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On October 26, the State Department released its third annual International Religious Freedom Report, which documents the status of religious freedom in 195 economies worldwide. The report is compiled and released under 1998's International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA).

On the same day, Secretary of State Colin Powell designated six countries and Afghanistan's Taliban regime as Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs). The countries were Burma, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Sudan. Such status makes a country subject to U.S. diplomatic and economic sanctions.

Nina Shea, director of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom and a commissioner of

the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom said the report is a "monumental effort"—but has flaws.

"It is better for the world of religious freedom to have this report than not to," Shea told Christianity Today last week. "But I find problems with the reporting on countries where the U.S. wants something such as oil or assistance in the war on terrorism."

The most glaring flaws, she said, appear in the report on Sudan, a country that has provided assistance in U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. "There is no real indication in the report that there is a genocide or jihad occurring," Shea said. The word jihad does appear, but only once and on page 5 of 6:

The Government is dominated by northern Muslims, while the southern ethnic groups fighting the civil war largely are followers of traditional indigenous religions or Christians. The Government has declared a "jihad" (Muslim holy war) against the southern rebels. One of the major factors in the continuation of the war is the Government refusal to agree to demands for a unified secular state.

Shea said the report's description of the civil war does not fully convey the fighting's terror or its religious nature. "The report deals more with customary issues of less significance such as prisoners being held, but there are no prisoners in the south because they are dead," Shea said.

Aid in the war on terrorism is not the only motivator for "political soft-pedaling" in country reports, Shea said. "In cases such as Egypt, [the careful treatment] must only be for political reasons to not upset Cairo. The Egyptian government has taken over all the human-rights groups in the country; nevertheless, the report find trends of improvement?"

Likewise, the Vietnam report "accentuates the positive," Shea said. According to the report:

While the status of respect for religious freedom remained fundamentally unchanged during the period covered by this report, there were improvements in some areas. In general there are amicable relations among the various religious communities, and there were no instances of societal discrimination or violence based on religion during the period covered by this report.

Shea said the report might be skewed by Vietnam's bilateral trade agreement with the U.S. "The only conclusion the report draws is that the situation stayed the same with some improvement," Shea said. "The overall conclusion doesn't at all highlight the negatives that are happening in Vietnam."

Last week, Robert Seiple, president and founder of the Institute for Global Engagement and former U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, released a statement calling the State Department report "the best compilation of factual information about religious freedom that exists."

However, Seiple told CT, this resource is overshadowed each year by the "media-driven" list of CPCs.

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November (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45