In its newly released annual report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is urging the State Department to designate or re-designate 16 nations as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) because they are nations in which there are “particularly severe violations of religious freedom that are sys-tematic, ongoing and egregious.”
The nations include ten current CPCs—Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—as well six other nations: the Central African Republic, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, and Vietnam.
The federal commission found that in 12 other nations—Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, and Turkey— “religious freedom violations are severe but do not fully meet the CPC standard.”
