US panel wants Pak on list for religious freedom violations

May 03, 2016 02:21

A US Congress-formed federal body on international religious freedom on Monday appealed to the Obama administration to designate Pakistan among nations listed as worst violators of religious freedom due to the current state of minorities in the country.

"In 2015, the Pakistani government continued to perpetrate and tolerate systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations," US Commission for International Religious Freedom said in its annual report.

As such USCIRF again recommended the State Department to designated Pakistan a "country of particular concern, or CPC, under the International Religious Freedom Act, as it has recommended since 2002. Its recommendations are non-binding and Pakistan has not been designated as a CPC country by the state department.

In addition to Pakistan, USCIRF has recommended to the state department to designate seven other countries as CPC: Central African Republic, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria, Tajikistan and Vietnam. The state department designated CPC countries are Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

"Religiously-discriminatory constitutional provisions and legislation, such as the countrys blasphemy law and anti-Ahmadiyya laws, intrinsically violate international standards of freedom of religion or belief and result in

prosecutions and imprisonments," the report said.

The actions of non-state actors, including US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, continue to threaten all Pakistanis and the countrys overall security, it said.

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