recommendation in the report.

A footnote in the report said three of the commission’s nine voting members felt Iraq should have received the more severe designation this year.

Those three members were all appointed to the commission by Democrats; five of the remaining six were Republican appointees.

The 2007 report suggests the commission "may designate Iraq as a CPC next year if improvements are not made by the Iraqi government."

But Commissioner Nina Shea, one of the Republican appointees, said the commission could change Iraq’s designation sooner.

"We’re not going to be sitting on our hands about Iraq over the next year," she said at a news conference.

Afghanistan under the Taliban and Iraq under Hussein were both listed as CPCs by the State Department before the U.S. invasions in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

The State Department’s current list of CPCs includes Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.

The countries recommended by the panel as CPCs this year include Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The panel’s watch list includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq and Nigeria. (RNS)