ICC Note:

The U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has once again called on the State Department to list Pakistan as a “Country of Particular Concern” for its consistent religious freedom violations. Religious minorities in Pakistan, including Hindus, Christians, Ahmadiyya, and Shia Muslims, face intense persecution in Pakistan at the hands of both terrorist organizations and Pakistan’s majority Sunni Muslim population. For Christians, Pakistan remains a country where persecution is just a part of daily life. Will the State Department listen to USCIRF and label Pakistan a Country of Particular Concern? 

5/3/2016 Pakistan (The Hindu) – A U.S. Congress-formed federal body on international religious freedom has 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 (USCIRF) said in its annual report on Monday.

As such USCIRF again recommended the State Department to designated Pakistan a “country of particular concern”, or CPC, under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), 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.

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The actions of non-state actors, including U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban), continue to threaten all Pakistanis and the country’s overall security, it said.

Religious minority communities, including Shia and Ahmadiyya Muslims, Christians, and Hindus, experience chronic sectarian and religious violence from both terrorist organizations and individuals within society, it added.

The government’s failure to provide adequate protection for likely targets of such violence or prosecute perpetrators has created a deep rooted climate of impunity, it said, noting that discriminatory content against minorities in provincial textbooks remains a significant concern, as are reports of forced conversions and marriages of Christian and Hindu girls and women.

“While the Pakistani government has taken some steps over the last two years to address egregious religious freedom violations, it has failed to implement systemic changes,” the report noted.

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