Washington, USA — Religious freedom conditions have worsened in insurgency-wracked Iraq as well as Egypt, while communist China has embarked on a crackdown on foreign missionaries ahead of the Olympics, the US government warned in a report Friday.
The State Department's annual report on religious freedoms around the world also noted "continued deterioration of the extremely poor status of respect for religious freedom" in Iran and highlighted "serious problems" in Pakistan.
Religious freedom is "integral to our efforts to combat the ideology of hatred and religious intolerance that fuels global terrorism," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as she launched the 800-page report in Washington.
Amid intra-sectarian Muslim violence, religious worship conditions "deteriorated" over the past year in Iraq with the ongoing insurgency "significantly" harming the ability of people to practice their faith, the report said.
"Many individuals from various religious groups were targeted because of their religious identity or their secular leanings," it said of the situation in Iraq where US troops are facing an uphill battle to restore order.
In Egypt, a key US ally, respect for religious freedom has "declined," the report said, citing particularly a court ruling this year that reinstated a policy not to provide a legal means for converts from Islam to Christianity to amend their civil records.
"There are cases where converts have been held and sometimes received physical abuse," US special envoy for international religious freedom John Hanford told a briefing.
One convert released after 25 months has his life now "under threat," he pointed out.
The report also highlighted religious repression in China, which reportedly expelled more than 100 foreign missionaries in the spring of 2007 in what some groups alleged was a "government-initiated" campaign to tighten control on Christian house churches ahead of the Olympics next year.
There were also "credible reports of deaths due to torture and abuse" involving practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual sect who "continued to face arrest, detention and imprisonment."
Beijing is imposing "extremely harsh treatment" on those determined to have religious contact in China, Hanford lamented.
The "Report on International Religious Freedom," transmitted to Congress Friday, is a precursor to the announcement each year of a blacklist of countries "of particular concern" that are subject to US sanctions for religious repression.
Iran headed last year's list alongside China, Eritrea, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.
The blacklist will be updated based on the findings of Friday's report, which covered religious freedoms in about 200 countries and territories, officials said.
Locked in confrontation with the United States over its suspected nuclear arms program and alleged backing for insurgents in Iraq, the Iranian government was slammed in the report for creating "a threatening atmosphere" for non-Shiite religious groups, evangelical Christians and Jews.
In Pakistan, the report said "serious problems remained" despite some steps by the government to improve the treatment of religious minorities.
It cited "discriminatory" legislation and Islamabad's "failure" to take action against societal forces hostile to minority faiths.
In India the the report said that the vast majority of citizens of all religions lived in peaceful co-existence in India, nevertheless there were still some cases of "organised societal attacks" against minority groups in the country.
"The Constitution (of India) provides for freedom of religion, and the National Government generally respected this right in practice." However, it said, "some state and local governments, including those of Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh, enacted or amended 'anti-conversion' laws during the reporting period. The Governor of Rajasthan, later elected to the Presidency, refused to sign her state's law, effectively nullifying it."
"The vast majority of citizens of every religious group lived in peaceful co-existence; however, there were reports of organised societal attacks against minority religious groups. State police and enforcement agencies often did not act swiftly enough to effectively counter societal attacks," the report said.
Attacks on religious and ethnic minorities continued to be a "problem" in Bangladesh despite the country's declared stance for freedom of religion and inter-community amity, the US has said.
"There were reports of societal abuses and discrimination based on religious belief or practice....Religious minorities were vulnerable due to their relatively limited influence with political elites," and said violence directed against religious minority communities continued to result in the loss of lives and property.
Saudi Arabia's religious freedom, the report said, remained "severely restricted."
But it pointed out that "there were positive developments which could lead to important improvements in the future."
The Saudi government, the report said, was reviewing educational materials to remove or revise disparaging references to minority religious traditions, and would weed out religious teachers who espouse extremist views.
However Washington, which defines freedom of religion as the ability to practice any religion publicly, it is ready make an exception for Saudi Arabia, one of the most fundamental Muslim state, said the State Department official who keeps tabs on the issue, John Hanford.
"In the case of Saudi Arabia, I think it's important first for there to be the freedom to securely meet, as has happened for many years, in homes, and for the raids and the other problems, the deportations, the arrests, to cease," Hanford said.
"I'm not sure that the security situation right now -- even if there were people who favored allowing minority faiths to build places of worship, I'm not sure that would be a good idea at this point, frankly," he added.
The annual report mentions discrimination against non-Muslims, or against Muslims with practices different from Saudi Arabia's conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam.
"Non-Muslims and Muslims who do not adhere to the government's interpretation of Islam continued to face significant political, economic, legal, social, and religious discrimination," the report reads.
"Charges of harassment, abuse, and even killings at the hands of the muttawa (religious police) continued to surface. Saudi textbooks continued to contain statements of intolerance," it added.
In Eritrea, religious freedom "deteriorated further," the report said, with Hanford noting as many as 1,900 religious prisoners in the African nation, many of them held without due process.
"I really grieve over what has continued to happen there. The numbers of prisoners continue to climb. I think one would have to say the sanctions there have not borne fruit," he said.