Nigeria added to list of offenders of religious freedom: CEN 5.07.09 p 7.

The Nigerian government’s blind eye toward the persecution of Christians has led to its being added to the list of the world’s worst offenders of religious freedom by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). In its annual report to the US State Department, the USCIRF recommended that Nigeria join the list of 13 nations whose governments have engaged or tolerated systematic and egregious violations of the universal right of freedom of religion or belief. Nigeria now joins: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam on the US government’s “country of particular concern” or CPC list. USCIRF commissioner Leonard Leo told a Washington press briefing that the commission had asked Congress to add Nigeria to the rogues gallery after a fact-finding mission held earlier this year “concluded the government was tolerating” sectarian violence. There had been an “unbroken chain of sectarian and communal violence the government has not addressed,” he said. The 2009 USCIRF Report is the most extensive in the Commission’s 10-year history, documenting serious abuses of freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief around the world. The report provides policy prescriptions for each nation on the CPC list. The USCIRF report “details a vital, yet sometimes underappreciated aspect of human rights facing lawmakers here and abroad,” the chairman of the USCIRF, Felice Gaer (pictured) said. Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper.