A woman leaves a Shiite shrine in a predominantly Hazara neighborhood while two men stand guard in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday, 9th November, 2021. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)

List Afghanistan as religious liberty violator, report urges US State Department

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended that Afghanistan be added to the State Department’s list of worst religious freedom violators, citing the changes that resulted when the Taliban took control of the country last year.

The federal panel said in its annual report released on Monday that the regime change has meant worsening conditions for religious liberty and significant deterioration of human rights overall.

“Religious minorities faced harassment, detention, and even death due to their faith or beliefs,” the bipartisan commission said in the report’s introduction. “The one known Jew and most Hindus and Sikhs fled the country. Christian converts, Baha’is, and Ahmadiyya Muslims practiced their faith in hiding due to fear of reprisal and threats from the Taliban.”

The last time the watchdog commission recommended Afghanistan be considered “a country of particular concern”, the State Department designation that signals ongoing, systematic and egregious religious freedom violations, was in 2001, just prior to the ouster of the previous Taliban regime that controlled most of the country for five years.

The Taliban has been on the State Department’s list of “entities of particular concern” every year since federal officials began that designation in 2018.

The 2022 annual report details conclusions of commissioners’ research during the previous year, from genocide to charges of blasphemy to punishment for listening to particular religious teachings. But during a virtual news briefing on Monday, they also noted their current concerns about Russia – already labelled a country of particular concern – and its invasion of Ukraine.

Read the article by Adelle M Banks in Sight Magazine.