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Minority religious
CoMMunities At risk
“Advancing the Fundamental Human Rights of Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience”
A report prepared by the First Freedom Center
March 2012

Board of Editors
Ambassador Akbar Ahmed
Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies,  
American University
Rabbi Andrew Baker
Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman  
in Office on Combating Anti-Semitism
Michael Cromartie
Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy Center 
Felice Gaer
Director, Jacob Blaustein Institute for the 
Advancement of Human Rights of the American 
Jewish Committee and Commissioner, United States 
Commission on International Religious Freedom
Paul Marshall
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute’s Center  
for Religious Freedom
William L. Saunders
Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel,  
Americans United for Life 
Ambassador Robert A. Seiple
Former United States Ambassador-at-Large  
for International Religious Freedom
Tad Stahnke
Director of Policy and Programs, Human Rights First
James Standish
Communications Director, South Pacific Division 
of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Former 
Executive Director, U.S. Commission on International 
Religious Freedom
Knox Thames
Director of Policy & Research, United States 
Commission on International Religious Freedom
Cover Photo: An Egyptian boy waves his national flag as anti-government protesters demonstrate in Tahrir Square, in Cairo, Egypt.  (Credit: AP)
The views presented are those of the authors. Members of the Board of Editors participated in their  
personal capacities, and positions presented are not necessarily those of the institutions they represent.

Minority Religious Communities at Risk
A report prepared by the First Freedom Center
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change 
his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private,  
to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18)
“Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right  
to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any  
of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 30)
“In those states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities 
shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own 
culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.”
(International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 27) 
“All human rights are universal, indivisible, and interdependent and interrelated. The international 
community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with 
the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, 
cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, 
economic, and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
(World Conference on Human Rights. Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action Paragraph 5)
1321 East Main Street • Richmond, Virginia 23219 • (804) 643-1786 • caff@firstfreedom.org • www.firstfreedom.org
© First Freedom Center, 2011. All rights reserved.
i

Daniel S. Mariaschin is Executive Vice 
President of B’nai B’rith International, and 
also serves as Director of the organization’s 
Center for Human Rights and Public 
Policy. Through service on many delegations 
and in many advisory roles, he has worked 
to advanced human rights, protect the rights of Jewish 
communities, and promote better relations with Israel. He has 
written many articles on foreign affairs and national security 
issues for leading publications and lectures widely, including at 
the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute.
Tad Stahnke is currently the Director of 
Policies and Programs at Human Rights 
First. From 2000 to 2007, he worked at 
the U.S. Commission on International 
Religious Freedom, where he served as 
Deputy Executive Director for Policy and 
Acting Executive Director. In addition to 
authoring and co-authoring many scholarly publications, Mr. 
Stahnke is considered an expert in international human rights 
laws, and has trained officials from the Departments of State, 
Justice, and Homeland Security.
The Rev. Canon Dr. Andrew White is 
vicar of St. George’s Anglican Church, 
one of Baghdad’s largest churches, which 
ministers to 550 families and provides 
critical medical services to 2,000 Baghdad 
residents a month. White is also Co-
Founder, CEO, and President of the 
Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation 
in the Middle East. By fostering trust and dialogue among 
religious leaders, he has helped broker important agreements 
such as the Baghdad Accord and First Alexandria Declaration 
of the Religious Leaders of the Holy Land.
Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is currently 
the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic 
Studies at American University, the First 
Distinguished Chair of Middle East and 
Islamic Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy, 
and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the 
Brookings Institution. An occasional 
advisor to senior government officials, Dr. Ahmed is the author 
of over a dozen award-winning books, one of which formed 
the basis of a six-part BBC TV series entitled Living Islam. 
Other recent books include Journey into Islam: The Crisis of 
Globalization; and Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam.
American University photo
Ambassador Randolph Bell is President 
of the First Freedom Center. During a 
thirty-one year career in the U.S. Foreign 
Service, he focused on European security 
and human-rights affairs at postings 
in Eastern and Western Europe in the 
Departments of State and Defense. His 
final assignment was as Ambassador at Large and Special 
Envoy in the State Department’s Bureau of European Affairs. 
He holds a Bachelor of Arts from The College of William 
and Mary and a Master of Arts in history from Cambridge 
University.
Felice Gaer has served as Commissioner 
on the U.S. Commission on International 
Religious Freedom since 2001, and 
Directs the Jacob Blaustein Institute for 
the Advancement of Human Rights of 
the American Jewish Committee. She 
has filled leadership roles on numerous 
human rights organizations, including as 
an Independent Expert on the UN Committee against Torture. 
She has worked to protect civilians under threat, advance 
the human rights of women, eradicate religious persecution 
abroad, resolve ethnic conflicts, and prevent genocide.
(Photo Credit: USCIRF)
ii
About the Authors

Contents
Changes Affecting Minority Religious Communities ........................................................................  3
Implications of the Arab Spring for Religious Minorities  ...................................................................  4
 Ambassador Akbar Ahmed 
The Problem of Impunity: Religious Minorities Need Human Rights Protection ...................................  6
 Felice Gaer 
New Life for Old Anti-Semitism .....................................................................................................  10
 Daniel Mariaschin 
The Spread of Authoritarianism .......................................................................................................  15
 Tad Stahnke 
We Have Been Left .........................................................................................................................  19
 Canon Andrew White 
Regional Assessments Update ...........................................................................................................  21
Sub-Saharan Africa ......................................................................................................................  23
Asia and Oceania ..........................................................................................................................  25
Europe .........................................................................................................................................  29
Latin America and the Caribbean .................................................................................................  34
The Middle East and North Africa ................................................................................................  37 
North America .............................................................................................................................  41
The Former Soviet Union .............................................................................................................  44
Prisoners ..........................................................................................................................................  49
Communities Most at Risk Update ...................................................................................................  57
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................  61
Notes  ...............................................................................................................................................  65
Bibliography .....................................................................................................................................  80
iii

-  1  -
Foreword
The turn of the New Year came against a background 
of violence in northern Nigeria, of continuing change 
in North Africa and the Middle East, and of nascent 
reform in Burma/Myanmar. In Russia, officials at 
Rostov on Don were rendering the decision to replace 
a memorial plaque to Jews killed in the Holocaust with 
one which mentions neither Jews nor the Holocaust. 
The implications of these and other currents in human 
events for minority religious communities are the subject 
matter of much of what follows. Our five expert analyses, 
together with updates in our regional assessments and in 
our portraits of “communities most at risk,” make clear 
that none of these changes has reached an end-point. 
Yet, as 2012 dawned, at least one thing was already clear. 
Now as ever, threats to religious minorities arise largely 
either in authoritarian states or in states with overtly 
discriminatory policies concerning religion – or in states 
which combine both of these characteristics.
Among the world’s authoritarian states and beyond, there 
was during the preceding year considerable interest in 
“the Chinese model,” which purports to combine market-
oriented economics with discretionary, unaccountable, 
and centralized power. Many religiously discriminatory 
states continued to focus on constitutional and statutory 
instruments for favoring one faith over another. The 
“Turkish model” (for the coexistence of Islam and 
democracy) and the “Iranian model” (for Islamic 
governance) loomed over processes of constitution 
drafting and reform in several Islamic countries. In 
economics, authoritarian countries like China and 
Russia strengthened the roles of state-owned and state-
controlled firms. In the administration of religion, they 
tightened the government’s control of all aspects of 
religious life. States with overtly discriminatory religious 
policies – from Hungary, through Egypt and Iran to 
Pakistan – also tightened controls, whether on behalf 
of registration systems which favor large, traditional 
communities or on behalf of an overall, Islamic identity.
The First Freedom Center sees no “model” as a guarantor 
or embodiment of religious freedom. While we find our 
own mandate and point of origin in Jefferson’s 1786 
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and in the First 
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, we are far from 
advocating to the world any specifically “American 
model” for freedom of the individual conscience. Rather, 
it is the progression of those American guarantees 
through the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights and other universally accepted documents into 
the realm of human rights generally which commands 
our loyalty and respect. The objective is and ought to be, 
we hold, rights and not models. 
In January of 2011, the First Freedom Center issued its 
first report on Minority Religious Communities at Risk. 
Distributed widely in the United States and abroad, 
it had important impact in the fields of human rights 
generally and of freedom of conscience and freedom of 
religion in particular. It was the subject of discussions 
with bodies of the U.S. Congress and of programming 
at the National Press Club. It was quoted extensively in 
reporting and discussion of the subjects it addressed.
This succeeding 2012 edition updates that report and 
provides two new elements. Five Expert Articles by 
recognized authorities in our field assess major trends 
which affected the circumstances of minority religious 
communities during 2011. They offer the individual views 
of each author and do not necessarily represent those of 
the Editors or of the First Freedom Center. We also offer 
a carefully and exhaustively researched “representative 
list” of prisoners around the world sentenced (or 
merely imprisoned without charges) for exercising their 
religious-freedom rights under the Universal Declaration 
of Human Rights and the International Covenant on 
Civil and Political Rights – or for advocating those rights. 
We hope that our readers and colleagues will find these 
features informative and useful.

-  2  -
Where the report discusses individual religious 
communities “most at risk,” it focuses on the same 
communities as it did last year. Our research shows them 
still vulnerable over the period of the decade ensuing 
from the first report, by virtue of political and cultural 
antipathy and/or issues of demography and resources.
Except as revised implicitly by any of the findings 
of our five Experts or by the contents of our updates 
of last year’s Regional Assessments, we stand by the 
identification of “Structural Impediments” to minority 
religious communities the first report contained. For that 
reason and by way of general reference, consumers of this 
year’s document may wish to keep the earlier report to 
hand. (It is available at www.firstfreedom.org.)
Most importantly, we stand fully committed to the 
definition of the universal rights we cherish and work to 
advance as contained in the Foreword to the first edition. 
This year as last, we start from the premise that nearly 
every country on earth is and remains fully committed 
to the rights anchored in the Universal Declaration’s 
guarantees that every citizen of every accepting state 
should enjoy freedom of religion and conscience, the 
right to change religions, and the right to manifest 
religious beliefs either alone or in communities. We 
assert once again our finding that, in subsequent votes 
on treaties, declarations, and other documents which 
specifically reincorporate the rights spelled out in the 
Universal Declaration, every country in the United 
Nations has reaffirmed these liberties again and again. 
We once more emphasize that, via the 1993 Vienna 
Declaration and Programme of Action and otherwise, 
states have specifically eschewed doctrines of cultural 
relativism.
Alas, our review of the intervening year convinces us that 
the gap between commitment and performance on the 
parts of many states around the globe is wider this year 
than it was the last. In order that we might encompass 
the entirety of calendar year 2011 in this year’s report, 
we have changed our reporting period slightly so that 
it incorporates the final two months of 2010 and all 
of 2011. (Our Experts have, in several of their articles, 
included evidentiary and other materials drawn from 
a wider time frame.) We thereby operate from a larger 
data base, but, even if that were not so, the actions 
taken by governments and regimes to the detriment of 
minority religious communities would have increased. 
Even where there has been progress in overall political 
and constitutional reform, there have been setbacks for 
religious communities. Egypt’s Copts continue unsure 
of their safety. Burma/Myanmar released some of its 
prisoners but continues brutally to suppress Rohingya 
Muslims and Kachin Christians.
In our Conclusion, we once again offer advice on actions 
which states and the international community might 
take to counteract this worrisome, downward slide. 
Whether upon our advice or otherwise, it is urgent that 
the slide be reversed. For that to happen, we believe 
that a strong leadership role on the part of the United 
States Government will be essential, and we strongly 
recommend new mechanisms, which we describe, for 
deriving greater leverage from the day-to-day conduct 
of American bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. Now 
as ever, the freedom of the individual human conscience 
remains the very bedrock and first point of origin of 
all human freedom. Without the securing of rights of 
conscience and belief, there can be no lasting peace in 
this world – and no meaningful prosperity.
Ambassador (ret.) Randolph Bell 
President, First Freedom Center
Richmond, Virginia, March 15, 2012

-  3  -
Arab Spring
(Credit: AP/LaPresse)
Changes Affecting Minority Religious Communities
We asked five Experts/Practitioners for their views on factors which most affected  
the lives and fortunes of members of minority religious communities during 2011.  
These are their contributions. Their views are their own.

-  4  -
The Arab Spring has enormous short and long term 
implications. These include historic, political, and 
hopeful changes. In the short term: For the first time 
ever in the Arab World, there is a genuine revolutionary 
mass movement wanting fundamental changes. While 
we have seen mass movements in the Muslim World –
Southeast Asia, with the creation of Pakistan in 1947, 
and Iran, in 1979 –here for the first time we saw a people’s 
uprising taking place throughout the Arab World. 
However, it is too early to predict how this will end. Unlike 
the great revolutions that have shaped modern times, the 
Arab revolutions are different. The revolutions in Russia, 
China, and Iran were all led by charismatic leaders whose 
followers soon developed a cult of personality around 
them. They were monolithic in ideological and political 
terms. They had a clear-cut vision of the world and what 
they wanted from it. In contrast, we see no Lenin, Mao, 
or Khomeini figure among the Arab movements. On the 
contrary, there is a great deal of infighting for leadership 
and lack of clarity in terms of political objectives. 
Nonetheless, these initial uprisings were encouraging 
for three reasons. First, they were led by idealistic young 
people who adeptly utilized social media and technology. 
Facebook, Twitter, and smart phones became the tools 
of revolutionaries who went up against despotic central 
governments. Status updates, tweets, and text messages 
served as lines of communication; these could be easily 
passed between friends and then on to the media, 
allowing for massive distribution in mere seconds. 
Second, there was little initial violence on behalf of those 
in revolt. While there was a public outcry for justice and 
an end to corruption, there were no real calls to march 
the leadership to the guillotines. This was critical to 
the legitimacy of the cause and to garner international 
support. Third, the quick success in Tunisia and Egypt 
allowed similar movements to spread like wildfire across 
the region. Populations in neighboring countries felt 
inspired, and almost overnight campaigns against the 
ruling elites in Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain emerged. 
The revolutions in these countries, which possess a more 
entrenched ruling class, have simmered more slowly. 
Where mere weeks saw the end of Mubarak, it took 
months and months and prolonged bloodshed before 
Qaddafi and Saleh were finally removed.
In the long term, it is important to remember that we 
are still in the midst of revolution –it isn’t over. Nascent 
governments must endeavor to establish truly democratic 
societies, where every minority, whether ethnic, religious, 
or tribal, has a voice and is represented. This includes 
defusing conflicts between Sunni and Shi’a, Christian 
and Muslim, tribe and state – and unless these different 
segments of society are included, the endeavor to create 
egalitarian change will dissolve into tit for tat clashes, 
and the underlying societal issues remain unresolved. 
Ultimately, neglecting to ensure the growth of genuine 
democracy undermines the entire revolutionary 
movement and dishonors the names of those who died 
fighting for the cause. Sectarian, religious, and socio-
economic tension will destabilize these countries and 
prevent them from becoming active, vibrant players 
on the world stage. Without acknowledging both the 
legitimacy of minorities to exist and participate in the 
iMpliCAtions of the ArAb spring for religious Minorities
by Ambassador Akbar Ahmed
Egyptian protesters on a military tank.

-  5  -
public sphere, and the necessity of their inclusion, these 
new governments are little better than the dictators 
they deposed. We are still witnessing terrible fighting 
within Syria, and violent unpredictability in Yemen and 
Bahrain. If protestors achieve regime change, they must 
remember that their marginalization sparked revolution, 
and they cannot then marginalize any portion of the 
population as they rebuild the state. 
In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, day to day 
life has been fairly calm over the last 13 months. While 
the religious party al-Nahda won 40% of the seats in 
Parliament, it is not of a radical frame of mind. President 
Monsef Marzouki is a secularist. The main problem 
Tunisia faces is restoring its economy, and in particular 
its tourism industry. Tunisians all feel this imperative, 
and could serve as a success story for the region if they 
continue to work together to achieve their goals.
Egypt has recently been in the news for the violence 
against Coptic Christians. Both a lack of effective 
public security measures and long standing hostility 
between the Muslim majority and Christian minority 
have contributed to these unfortunate and unacceptable 
instances. As the Muslim Brotherhood won elections in 
Egypt, Copts expressed a sense of helplessness and a fear 
of marginalization. The Brotherhood has promised to 
protect its religious minorities, and it must hold firm to 
this vow. While the military still holds power, it too must 
pledge to protect the rights and interests of all Egyptian 
citizens. Egypt will not be accepted as a true democracy 
if it does not provide for its minority communities.
In the short term we have watched unprecedented 
change, which serves as a symbol of hope for a better 
and more equitable world to come. In the long term, 
however, we see a looming question mark. The graphic 
images of Qaddafi’s bloody corpse, which were plastered 
all over the media, serve as a troubling indicator of the 
barely contained anger and frustration which continues 
to seethe in Libya. In Bahrain, violence erupted on the 
anniversary of the Arab Spring, as little has changed for 
the Shi’a citizenry. There is vast potential to completely 
reform the Middle East with these revolts –as long 
as they serve as vehicles for democracy, inclusiveness, 
and tolerance. Young leaders who now find themselves 
in positions of power cannot allow old enmities and 
prejudices to overshadow their decisions and discolor 
the spirit of the Spring.
Inevitably the Arab World will get there, and it must 
bear the burden of experiencing its growing pains under 
the scrutiny of modern times. The world, and specifically 
the US, must step back to see the situation clearly, and at 
that point unambiguously declare that they stand behind 
those who believe in democracy, human rights, religious 
freedom, tolerance, and compassion. 
America cannot afford to vacillate on these values. It is 
in the spirit of our Founding Fathers, the Declaration, 
and the Constitution that we must communicate this to 
the world –and now is the time to do it. While direct 
military intervention is highly unlikely, the US must 
encourage its own and world media to continue its 
piercing coverage of successes, failures, and obstacles 
reformers encounter. It is only by keeping the trials 
and tribulations of those striving for change in the 
forefront of the collective world consciousness that we 
ensure human rights abuses are combated and avoided. 
Without a firm commitment of support, atrocities as we 
have seen in Syria will rage on, rights will be violated, 
and democracy will stagnate. Unfortunately, religious 
minorities will be the first victims. The only way to help 
all religious minorities in the Arab World is to bring 
them into clear and unambiguous democracies that give 
them a voice and a position all their own. The burgeoning 
democracies will not spring fully formed into existence 
overnight, and will require assistance and support from 
the international community. 

-  6  -
The incidents and trends outlined in this study that 
threaten minority religious communities evoke some 
basic questions: what sustains intolerance and violence 
against minorities, and what can bring such problematic 
behavior to an end and prevent its recurrence? Such 
questions could easily lead us to a study of cultures, or 
into psychological research and philosophical as well 
as theological questions. Indeed, many such issues are 
already discussed in this and last year’s studies by the 
First Freedom Center. A human-rights approach 
offers a structured response. It mandates attention to 
codification of legal norms, a system that enforces the 
norms, and measures that can be taken to correct the 
practices that result in violations of those norms and 
prevent their recurrence. In a human-rights approach, 
there is also a focus on accountability – i.e., identifying 
those responsible for breaching the norms – in this 
case, guaranteeing freedom of thought, conscience and 
religion, non-discrimination, and non-abuse of others – 
and if they are proven responsible in a fair proceeding, 
ensuring the perpetrators are punished appropriately. 
Looking at the inter-religious and communal violence 
that has plagued so many countries in the last year, it 
becomes clear that the absence of an effective human-
rights approach has been a prevailing reality in many such 
cases. There may be lip service to human-rights norms 
in such instances, but there is no effective enforcement 
of them. Instead, there is impunity for abuses and the 
culprits face no punishment or sanction. In additional 
to a failure to investigate and prosecute, there are often 
other factors. For example, reconciliation meetings and 
conflict resolution approaches have sometimes been 
resorted to as so-called ‘healing’ methodologies – such 
scenarios routinely downplay or bypass human rights. 
This needs to be changed. 
reCent exAMples 
Two examples that commanded attention during the past 
two years merit special consideration: Egypt and Nigeria.
At the beginning of 2011, the world expressed shock over 
the suicide bombing of the Coptic Orthodox Church 
in Alexandria, Egypt – and the death of more than 
20 people. As 2012 began, it was a series of bombings 
on churches in Adamawa and elsewhere in northern 
Nigeria – including a series of coordinated attacks – that 
resulted in more than 100 deaths. And then another 
series of attacks in Kano brought on at least another 185 
deaths and many more injuries. These focused attention, 
for a time, on the prevalence of religiously-targeted 
violence in that troubled country. While both events 
merited condemnation because of the resort to violence 
and loss of life, both actually share a strangely similar 
context: the context of impunity. The word impunity 
comes from the Latin impunis which means free from/
without punishment. [OHCHR Study on HRTB’s 
Jurisprudence and Findings in Light of OHCHR’s 
Thematic Priorities, p. 62.] 
The loss of life in Egypt and Nigeria may have been 
denounced by the leadership of each country, but the 
culprits surely felt they risked nothing by such acts. 
Indeed, in both Egypt and Nigeria, as in many other 
places around the globe, incidents of mass violence 
and communal killing were treated more as problems 
to be discussed (rather like natural disasters) than as 
crimes to be investigated and prosecuted, and for which 
perpetrators will be punished. Egypt has tended to hold 
“reconciliation meetings” among the residents in affected 
communities and has only rarely brought people to trial 
for such loss of life. Yet, during 2011, Egypt saw about 
100 deaths in such conditions – more persons killed in 
sectarian or communal clashes than in the past ten years 
combined. 
the probleM of iMpunity:  
religious Minorities need huMAn rights proteCtion
by Felice Gaer

-  7  -
This problem is even more severe in Nigeria, which 
has seen at least 14,000 killed in religious clashes since 
1998, according to the US Commission on International 
Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Rather than prosecuting 
those responsible, Nigerian leaders have counseled calm 
over such “sensitive” clashes and in general temporarily 
detained the suspects involved without pressing charges, 
and eventually released them. Although Nigerian officials 
claimed to USCIRF last year that five persons had been 
convicted for their actions in the January 2010 sectarian 
clashes in Jos, details on these and other cases have not 
been forthcoming when requested. The past year brought 
a substantial increase in such violence, with more than 
800 people killed in April 2011 in violence following 
the Nigerian presidential elections, and numerous other 
incidents throughout the country. Indeed, the Christian 
Association of Nigeria reported that more than 430 
churches were burned or destroyed. These countries 
did not develop “impunity” overnight. Such incidents 
have been occurring for years, but they have taken place 
within a context and a culture of impunity, which reflects 
not just incapacity or lack of will on the part of the 
police to begin investigations and of the government to 
pursue prosecutions, but also ultimately a lack of respect 
generally for human rights themselves. 
WhAt is iMpunity?
The United Nations has addressed impunity, adopting 
Principles in 2005 that have been endorsed by consensus 
in the 193-member General Assembly. The first principle 
explains clearly that impunity is a failure of action by 
governments – a failure to investigate, prosecute, punish, 
and provide redress to victims for injuries. [“Impunity 
arises from a failure by States to meet their obligations to 
investigate violations; to take appropriate measures in 
respect of the perpetrators, particularly in the area of justice, 
by ensuring that those suspected of criminal responsibility are 
prosecuted, tried and duly punished; to provide victims with 
effective remedies and to ensure that they receive reparation 
for the injuries suffered; to ensure the inalienable right to 
know the truth about violations; and to take other necessary 
steps to prevent a recurrence of violations.” Set of Principles 
for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights 
through Action To Combat Impunity, United Nations 
Commission on Human Rights, 2005.]
But as any scholar of politics knows, inaction is not 
merely failure to act – it is and can often be a deliberate 
action. Impunity does not result simply from inability or 
incapacity – there is often a lack of will on the part of a 
government and even a willful decision not to investigate 
or pursue those responsible that results in “impunity.” 
Moreover, governments have the obligation to take 
action to investigate and prosecute crimes by private or 
non-state actors, and since the failure to do so constitutes 
a violation of their human rights obligations, which in 
turn further fuels a climate of impunity. 
The Committee against Torture, a UN human-rights 
treaty-monitoring body, has explained to State Parties 
to the Convention Against Torture that official inaction 
actually encourages further violations. In its General 
Comment 2, the Committee stated that “since the 
failure of the State to exercise due diligence to intervene 
to stop, sanction and provide remedies to victims … 
facilitates and enables non-State actors to commit acts 
impermissible under the Convention with impunity, 
the State’s indifference or inaction provides a form of 
encouragement and/or de facto permission.” [Emphasis 
added. Committee Against Torture, General Comment 
2, paragraph 18.]
The United Nations (UN) has sent a strong signal that impunity for 
serious human rights violations will not be tolerated.
(Credit: Land Times)

-  8  -
It is this sense of encouragement – of providing de 
facto permission to conduct violent attacks on minority 
religious communities – that has enabled killings to 
recur all too often in countries such as Egypt, Nigeria 
and elsewhere. Clearly, the State has a parallel obligation 
to prevent and punish such acts. 
Where iMpunity is found
Both private and governmental bodies have identified 
impunity as a serious element impairing respect for 
freedom of religion or belief. The most recent annual 
State Department International Religious Freedom 
Report (published September 13, 2011, and covering 
the period July through December, 2010, available at 
www.state.gov. – hereafter referred to as “IRF Report”) 
has identified a number of countries and regions where 
“impunity” problems are noteworthy. Explaining that 
there are numerous ways that governments can “violate” 
religious freedom obligations, it cites both “active state 
repression and impunity.” The report goes on to mention 
“failure to prevent and prosecute societal violence and 
discrimination” and explains that merely adopting laws 
on non-discrimination is not an adequate measure in 
itself to meet a state’s international obligations to protect 
freedom of religion or belief and/or religious minorities. 
“…Many states that have laws guaranteeing religious 
freedom still fall short in protecting minorities by failing 
to take steps to curb intolerance, attacks, or harassment,” 
the State Department reminds us, and “…such impunity 
can exacerbate sectarian violence and empower those 
who attack religious minorities.” [Executive Summary, 
IRF Report, September 13, 2011.]
A number of states are identified by the IRF report 
as displaying impunity – including our two examples 
above: Nigeria (“Local political actors stoked sectarian 
violence with impunity, occasionally using religion 
as a catalyst”) and Egypt (“The government failed to 
prosecute perpetrators of violence… and contributed to 
a climate of impunity that encouraged further assaults.”). 
Similar language was used to describe Pakistan (“The 
government of Pakistan rarely prosecuted perpetrators 
of extremist attacks, deepening the climate of impunity... 
The government did not take adequate measures to 
prevent these incidents or undertake reform measures to 
prevent the abuse of the blasphemy laws.”) 
For a range of African countries, the IRF report 
acknowledged something called ‘official impunity’ 
(Algeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Togo, Burkina Faso, Sao Tome 
and Principe, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, but 
for others, it pointed only to “police impunity” (Cape 
Verde, Solomon Islands). Albania, too, suffered from 
“police impunity” but otherwise, for East European 
countries, the word “impunity” was not utilized. At the 
same time, it has been clear, with regard to hate crimes, 
‘vandalism’ and anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic incidents 
in Russia, that there is a tendency to dismiss such crimes 
perpetrated by private actors as “hooliganism” rather 
than as human rights abuses. The State Department has 
acknowledged this for example in Russia by remarking: 
“Authorities rarely prosecuted or sentenced those arrested 
for attacks and vandalism against religious minorities, 
and they often failed to bring hate-crime charges even 
when religious bigotry was clearly involved. …” – but 
the term “impunity” is never mentioned. Similarly, with 
regard to Hungary, “Between July 1 and October 31, the 
police closed investigations in 136 cases of vandalism 
or burglary in Jewish or Christian cemeteries” and 
Moldova, where “Jehovah’s Witnesses reported they 
were frequently treated aggressively and occasionally 
physically attacked. They filed reports with the police, 
but those responsible have not been punished.” 
The IRF report spoke differently regarding India, and it 
is worth quoting the report at greater length: “Some state 
and local governments … limited … freedom .... by not 
efficiently or effectively prosecuting those who attacked 
religious minorities. The government [of India] provides 
minorities strong official legal protection, although at 
times its weak law enforcement, lack of trained police, 
and overburdened court system played a role in not 

-  9  -
addressing communal tensions as swiftly as possible. 
Despite government efforts to foster communal harmony, 
some extremists continued to view ineffective investigation 
and prosecution of attacks on religious minorities as a 
signal that they could commit such violence with impunity, 
although numerous cases were in the courts at the end of 
the reporting period.” (emphasis added)
Many extensive cases of violence and inter-religious 
communal violence – and follow up – are described in 
the IRF chapter on India – as is the slow action of the 
courts, and the large number of acquittals in some of the 
fast-track courts set up for Kandmahal – but the State 
Department has concluded that, taken together, lengthy 
procedures and some acquittals don’t add up to ‘impunity’ 
when a substantial number of cases end in convictions. 
They have in the Orissa cases, and substantial restitution 
has also been provided to victims there. 
iMpunity And internAtionAl tribunAls 
Recently, US Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo, speaking 
at the Security Council Debate on international justice 
and rule of law (Feb 19, 2012) pointed out that “the 
international community has signaled that impunity 
for the most serious crimes will not be tolerated…” and 
has therefore created a series of international and mixed 
tribunals, commissions of inquiry and fact-finding 
mechanisms.” 
Which crimes are “the most serious” merits deliberation, 
as this judgment, too, has changed. Years ago, international 
jurists seemed to approach the matters of rape and sexual 
violence against women as private or personal acts rather 
than abuses of power or violations of human rights/
humanitarian law. In a series of cases in the recent past, 
jurists have reexamined these abuses using a gender lens. 
So-called “honor killings” are an example of a crime 
mainly directed against women whose perpetrators have 
benefited from state-sanctioned mitigating sentences 
– or, more often, from impunity reflected in a failure 
to investigate or prosecute when claims of “honor” are 
presented as an explanation of the homicide.
 “Crimes committed against women in the name of 
honor” are commonly murders directed against female 
members of the families by spouses or other male 
relatives. Many have linked such crimes to countries 
where the Islamic tradition is preeminent. Countries 
have adopted discriminatory legal provisions that provide 
for lenience and sentence reductions for such crimes. 
The UN General Assembly has described such “honor 
crimes” as manifestations of violence against women, 
deeply rooted in discriminatory and traditional behavior. 
In its chapters recommending that Iraq be designated a 
“Country of Particular Concern” for religious freedom 
violations, USCIRF has expressed concern about 
violence against women in the form of “honor killings” in 
that country. Indeed, the CEDAW (the treaty body that 
monitors compliance with the convention on women’s 
human rights) has called upon the Iraqi government to 
condemn and eradicate “honor killings” and ensure that 
they are prosecuted and punished in the same way as 
other crimes, and it has used similar language for Turkey 
and other countries. 
The Committee on the Rights of the Child, another 
treaty-monitoring body, complained in 2003 and again 
in 2009 about Pakistan’s “widespread and increasing” 
phenomenon of “honor killings,” the reluctance of the 
police to arrest perpetrators, who then receive at most 
token punishments, as well as the need for a range of 
measures to educate and change social attitudes, and the 
UN wants laws protecting women enforced.
(Credit: Daily Outlook Afghanistan)

-  10  -
need for more effective measures to combat honor killings. 
[Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration 
of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 44 of 
the Convention: Pakistan, UN Document CRC/C/15/
Add.217 (27 October, 2003) at paragraphs 34-35; 
Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration 
of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 44 of 
the Convention: Pakistan, UN Document CRC/C/PAK/
CO/3-4 (15 October, 2009) at paragraphs 37-38.]
Women continue to draw attention to the problem that 
this impunity – for honor killings – is actually provided 
for by law in many countries – so the state’s action to 
ignore or forgive such murders is quite clear. In such 
cases, there is often also inaction – a failure to report, 
investigate, prosecute or punish such crimes in any way. 
As with other forms of impunity, the failure to prosecute 
‘honor killings’ is believed to lead to repetition of the 
practice and more than that, seems to give a free license 
– and encouragement – to those who would choose to 
engage in this kind of abuse. 
the WAy AheAd 
Human rights methodology offers some pointers 
for progress in addressing the problem of impunity. 
First, the problem needs to become visible – naming 
the pattern as “impunity” helps, but pointing to the 
situations where it prevails is also needed. As the scant 
survey of the State Department’s own comprehensive 
religious freedom report shows, there are many 
situations where impunity can be identified. The Office 
of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights in 
Geneva has indicated that some treaty bodies have 
referenced impunity in their concluding observations – 
it identified 92 countries about which one or more treaty 
monitoring bodies have raised concerns about one or 
another form of impunity. Of these, 28 of them are in 
Africa, 21 in Eastern Europe, 19 in Latin America, 15 
in Asia and 9 in Western European and other countries. 
[OHCHR Study on HRTB’s Jurisprudence previously 
cited, pp. 191-2.] Examining the ways in which states 
and their agents all over the world fail to take measures 
to investigate, prosecute, and punish perpetrators and to 
prevent recurrences of the abuses will require considerable 
additional effort. Far more will be needed to reverse the 
trends which actually encourage individuals to engage in 
communal violence and carry out killings in the name 
of ‘religion’ or ‘community.’ Key to this is recognizing 
that so-called state inaction is not merely the result of 
incapacity. A human-rights approach will help pinpoint 
the way forward. 
neW life for old Anti-seMitisM
by Daniel S. Mariaschin
B’nai B’rith shares with the First Freedom Center 
the perception that circumstances worsened for many 
minority religious communities in 2011. Jews have been 
a violently mistreated minority for thousands of years. In 
the Middle East, the Jewish homeland Israel constitutes 
a tiny religious minority in a region of Muslim majorities. 
Against a background of change in that region, Israel’s 
Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry issued 
a monitoring report in January 2012 which stressed the 
increase in anti-Semitic violence in the Middle East 
during 2011. The report found that, “while the popular 
uprisings in the Arab world do not represent a general 
change in attitude towards Israel, Zionism, and the Jews, 
it seems that the anti-Semitic discourse and incitement 
have become more violent…Charges of an international 
Jewish conspiracy have been a central motif in the anti-
Semitic propaganda that has accompanied the Arab 
Spring uprisings.”
The Israeli government was not alone in tracing a 
disturbing trend. Human Rights First has been tracking 
a steady increase in anti-Semitic violence in Europe and 

-  11  -
North America since 2000. The organization for Security 
and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic 
Institutions and Human Rights acknowledged in its 
annual report on hate crimes that anti-Semitic incidents 
and crimes continue to threaten the security and stability 
of the OSCE region.
Reporting on the Arab Spring has highlighted a number 
of anti-Semitic incidents. In September, a violent and 
threatening crowd attacked the Israeli Embassy in 
Cairo, pulling down the Star of David flag. In Libya 
in October, just before Yom Kippur, Dr. David Gerbi, 
who had returned from exile in Italy, was shocked when 
his peaceful efforts to clean rubbish and dead animals 
from the abandoned Dar Bishi Synagogue provoked the 
assembly of an angry mob shouting “we have no room 
for Zionism.” Also in October, the Jewish Museum of 
Berlin cancelled a traveling exhibition in two eastern 
German towns after the display triggered an anti-
Semitic onslaught in the form of student comments 
such as “no more Jew-blabbering.” And on July 11, anti-
Semites firebombed a synagogue in Moscow with six 
Molotov cocktails.
Words and deeds infuse the world of anti-Semitism, and 
the two are related. The European Union Monitoring 
Centre’s working definition of anti-Semitism, which the 
U.S. State Department and Civil Rights Commission 
have also adopted, terms it “a certain perception of 
Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. 
Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism 
are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/
or their property, toward Jewish community institutions 
and religious facilities.” The language incites the violence, 
and because of the inseparability of the Jewish state from 
Jewish life, worship, and thought world-wide, anti-Israeli 
rhetoric all too often figures in the incitement, however 
much the world may debate about the dividing line 
between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” criticism of Israel. 
Anti-Israel invective – the most popular expression of 
anti-Semitic hatred today – is spreading with particular 
alacrity among Arabs and Muslims, in the Middle East, 
Europe, and the Americas. Anti-Semitic literature and 
media reportage is a common feature in the Arab and 
Muslim world, as well as in Western countries with 
large Arab and Muslim populations. In Europe, these 
communities readily absorb the predictably one-sided, 
inflammatory coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict 
offered by Arabic-language cable TV networks like Al 
Jazeera; print publications; and Internet sites. These 
outlets employ primitive Jewish stereotypes in service 
of their anti-Zionist message, often borrowing symbols 
and motifs from Nazi propaganda so as to evoke the 
vociferous anti-Semitism of Der Sturmer. Thus, one sees 
images of Jews as ghoulish, even satanic, caricatures 
with misshapen noses, festooned with dollar signs or 
carrying money-bags, and of Israelis bearing swastikas 
or drinking the blood of children. Meanwhile, book 
stores in Europe’s capitals sell Arabic editions of Mein 
Kampf in steady abundance.
In Iran, where President Ahmadinejad has uttered a 
series of outrageous pronouncements vilifying Israel and 
minimizing the Holocaust, a viciously anti-Semitic series 
called Zahra’s Blue Eyes aired on national TV. Filmed in 
Farsi and dubbed into Arabic, the series depicted Israeli 
doctors posing as United Nations medical workers 
whose true purpose is to harvest bodily organs from 
Palestinian children. In Egypt and Syria, anti-Semitic 
and virulently anti-Israel content abounds in the press. 
The government of former Egyptian President Hosni 
Mubarak long maintained that it advised journalists 
and cartoonists to avoid anti-Semitic themes, but anti-
Semitism was and still is nonetheless found in both the 
state-sponsored and opposition media. In April 2011, 
thousands of fans at an Egyptian soccer match chanted 
“One nation for a new Holocaust” while displaying an 
immense banner with this hateful slogan. Meanwhile, 
Syrian school textbooks not only contain rabidly anti-
Semitic material; they teach children that Zionism is 
more egregious than Nazism, that Israel’s very existence 
is intolerable, and that the Jewish state must be destroyed.

-  12  -
In the West, a contemporary version of Holocaust 
denial has emerged, as Israel’s detractors claim that Jews 
are worse than Nazis and that Israel is perpetrating a 
“Holocaust” upon the Palestinians. Rhetorical attacks on 
Israel often feature phrases such as “ethnic cleansing,” 
“forced transfers,” and “human rights violations.” 
Claims that Jews are exploiting the Holocaust to collect 
reparations money or that they have used the Holocaust 
to justify the creation of an “apartheid” state also serve 
as troubling examples of the misuse of the Holocaust 
for political purposes. Professors at two of the United 
States’ most prestigious universities published a paper 
that trucked in anti-Semitic stereotypes, claiming, in 
a sweeping manner reminiscent of the Protocols of the 
Elders of Zion, that Jews control universities, the media, 
and U.S. foreign policy.
The pronounced ideological radicalization of Europe’s 
Arab and Muslim population has played a disquieting 
role in the rise of anti-Semitism. France alone has five 
million inhabitants with roots in the Maghreb region of 
North Africa; much of the rampant anti-Jewish violence 
in France has been committed by individuals who 
count themselves among this population. This trend has 
dovetailed with the rise of the far right, whose standard-
bearers are generally anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. 
Their nationalist rhetoric has also often featured what 
many consider to be anti-Semitism, however, and their 
message of opposition to European enlargement and 
integration is threatening to Jews, who, like other ethnic 
and religious minorities, are considerably discomfited by 
the parochialism and xenophobia of these movements.
Even as right-wing extremism inspires fear among 
European Jews, the far left is creating further 
apprehension with the intensification of its own anti-
Israel vitriol. Many left-oriented politicians and 
journalists have joined labor unions, non-governmental 
organizations, and human rights activists in polemical 
assaults on Israel that exceed the sort of legitimate policy 
critiques normally expected in democratic societies. 
Their narrative, reflexively embraced by much of Europe, 
begins with the premise that in the Middle East conflict 
the Palestinians are the perpetual victims and Israel their 
brutal persecutor. This view has led to calls for boycotts, 
divestment, and sanctions against Israel – what has 
become known as the BDS movement.
Evidence of rising or sustained levels of anti-Semitism 
continues to manifest itself around the globe in recent 
years. For example:
■■ Emad Hajjaj, a Jordanian Palestinian who provides 
editorial cartoons for Abu-Mahjoob Creative 
Productions, regularly sketches blatantly inciteful 
anti-Semitic images, crudely caricaturing Jews as 
bloodthirsty monsters and equating Israel with the 
Third Reich. Abu-Mahjoob’s clients include United 
Nations agencies such as UNICEF and major 
corporations like Visa and Siemens. In July 2011, 
Richard Falk, the UN’s Human Rights Council 
Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories posted an 
anti-Semitic, anti-American Hajjaj cartoon on his 
blog.
■■ Zayzafuna, a children’s magazine distributed by the 
Palestinian Authority and regularly featuring anti-
Semitic material, received funding from UNESCO 
prior to December 2011. A letter from U.S. 
Ambassador David Killion to UNESCO Director 
General Irina Bokova prompted the cut-off of 
financial support.
Anti-Semitic editorial cartoon by Emad Hajjaj.

-  13  -
■■ Five leaders of the Greek Jewish community stood 
trial in February 2012 on charges of “aggravated 
defamation.” Their offense: accusing right-wing 
extremist author Konstatinos Plevris, a self-declared 
anti-Semite, of insulting the Jewish community, 
after he had written that Jews are “sub-human.”
■■ In Venezuela, the Jewish community lives in constant 
fear as the regime of President Hugo Chavez 
continues to vilify Israel in the harshest terms. In 
May 2011 Broadcaster Cristina Gonzalez openly 
promoted the anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols 
of the Learned Elders of Zion” on a state-controlled 
national radio station.
■■ In September 2011 in Cairo, a group of Egyptian 
protesters set out to tear down the wall that had 
been built by Egyptian police to protect the Israeli 
Embassy. With hammers and broken poles in hand, 
the crowd destroyed the barrier while burning Israeli 
flags. They also broke into the embassy, rummaged 
through the documents and threw some of them 
into the streets, and assaulted an Israeli employee.
■■ Arsonists in Gabes, Tunisia set fire to a synagogue 
in February 2011, burning Torah scrolls contained 
within. Nearby police did not stop the attack.
■■ BBC Radio 3 suspended a live broadcast of an 
Israeli Philharmonic concert in London’s Royal 
Albert Hall in September 2011 following protests 
by pro-Palestinian groups. Four musicians of the 
London Philharmonic Orchestra also advocated for 
cancellation of the concert.
■■ Following a year of relentless criticism by the Turkish 
government of Israeli policies, Turkish state-run TV 
in January 2010 aired an episode of the popular soap 
opera “Valley of the Wolves: Ambush” that depicted 
Israel’s Mossad as kidnapping Turkish babies and 
taking hostage the Turkish ambassador in Tel Aviv 
and his family.
■■ At the University of California, Irvine, where Jewish 
students have been physically and verbally abused 
for years against a backdrop of intense anti-Israel 
criticism on campus, Israel’s ambassador to the 
United States, Michael Oren, was booed off the 
stage when attempting to give a speech in February 
2010.
Tragically, the demonization and delegitimization of 
the Jewish state has become a daily occurrence, as the 
Holocaust recedes further into history and the world’s 
comprehension of why the existence of a Jewish state 
is crucial continues to erode as new generations step 
forward. Israel’s enemies abuse historical analogies by 
repeatedly accusing the country of being a Nazi-like 
occupier and an apartheid state that disenfranchises the 
Palestinians. Falsehoods about Israel are repeated so 
often that they become widely accepted in the popular 
culture and sometimes impact government policy. 
The effort by Israel’s relentless critics to denigrate the 
Jewish state is not only evidence that anti-Semitism is 
alive and well in the 21 st Century – this new variation 
of judeophobia actually threatens Israel’s security by 
intensifying the country’s international isolation.
Over the past decade, the OSCE has taken up the 
urgent struggle against rising anti-Semitism. High-level 
conferences in Vienna in 2003 and Berlin in 2004, as 
well as later conferences in Cordoba, Bucharest, Astana, 
and Prague have focused a needed spotlight on this and 
other forms of intolerance. One can feel encouraged by 
the many positive developments that have resulted from 
these gatherings, even though much more work remains 
to be done.
The historic 2004 Berlin Declaration, which provided a 
series of important recommendations for governments 
to follow in combating anti-Semitism, specifically 
addressed the growing problem of anti-Semitic attacks 
being committed by opponents of Israel’s policies. The 
passage stating that “international developments or 
political issues, including those in Israel or elsewhere 

-  14  -
in the Middle East, never justify anti-Semitism” still 
represents a bulwark stance by the OSCE against 
attempts by opponents of Jews or Israel to rationalize 
their hatred.
Furthermore, the Berlin Declaration issued a series 
of recommendations for the governments of Europe, 
North America, and the former Soviet Union to 
follow in combating anti-Semitism, including an 
informal exchange of “best practices” between nations; 
government support for anti-hate programs; systematic 
data collection on anti-Semitic acts; assistance in 
facilitating the prosecution of anti-Semitic crimes; and 
the promotion of academic exchange and educational 
programs.
In the tradition of the OSCE Berlin Conference, 
governments everywhere should comply with their 
moral and legal obligations to combat anti-Semitism 
and other forms of intolerance:
■■ States should compile comprehensive statistical 
information relevant to hate-motivated crimes; too 
few governments have done so until now.
■■ Governments should adopt and fully enforce 
domestic legislation aimed at curbing intolerance, 
as well as implementing effective monitoring 
procedures.
■■ States should develop Holocaust education programs 
that underscore the distinct nature of anti-Semitism 
and link the historical struggle against Nazism to 
the contemporary battle against anti-Semitism.
■■ Ministers should convene multilateral gatherings 
to share best practices and to pressure other 
governments to comply with their obligations in 
combating intolerance.
■■ Public officials must forcefully denounce and 
stigmatize anti-Semitism and other forms of 
intolerance and underscore the principle that 
political events in the Middle East or elsewhere 
never justify anti-Semitism.
Governments and non-governmental organizations must 
join together to facilitate progress in these fields and to 
further the vision articulated by the Berlin Declaration. 
They should establish frameworks for multilateral 
cooperation on matters related to anti-Semitism and 
hate crimes. And governments should actively support 
the important work of the International Task Force on 
Holocaust Education.
The critical lesson learned from the experience of those 
who perished in the Holocaust is that indifference to 
the suffering of others is itself a crime. It is therefore 
imperative that people of good will aggressively confront 
every form of racial, religious, or ethnic hatred. The post-
Holocaust generations must raise their collective voices 
on behalf of all groups, anywhere in the world, who are 
subjected to discrimination and persecution, or who are 
threatened by annihilation.
George Washington – the first U.S. President to publicly 
oppose anti-Semitism – famously wrote to the Hebrew 
Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790, “The 
government of the United States…gives to bigotry no 
sanction, to persecution, no assistance.” Washington’s 
message of tolerance has been a glowing inspiration to 
American Jews for more than 200 years, as they have 
drawn steady comfort from the knowledge that the U.S. 
government, in the earliest years of the country’s history, 
took a clear stand against anti-Semitism and warmly 
offered America’s Jewish community a level of support 
and protection that, sadly, Jews in many other countries 
have never enjoyed. Sixty-seven years after the Holocaust 
and 12 years after the rise of the current wave of global 
anti-Semitism, world Jewry still require such assurance.

-  15  -
During 2011, the perennial problem of authoritarian 
governance, with its inherent tendencies both to limit the 
freedoms of members of minority religious communities 
and to repress religions generally, continued to worsen 
in numerous countries. This report usefully emphasizes 
the extent to which this was true in a number of former 
Soviet republics, in China, and elsewhere. At the same 
time, 2011 was the year during which Egypt, Tunisia, 
and other authoritarian Arab states started to open 
their systems, albeit unevenly, and during which Burma 
began its tentative outreach to the West. States with 
accountable, democratic governments sought for ways 
usefully to react to these positive trends. In what follows, 
I offer an assessment of the problem of authoritarianism 
as 2011 ended, together with some recommendations for 
dealing with the human-rights and religious-freedom 
challenges it poses.
In 2001, the State Department, in one of its first Annual 
Reports on International Religious Freedom, had this 
to say about the relationship between authoritarian 
governments and the protection of freedom of conscience 
and religion:
Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes are defined by 
the high degree to which they seek to control thought 
and expression, especially dissent. It is not uncommon 
for such regimes to regard religious groups as enemies of 
the state because of the content of the religion, the fact 
that the very practice of religion threatens the dominant 
ideology (often by diverting the loyalties of adherents 
toward an authority beyond the state), the ethnic 
character of the religious group, or a mixture of all three. 
When one or more of these elements is present, the result 
often is the suppression of religion by the regime.
As the First Freedom Center’s current report amply 
demonstrates, this dynamic continues to undermine 
the protection of religious freedom and other human 
rights, including of members of minority religious 
communities, in authoritarian countries. The trend is a 
negative one, with many regimes tightening their grip 
on religious practice and political dissent. A particularly 
disturbing trend discussed in the report is the increasing 
ability of authoritarian regimes to use the Internet and 
other advances in communications technology to spy on, 
instill fear in and control their populations. 
The authoritarian impulse is to control individuals and 
communities in order to retain power and privilege, and 
to maintain the web of governance, economic, media, 
information and patronage structures that are necessary 
to hang on to power. Antithetical to this impulse are 
the practices that support the protection of human 
rights and individual freedom, including democratic 
governance, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, 
religious pluralism as well as open debate through a free 
media and a vibrant civil society. 
From the point of view of relations between religion 
and the state, the authoritarian state seeks to control 
religious organizations and communities to ensure that 
these entities do not become alternate sources of political 
ideas, objects of citizen loyalty or engines to mobilize 
the spreAd of AuthoritAriAnisM
by Tad Stahnke
Buddhist monks protest in Burma.
(Credit: BurmaPartnership)

-  16  -
political opinion (i.e. dissent). The recent events of the 
Arab Spring – where protest movements were infused 
with fresh energy each week following Friday prayers in 
Egypt, Tunisia and Syria – illustrate one sort of danger 
that religious activity can pose to authoritarian regimes. 
The protests of Buddhist monks over the last several 
years against repression in Burma and Tibet are another 
example. 
Each of these examples concerns the need to control 
the religious institutions and activities of the majority of 
the population, which makes sense given that in many 
authoritarian countries the most pressing threat comes 
from mobilization of the majority. This is true regardless 
of the religion involved: Buddhists in Burma and 
Vietnam, Roman Catholics in Cuba, Sunni Muslims in 
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Uzbekistan, Russian Orthodox 
in Russia, Shi’a Muslims in Bahrain. 
The methods that the state employs to control the 
religious institutions and activities of the majority, 
however, differ from situation to situation. In some cases, 
religious institutions are maintained as state structures 
or as reliant on the largesse of the regime. For example, 
in several former Soviet Republics, communist-era 
security and regulatory bodies that control religion 
have been maintained or revived. Saudi Arabia is one of 
several predominantly Muslim countries where religious 
institutions are essentially creatures of the state. In other 
countries, religious leaders may be paid by the state or 
may be forced to operate under strict rules as to what 
they can say and do. In yet others, the control is more 
subtle. The incentives may be lined up in favor religious 
leaders and institutions cooperating with the state and 
not making waves with the political elite, such as in 
Russia where the Orthodox Church benefits in economic 
and other ways from a close and cooperative relationship 
with the Kremlin. The Church in recent years has sought 
to mobilize public opinion against human rights activists 
and other civil society groups that threaten increasingly 
authoritarian rule in Russia, branding such movements 
as trying to undermine traditional values. 
Members of minority religious communities typically 
don’t fare any better than the majority in authoritarian 
countries. Indeed, in several countries implementing the 
dominant political ideology results in the suppression 
and strict control of all religions – whether the 
majority or minorities. China, North Korea, Cuba and 
Turkmenistan all fit this pattern. Elsewhere, religious 
minorities fare far worse than the majority because the 
instruments of control regularly employed by the state 
to control minorities are more direct and brutal: fear, 
violence and persecution. 
Nationalism, religious chauvinism and ethnic rivalries 
are all manipulated by the state to suppress and persecute 
religious minorities, sometimes with disastrous results 
for those communities. The report abounds with 
examples. In Eritrea, hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses 
and Evangelical Christians have been imprisoned and 
tortured as their religious adherence does not fit into 
“traditional” Eritrean religious groups. It does not 
help the plight of Jehovah’s Witnesses that they refuse 
military service in a highly militarized regime. 
The combination of ethnic and religious differences can 
be a potent one in fueling persecution by authoritarian 
governments. Ethnic Rohingya (Muslims) and Kachin 
and Chin (Christians) in Burma have been locked in 
long-running battles with the government for greater 
autonomy in their respective territories. The religion 
Eritrea's persecution of believers turns gold into blood money.
(Credit: JW News)

-  17  -
of these groups – one facet of their difference from the 
dominant culture – has been targeted by the regime as 
one of several methods to repress these groups. One can 
hope that a greater measure of democracy in Burma 
could bring those battles to a peaceful end by welcoming 
all groups a stake in the future of the country, although 
repression of minorities in Burma continues as of the 
writing of this report. Primarily Protestant Hmong and 
Montagnard ethnic groups in Vietnam are marginalized 
politically and economically, and control over religious 
activities and the ability of these communities to receive 
outside support are used as tools of repression. In the 
last year, the Vietnamese government has ramped up 
its repression of these groups, including violence and 
imprisonment. 
The authoritarian state also works to sow religious 
divisions among the population, seeking to mobilize 
public opinion or violent extremist groups against religious 
minorities in order to support ongoing repression. The 
legitimacy of the authoritarian regime with key sectors 
of the population may be increased by such treatment 
of minorities. Examples include Baha’is in Iran, Ismaili’s 
in Saudi Arabia and Mandaens and Yezidis in Iraq. 
Religion is manipulated for political gains in other 
countries as well, such as against Methodists in Fiji or 
Robert Mugabe punishing Anglicans in Zimbabwe for 
not being suitably loyal to the regime. Finally, religious 
conflict and violence targeting vulnerable minorities can 
be promoted by the state in order to deflect attention 
from the failures of authoritarian governments, as in 
the case of violent attacks on Jewish and Catholic and 
other Christian communities in Venezuela and recent 
incidents of incitement of violence against Christians 
by agents of the ruling military council in Egypt. 
Promotion of religious intolerance by the state creates a 
mutually reinforcing cycle with disastrous consequences: 
greater public intolerance and hatred leads to increased 
calls for repression which pushes governments to take 
even harsher measures to live up to their promises. It’s  
difficult to jump off such a cycle without radical political 
change. 
A final variation on this theme is the manipulation to 
xenophobia by the authoritarian state. The connections 
– actual or merely perceived – that religious minorities 
have to co-religionists in foreign countries offer special 
opportunities for authoritarian governments to control 
these groups. Their loyalty can be more easily questioned 
and suspicion against them can be more easily sowed in 
the general population. Chinese Roman Catholics and 
some Protestants, Uighur Muslims in Western China, 
Vietnamese Catholics, Shi’a Muslims in Saudi Arabia, 
Armenian Christians in Iran, Jews in many countries of 
the Middle East are all branded by the state as loyalty 
risks because of historical or other connections to 
“foreign” countries or religions. In a particularly striking 
example, Christians in Iraq following the U.S. invasion 
were derided as tools of the Christian West, while at the 
same time the United States did not want to be seen to 
be helping Christians because they thought that such 
assistance would worsen their plight. 
The dynamics of persecution of religious individuals 
and communities by authoritarian regimes present 
formidable obstacles to promoting freedom of religion 
or belief in those countries. Unlike in democratic states, 
there are few independent checks on political power 
from elected parliaments or courts or human rights 
activists free to conduct their work or a free media. 
Wherever the independence of these institutions can 
be strengthened, the international community should 
seek to do so especially in those countries committed 
to some form of democratic rule, e.g. Nigeria, Mexico, 
Russia, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Direct attention should 
be given to increasing access to these institutions by 
religious minorities, human rights groups and legal aid 
providers. This approach is particularly important in 
Arab countries undergoing political transition – Tunisia, 
Egypt and Libya – where the stakes for democratic 
change and religious minorities are extraordinarily high. 
But in the hard-core authoritarian countries, like China, 
Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia – even more 
indirect and long-term strategies must be employed. 

-  18  -
Three prongs of such an approach are as follows:
■■ Democratic countries are often in security and 
economic dialogue with authoritarian governments 
where mutual interests exist. Security and economic 
arguments in favor of freedom of religion and just 
treatment of religious and other minorities should 
be promoted by democratic governments in these 
dialogues. Private companies can also demonstrate 
the importance of non-discrimination by adhering 
to the standards of their home countries in their 
dealings with private and state-owned enterprises 
in authoritarian countries. Mixed messages by 
democratic governments and companies undermine 
efforts to promote freedom of religion.
■■ Future generations of political, military, business, 
civic and religious leaders in authoritarian states 
should be identified and exposed to the workings of 
freedom, democratic governance, religious pluralism, 
anti-discrimination efforts and organized joint 
action by people of different faiths and different 
religious institutions. Governments, international 
institutions and private foundations and NGOs all 
have mechanisms to do this. It will certainly not be 
successful in all cases – and we know of celebrated 
cases where exposure to freedom and democracy 
has only hardened the attitudes of future political 
figures. But the benefits outweigh the potential 
costs, as having a positive influence on even one 
person can prove crucial during a moment of crisis 
or political transition.
■■ Government officials and business, religious and 
civil society leaders should seek out opportunities 
to speak directly to the people under authoritarian 
rule and use every opportunity to speak directly 
to the people of authoritarian countries to deliver 
messages on the benefits of fundamental freedoms, 
the protection of human rights and the practice of 
religious pluralism. 
Dramatic human rights improvements are rarely 
achieved except during moments of rapid political 
change. The rejection of authoritarian rule is one of 
those moments. A readiness to seize the opportunity to 
bring about change at those moments by political, social 
and religious forces within a country – supported by 
international actors – will determine the future extent 
of protection for human rights and religious freedom for 
all, members of the majority and religious minorities. 
Saudi Arabia's Sunni Muslim authorities have allowed small Shiite religious celebrations.
(Credit: Reuters)

-  19  -
We Christians in Iraq feel that we have been left behind, 
and that we have nothing. Recently, President Obama 
declared, “We are leaving behind a sovereign, stable and 
self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government elected 
by its own people.” But reality is swiftly contradicting 
the President’s words. 
None of us thought there would be any change here 
after the U.S. troops left. I myself had long felt it would 
make little difference to us if the Americans left. The 
troops had not been seen on the streets for two years. 
But we had always known where they were when we 
needed them. Then, from the day the U.S. military left, 
Christians felt themselves in total disarray. Violence 
related to religious sectarianism increased. We could 
not enter the Green Zone, as any badges issued by U.S. 
officials were no longer valid, and new badges were 
simply not being issued. 
Political chaos worsened, especially as the Prime Minister 
issued a warrant for the arrest of the Vice President, 
Tariq Al Hashami, the most senior Sunni political 
leader in the country. He was accused of terrorism, and, 
sadly, there was evidence to suggest that the charge 
was warranted. With this action, it became apparent 
that Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki is Shi’a, and Vice 
President Al Hashami is Sunni. Violence targeting the 
Shi’a began in force. 
There have also been coordinated attacks on institutions 
of state, including the Foreign Ministry, which is close to 
St. George’s Anglican Church. The arrest warrant for the 
Sunni Vice President signaled that the fragile coalition 
government is fracturing along sectarian lines. Events in 
Iraq continue to escalate. There have been attempts to 
ransack both al Hashami’s office and that of al Maliki. 
There has been a car bomb in the supposedly secure 
Green Zone. 
As a result, Iraqi Christians and other religious minorities 
feel great fear. They say, “at least under the old regime 
we were protected; now we have nothing. Those who set 
us free from an evil dictator have left us, and we have 
nothing.” 
What is this “nothing?” It is the absence of security. 
Previously, Christians as a minority were protected. 
The evil regime of Saddam represented a man who was 
Sunni, not an adherent of the larger Shi’a group. When 
foreign troops were here, we may not always have seen 
them, but they came if we needed them. Now there are 
times when we Christians face great danger. Our people 
We hAve been left!
by Canon Andrew White
(Editor’s Note: This plaintive, eloquent assessment of the greatest change of 2011 in Iraq records the sentiments of 
Canon Andrew White who, in his ministrations at an Anglican Church, incorporates, protects, cures, and nourishes 
members of a large variety of minority religious communities. Canon White received the First Freedom Center’s 2012 
International First Freedom Award.)
Iraqi Christians face the unknown.
(Credit: AsiaNews.it)

-  20  -
have been slaughtered, massacred and murdered, and we 
have nowhere to turn. The Iraqi government has tried to 
do what it can, but we do not live as a confined people. 
Christians are found across Iraq, especially in Baghdad 
and Nineveh/Mosul. Twenty-seven hundred years after 
Jonah, Nineveh is still the place where all Iraqi Christians 
came from. Now we and all other minorities may be less 
safe than ever before. 
Meanwhile, finding employment is very difficult, 
especially for Christian women. No employment means 
no money and no ability to buy food, to pay rent, or to 
find proper health care. Indeed the healthcare system in 
Iraq has collapsed. Hospitals are falling to pieces, and 
many leading doctors have been killed or kidnapped, or 
have fled Iraq. 
I may be the leader of a church, but after services each 
week I must give all of my 4000-plus people food for the 
week. We have had to establish a large clinic with doctors, 
dentists, a laboratory, specialist units and a pharmacy. All 
treatment is totally free, not restricted to Christians, and 
totally open to all. In addition to these services, we have 
built a school to provide excellent education for many 
children. It is fortunate that we can provide this service 
for our people. We did not envision that so long after 
2003 we would have to do this, but we do. Iraq is an 
unsecure place, where people have nothing. 
While things are difficult for all Iraqis, for religious 
minorities this is especially the case. In addition to the 
violence, we have another huge problem. Iraq may be 
one of the most corrupt nations on earth. Corruption is 
so great that we do not know whom we can trust. 
When the Coalition Provisional Authority took control 
of the nation in 2003, I remember telling one of the 
diplomatic leaders that we needed to deal with the issue 
of religion in order to prevent religious sectarian violence. 
I was told that this was not an issue in Iraq. First, I heard 
that water and electricity needed to be dealt with. It 
was only a few weeks later that this diplomat came to 
me and said that he could not even deal with water and 
electricity because religion kept getting in the way. 
During the Second World War, Archbishop of 
Canterbury William Temple observed that “When 
religion goes wrong, it goes very wrong.” Sadly, that is 
what has happened here. Religion here is now not a 
tranquil means of relating to the Almighty but rather a 
means of contending for the priority of one’s own, a fight 
that often involves violence. The violence that recently 
arose between Sunni and Shi’a was a symptom of this. 
But if religion is the cause of violence, it must also be the 
cure. That is the work of the High Council of Religious 
Leaders in Iraq that we established in 2004. After many 
had been killed or injured, we as religious leaders began 
an urgent process to reduce sectarian violence. We met in 
Najaf, the holiest city of the Shi’a. For the first time, we 
brought some of the Sunni religious leaders there. A few 
days later, we produced an Islamic Fatwa (injunction) 
against Sunni killing Shia. 
Much of the diplomatic world fails to see that this 
problem, of “religion gone wrong.” The problem has to 
be dealt with by religion itself. That is why we are here, 
and that is what we try to do. 
Sadly, this radical sectarianism is no longer restricted to 
Iraq. The so-called “Arab Spring” has greatly increased 
the risk of sectarian violence across the region. Will there 
now be more minorities saying: “We have nothing?” 
I lack personal experience of religious minorities in 
Afghanistan but have maintained close relations with 
protagonists there, who report that, in the absence of 
international engagement, a similar downward spiral 
of security may make an already dangerous Afghan 
situation even worse.

-  21  -
Regional Assessments Update
On the pages which follow, we catalogue principle events and developments in each of the regions 
we assessed last year. For reference, we also recall in the boxes at the outset of each regional offering 
the “structural impediments” which our detailed analysis yielded in the previous report. As several 
of our Editors have stressed, the reader should by no means conclude that the severity of violations 
of religious freedom affecting minority communities is the same in each region.
The Legacy of Silence – the remains of murdered children.
(Credits: blog.undergradresearch.northwestern.edu)

-  22  -
sub-sAhArAn AfriCA
Geographic Reach: All the countries of the African continent south of those along the 
Mediterranean littoral, not including Western Sahara. The region includes Madagascar.
Structural Impediments
(These factors impinging negatively upon the circumstances of minority religious  
communities were identified in the First Freedom Center’s 2011 Report.)
• Impunity: Failure to rein in, investigate, prosecute, or punish those who perpetrate violence against 
religious communities is often at the heart of Africa’s most violent conflicts.
• Authoritarianism: Both secular and religiously-oriented authoritarian regimes abound in the sub-
Saharan region.
• Repression of communities advocating human rights reform: Minority communities associating 
with human-rights advocacy face repression.
• Low status of indigenous religions: Animist and other indigenous religious groups in many cases 
lack the legal status accorded other groups, and often fall outside official registration regimes. These 
groups often contend with negative public attitudes and heavy-handed government treatment for their 
practices.
• Government opposition to “cults”: Numerous governments are prone to crack down on “non-
traditional” religions.
• External influences on indigenous Islamic Communities: Saudi, Wahabi, and Islamic 
fundamentalist protagonists from abroad have attempted to impose their own views, often violently, 
on long-established Muslim cultures.
• Lack of adequate intergovernmental human rights framework: Existing organizations, including 
the African Union, need to strengthen monitoring and enforcement of religious-freedom rights.
In the majority of countries in this region, minority 
communities fared reasonably well during the reporting 
period. Where they did not, however, their sufferings 
were notable. Violence perpetrated principally against 
Nigerian Christians by adherents of the Boko Haram 
group, whose name encapsulates its opposition to Western 
education, was widespread. As the year ended, it was on 
the increase. Against the backdrop of the secession of 
Sudan’s southern territories, the authoritarian, avowedly 
Sunni government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir 
continued its gross oppression and mistreatment of 
Islamic and Christian minority communities in Darfur 
and in and around Khartoum. The Al-Shabaab Islamist 
movement holding effective power in much of Somalia 
reportedly espoused and sought to implement a program 
for physical extermination of known Christians while, in 
neighboring authoritarian Eritrea, hundreds of Jehovah’s 
Witnesses and Evangelical Christians languished in 
prisons. Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe and 
the country’s courts, despite a visit by the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, continued to discriminate against Anglicans. 
There were instances of violence against Christians in 
predominantly Muslim areas of Ethiopia.

-  23  -
key developMents
In Nigeria during the last quarter of 2011, perpetrators 
claiming the mantle of Boko Haram launched a series 
of attacks, including bombing the United Nations office 
in Abuja. Soon thereafter, militants killed 67 people in 
shootings and bombings in the country’s north. Persons 
speaking in the name of Boko Haram claimed credit 
for a major bomb blast outside a Christian theological 
college.1 
Assailants bombed a Catholic church in Abuja on 
Christmas day, killing 26 people, after 72 persons died 
in fighting between security forces and self-described 
Boko Haram adherents in Damaturu on December 
22.2 That proved the most destructive so far of a 
lengthy series of attacks on Christians and their places 
of worship. As 2011 ended, the BBC noted, more than 
90,000 Nigerians had been displaced by Boko Haram 
militancy.3 Christians declared their determination to 
defend themselves. Major Muslim leaders condemned 
the violence and Western analysts questioned the reality 
of a large and integrated Boko Haram network, but 
Christian spokespersons insisted that neither the overall 
Muslim response nor actions on the part of the Nigerian 
government had been adequate. 4 Members of the 
United States Commission on International Religious 
Freedom complained that there had been few arrests of 
perpetrators and none on any charge directly related to 
abuses of religious freedom.5
Bigoted religious intolerance and violence characterized 
also the actions of the Al Shabaab extremist group 
holding effective power in much of Somalia. In this 
Report’s section on Communities Most at Risk, we 
convey accounts of Al Shabaab consciously denying 
food aid to Christians. International Christian 
Concern reported in August that at least 18 Christians 
had been starved to death. It noted that some 1,000 
Christians were known to have died in Somalia since 
the inception of the country’s period of lawlessness in 
1991 and, like other Christian groups, ascribed to Al 
Shabaab a conscious policy of physical extermination 
of Christians.6 The New York Times confirmed that Al 
Shabaab was challenging and interfering with drought-
relief operations. 7 Not infrequently, as was the case 
with a seventeen-year-old youth, discovery of Christian 
identity resulted in beheading.8
Several authoritarian governments oppressed – or at 
least did not effectively defend – minority religious 
communities. The United States government has 
repeatedly declared Eritrea a Country of Particular 
Concern because of its widespread and arbitrary detention 
of members of minority communities, especially Jehovah’s 
Witnesses and Evangelical Christians. The Ecumenical 
Canonical Orthodox Church Worldwide reports that 
there are also some 2,000 to 3,000 Orthodox Christians 
in Eritrean prisons. 9 In Zimbabwe, where Robert 
Bombed church in Damaturu, Nigeria.
Eritrean Witnesses in prison.

-  24  -
Mugabe’s government had helped to cause a schism of 
the Anglican Church over questions of political loyalty, a 
High Court Justice awarded the property of the Diocese 
of Harare to the schismatic, excommunicated Bishop, 
thereby prospectively denying numerous Anglican priests 
and their congregants access to churches, rectories, and 
other facilities.10 It was unclear whether Archbishop of 
Canterbury Rowan Williams’ October visit to Harare, 
during which he resoundingly criticized the Mugabe 
regime at an open-air appearance, helped or hindered 
Zimbabwe’s Anglicans. Williams handed Mugabe a file 
documenting abuses of religious freedom in Zimbabwe.11 
In western, predominantly Muslim districts of Ethiopia, 
there was sporadic, sometimes large-scale anti-Christian 
violence. In November of 2010, ten Christian homes 
were burned. In March of 2011, some thirty Protestant 
Christian churches were burned. In both cases, there were 
arrests, and, in the first, nine perpetrators received prison 
terms. Nevertheless, Christian observers complained of 
inadequate protection.12
Sudan, whose government combines authoritarianism 
and religious extremism, trampled notably upon 
religious minorities and their rights. In July, the country 
was divided. South Sudan adopted a constitution 
assuring religious freedom. President Bashir avowed that 
(north) Sudan would adopt an “Islamic” constitution, 
prospectively applying it to all Sudanese, which would 
“strengthen Islamic law.” That approach would affect 
Christians, who expressed fears of becoming “dhimmis,” 
or second-class citizens, as well as a large number of 
Muslims who never voted for their current political leaders 
and would presumably not favor the new constitution. 
Christian churches were burned, and Christian civil-
servants and private-sector workers were laid off. 
Christian groups reported that Sudanese Christians 
were drafted disproportionately into the military and 
forced to fight against southern sympathizers in South 
Kordofan and Blue Nile states. Christians feared for their 
safety, and church attendance declined. 13 In October, 
Sudanese officials announced their intention to destroy 
Khartoum’s Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Church 
of Christ church buildings. 14 Elsewhere in this Report, 
we note the continuing demographic pressures and 
violence affecting Muslim Masalit and other minority 
communities in Darfur.
In most other sub-Saharan countries, minority 
communities fared reasonably well. South Africa, for 
example, continued to take religious freedom extremely 
seriously. South African Constitutional Court Justice 
Zakeria Mohammed Yacoob was the keynote speaker at 
the Brigham Young University Law School’s Eighteenth 
Annual International Law and Religion Symposium. 15 
Zambian police arrested twenty-six Protestant 
Christians in November, 2010 when they refused, on 
religious grounds, to participate in the country’s census, 
and Zambian president Michael Sata proclaimed 
in September that the country would be governed 
“according to the Biblical Ten Commandments.”16 Still, 
Zambia, like most sub-Saharan countries continued in 
the main to ensure and provide religious freedom to 
minorities.
Harare Anglican Cathedral in Zimbabwe.
(Credit: Damien Farrell)

-  25  -
AsiA And oCeAniA
Geographic Reach: South, Southeast, and East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania.
Structural Impediments
(These factors impinging negatively upon the circumstances of minority religious  
communities were identified in the First Freedom Center’s 2011 Report.)
• Authoritarianism: The region is home to an unusually large number of authoritarian states.
• Civil wars: Several ongoing intra-national conflicts create refugee crises as well as the curtailment of 
legal processes.
• Proliferation of Islamic extremism: Violent extremists intentionally foment unrest. Measures to 
combat them often abridge religious liberties for other, unassociated groups.
• Inter-communal violence: Many parts of South and Southeast Asia have a significant history of 
violence between and among religious communities.
• Impunity: Impunity is a hallmark of much large-scale inter-religious violence in the region.
• Banning: Entire religions are banned as blasphemous and their followers thereby stripped of legal 
protections.
• Strictures on speech and action; anti-defamation measures: To protect government sponsored 
majority faiths, governments enforce anti-blasphemy laws against members of other faiths, thereby 
severely restricting religious speech and expression.
• Tensions arising from traditional cultures: Resistance by traditional believers to “new” minority 
faiths leads to widespread discrimination.
The climate for minority religious communities in this 
region worsened markedly during the reporting period. 
Authoritarian China increased its disruption and 
harassment of Christian and Falun Gong communities 
and the arrest of their leaders and members. China’s 
violent crackdown on Tibetan Buddhists and Xinjiang 
Uyghurs aroused world-wide concern. Authoritarian 
Burma began an uncertain series of reforms which led to 
the release of some of the country’s prisoners – including, 
by year’s end, a few monks – but it continued its violent 
crackdown on Muslim Rohingya and Christian Kachin 
minorities, even as circumstances for the Karen, the 
Chin, and other minorities began to improve. North 
Korea continued its extreme violation of all human 
rights, including religious freedom, and maintained 
an estimated 50,000 religious prisoners. Authoritarian 
governments in Vietnam, Laos, and Fiji dealt summarily 
and unjustly with Christian and ethnic minorities. In 
India and Indonesia, impunity, ineffective administration 
of justice, and poor leadership allowed violence and 
bigotry to make significant gains at the expense 
of religious minorities. Most pervasively, however, 
increasing and often violent intolerance of religious 
minorities, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan, grew 
palpably worse. China, Vietnam, and Burma in particular 
clamped down on Internet openness and functionality in 
part, at least, to inhibit communication among minority-
community adherents and among advocates of religious-
freedom rights.
key developMents
This Report’s section on Prisoners and imprisonment 
makes abundantly clear that authoritarian China 
incarcerates more religious prisoners than does any 

-  26  -
other country on earth. (Our Prisoners section conveys 
an estimate of 50,000 religious prisoners in that country, 
where some two-fifths of them face probable death from 
starvation.) Arrests and detentions continued at a brisk 
pace throughout the year. On August 24, 21 Protestant 
leaders were arrested in Wuhai, Inner Mongolia, in a 
continuing series of detentions of House Christians. 1 
On September 21, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State 
Michael Posner noted that, in 2011, respect for religious 
freedom declined in China and offered as an example 
of the country’s repression of religious freedom frequent 
accounts of the detention and forced medication in 
mental facilities of members of unrecognized religious 
communities, including especially Christians and Falun 
Gong.2 Tension over China’s handling of Tibetan 
regions and Tibetan Buddhists increased late in the 
year. A “crackdown” on Tibetan monasteries, reported by 
Human Rights Watch, triggered violent protests. 3 On 
November 10, a Tibetan monk burned himself to death 
in protest against Han Chinese treatment of Tibetan 
Buddhists and as an appeal for the return of the Dalai 
Lama.4 Other self-immolations followed. Hundreds of 
Tibetans later marched to a police station where the 
monk’s body had been taken in a massive demonstration. 
Monasteries and other Buddhist facilities remain under 
severe police control and monitoring. China Aid founder 
and President Bob Fu told the European Parliament 
on November 30 that religious freedom in China is 
“non-existent” and “at the lowest point since the 1989 
crackdown on Tienanmen Square.” 5 Many analysts 
ascribe China’s ever-heavier hand to its leaders’ fear 
of the popular revolutions that have occurred in Arab 
countries.
Other authoritarian governments also repressed 
minorities heavily. On March 31, Human Rights 
Watch urged the State Department to return Vietnam 
to its list of Countries of Particular Concern because 
of Vietnamese leaders’ increasing clamp-down on 
minorities. HRW mentioned as an example the 
sentencing of 350 Montagnard Christians to lengthy 
prison terms.6 On May 1, Vietnamese Hmong Christians 
assembled in Dien Bien to mark the beatification 
of John Paul II and to demonstrate regarding their 
grievances. In breaking up the gathering, police 
reportedly killed several participants. 7 Later, just across 
the Laotian border, Vietnamese troops joined the Lao 
People’s Army in shooting four fleeing Hmong women 
and reportedly raping two of them. 8 On September 
30, HRW called on Vietnam to end its crackdown 
and to free 15 Redemptorist Catholics who had been 
arrested and imprisoned. 9 Among the Redemptorist 
churches Vietnamese authorities dealt with the most 
summarily was Thai Ha Church in Hanoi, where several 
parishioners and clergy were arrested on December 2 
for demonstrating against the government’s seizure of 
part of the church’s grounds for the construction of an 
adjacent sewer plant. 10 In December, officials in the 
Laotian province of Savannakhet announced the seizure 
of the fifty-year-old Nadeng Church and made clear 
that they considered only five of the thirty churches in 
the province legal and free to operate.11
Numerous press accounts have focused on the actions of 
authoritarian governments in Asia – especially those of 
China, Vietnam, and Burma – aimed at cracking down 
on the openness and functionality of the Internet, lest 
it facilitate coordination of events and views among 
adherents of minority religious communities and 
advocates of their rights.
Refugee family in Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh.
(Credit: Dr. Habib Siddiqui blog)

-  27  -
The Pew Forum, in connection with its survey of 
restrictions on religion, reported in August that Malaysia 
imposes “very high” restrictions on religious minorities, 
including “deviant” Shi’a and Wahabi Muslims, 
whom Malay authorities forcibly “retrain” in specially-
established training centers.12 A bill under consideration 
in the Malaysian parliament at year’s end would grant 
police discretionary authority to permit or not permit – 
and to determine the duration of – all public assemblies, 
including religious services. 13 Fiji’s coup-originated 
authoritarian government chose during 2011 to ban all 
meetings of the Methodist Church other than Sunday 
morning worship because of Methodists’ association 
with political opposition.14 In Burma/Myanmar, Nobel 
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi encouraged American and 
other officials to engage with the country’s new leadership 
as it undertook initial, tentative reforms. Even as it did 
so, however, the Burmese leadership continued brutally 
to repress Rohingya Muslims and Kachin Christians.
This Report contains an expert-drafted chapter on 
the problem of impunity. The failure of political 
leaders, police, courts, and prosecutors to provide 
investigation and punishment of violence and other 
acts inconsistent with the requirements of international 
law has had a depressing impact in India. The United 
States Commission cited India’s climate of impunity in 
ascribing the country to its Watch List. 15 On October 
13, India’s National Solidarity Forum, a civil society 
organization which seeks justice for victims of violence, 
held a two-day conference in New Delhi to explore the 
problem.16 Much violence against Christians in India 
during 2011 arose in connection with conversions, 
which, especially among “untouchable” Dalit, are 
widespread.17 On August 5, Muslim extremists 
disrupted a prayer meeting in the home of a woman who 
had recently converted to Christianity. They threatened 
to burn her house down if she did not return to Islam.18 
In April, at the Calvary Bethel Church in Nandi Tavere 
village, police detained clergy and forced them to sign 
pledges against holding any further services after Hindu 
extremists had disrupted morning worship and torn up 
Bibles.19 Outbreaks of anti-Christian violence occurred 
with frequency in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andra 
Pradesh, and elsewhere.20 The national parliament, in 
response to continuing attacks, considered a Prevention 
of Communal and Targeted Violence Law, but at year’s 
end it had not been passed. More worrisome are the 
numerous laws passed by Indian states to regulate and 
deter conversions, requiring, typically, that conversion 
to a “non-native” religion such as Christianity be upon 
express approval of officials.
It is important to note that, in the eyes of many observers 
– including members of the United States Commission 
who dissented from their colleagues’ decision to place 
India on the Watch List – there has been a qualitative and 
quantitative improvement in prevention, investigation, 
and prosecutions in the wake of large-scale violence and 
as the Indian Supreme Court has asserted leadership. 
While recognizing that the courts have been slow and 
that local and state bodies have not been as responsive 
as the federal bodies have urged, these observers point 
to material developments. They stress the creation at 
the national level of new review structures to address 
past cases related to violence in Orissa, Gujaray, and 
elsewhere; statistics offered in January, 2011 by the 
Indian National Human Rights Commission, according 
to which 279 persons in 56 cases had been prosecuted 
in special courts; and Indian leaders’ emphasis on the 
country’s overall strong traditions in the rule of law and 
in democratic accountability.
Indonesian authorities were also lax in their treatment 
of religious minority rights. On February 6, Muslim 
residents of the Cikeusik district in Banten province 
killed six Ahmadiyya. At the perpetrators’ trial, 
prosecutors asked for light, seven-month sentences on 
the grounds that the Ahmadi Muslims had “provoked” 
the attack and had filmed it and distributed the film, 
thereby worsening intercommunal relations. Amnesty 
International’s Asia-Pacific Deputy Director Donna 
Guest, commenting on the trial, spoke of Indonesia’s 
“continued failure” to protect “religious minorities 
from harassment and attacks and to hold perpetrators 
accountable.”21 In October, local authorities ordered the 

-  28  -
complete closing of the Indonesia Pentecost Church in 
Sumedang.22 Political analysts have sometimes looked 
to Indonesian President Yudhoyono’s political reliance 
on Muslim parties as a reason for the government’s 
laxity. Certainly, current government initiatives show 
no determination to improve a worsening climate. A 
draft “Religious Tolerance Bill,” opposed by minority 
communities, would perpetuate the restriction of official 
government recognition to five faiths only (see the First 
Freedom Center’s 2011 Report).
Horrendous acts of intolerance and the policies and laws 
which encourage them were the year’s most worrisome 
aspect in this region. 2011, after all, began with the 
assassination in Islamabad of Salman Taseer, Governor 
of the Pakistani province of Punjab, by a member of his 
own security force. Taseer had become known for his 
opposition to the country’s infamous blasphemy law. 
In March, a group calling itself “Taliban Al-Qaida” 
assassinated Pakistani Minister of Minorities Shahbaz 
Bhatti outside his mother’s home. The only Christian in 
the Pakistani cabinet, Bhatti had been a vocal critic of 
the blasphemy law. Still unresolved throughout the year 
was the fate of one of the law’s victims, Asia Noreen 
Bibi, an illiterate Christian woman who is appealing her 
sentence of death by hanging.
These cases have been widely reported. Less known 
are other incidents involving violence and hatred like 
the mob attack on April 30 on Christian homes in 
Gujranwala, home to some 50,000 Pakistani Christians, 
with its Christian-run schools and service centers. The 
incident was not the first to occur there and stemmed 
from charges of blasphemy leveled against a Christian 
pastor and his son arising from the finding of torn-out 
pages of the Qur’an in front of their home. Their release 
prompted massive reactions.23 In June, Maulana Abdul 
Rauf Farooqi and other leaders of the Samiul faction 
of the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam political party began 
an unsuccessful public campaign to ban the Bible in 
Pakistan. If Pakistani courts did not respond, Farooqi 
averred, he and his followers would begin burning 
Bibles themselves. 24 In Pakistan’s ever-more-tense 
atmosphere of religious intolerance, Christians have 
become more fearful. The killing of Osama bin Laden 
in Abbottabad and the attacks on insurgent targets by 
American drones have reportedly strengthened popular 
perceptions that Christians are disloyal and are “agents 
of the Americans.”25
There were also attacks on Pakistan’s Shi’a population. On 
September 19, Sunni militants shot 26 ethnic Hazaras 
and wounded six more. 26 On October 4, thirteen Shi’a 
were killed in Balochistan, and six others were wounded 
in a separate incident there.27 In both cases, the victims 
were traveling religious pilgrims.
Rank intolerance also marked the year in Afghanistan 
where, in 2010, the last Christian church in the 
country had been closed. 28 In the Maldives, where any 
sight, sound, symbol, literature, or other evidence of 
any religion other than officially-promulgated Sunni 
Islam is illegal; an Indian school teacher was arrested 
when a purportedly Christian video was found on his 
hard drive. He had not, to be sure, shown the video to 
anyone.29 On November 27, Islamic organizations in the 
Maldives called for the arrest of United Nations High 
Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay when she 
visited the country and discussed its circumstances.30
Sadly, the Maldives’ absolutist approach to the regulation 
of religion does not stand out in a region which includes 
a large number of authoritarian and intolerant regimes.
Citizens protest the assasination of  Shahbaz Bhatti in Pakistan.
(Credit: citizensfordemocracy.wordpress.com)

-  29  -
Structural Impediments
(These factors impinging negatively upon the circumstances of minority religious communities were 
identified in the First Freedom Center’s 2011 Report.)
• Differentiated systems of registration: Registration systems are nearly universal, many of which 
are effectively discriminatory.
• Differentiated systems of state support: Many governments raise tax revenue for officially 
sanctioned faith communities to the detriment of minority groups, whose members sometimes receive 
unequal benefit in return for their taxes.
• Systems of religious instruction in public schools: In numerous countries, public-school instruction 
concerning majority faiths effectively discriminates against minorities.
• Discriminatory property restitution: Governments continue to resist the resolution of restitution 
regarding properties illegally seized during prior conflicts.
• “Sect” and “cult” monitoring: In several countries, official agencies and/or commissions monitor and 
publicly warn about “non-traditional” communities designated as “cults” or “sects.”
• Impunity: Concerns over terrorism and migration fuel acts of violence against minorities and 
destruction of their property. Many of these acts go uninvestigated or are downplayed as common 
vandalism.
• Regulation of religious symbols: Government banning of religious symbols, including minarets, 
headscarves, and burqas, lends profile to public antipathy toward Muslims.
• Legislation concerning “hate speech” and “incitement”: Criminalizing hate speech in some cases 
fuels antipathy towards the very groups it has been meant to protect.
The most resonant theme in Europe during 2011, with 
respect to minority religious communities, was violence 
against Christians, especially in the Middle East. 
(While this focus was upon minorities beyond Europe, 
it served to strengthen the sensitivity of Europeans and 
their institutions to the needs of religious minorities 
everywhere.) A rash of anti-Coptic violence in Egypt 
and attacks against Assyrian Christians in Iraq at the 
turn of the year ushered in a broad-sweeping public 
and institutional focus of the problem, which brought 
the issues of religious freedom generally and of religious 
minorities specifically into sharp focus. Significant 
legal changes in Hungary, which radically restricted 
registration of religious communities, and Turkey, which 
undertook partial restitution of minorities’ communal 
property, drew widespread attention. There were 
manifestations of anti-Semitism and anti-Islamicism, 
and there were actions taken to counter such trends. The 
European Court of Human Rights continued making 
decisions of material significance for religious minorities, 
as did national governments and courts. The issue of 
hate-speech remained controversial. As the strength 
of fundamentalism in European Islamic communities 
grew, prospects for Muslim feminists to gain influence 
on behalf of improved safeguarding of the religious and 
other human rights of Muslim women diminished. They 
europe
Geographic Reach: All of Europe west of the former Soviet Union, plus the three Baltic Republics and Turkey.

-  30  -
and other well-integrated Muslims showed a degree of 
understanding for European governmental actions in 
the areas of dress and elsewhere as proactive measures 
intended to secure choice for Muslim women. The 
violations of religious freedom this Report discusses in 
its assessment of Europe are much less severe than are 
those in several other regions.
key developMents
Both immediately before and in the broader course of 
change in North Africa and the Middle East, sporadic 
acts of violence against Christians drew enormous 
attention in Europe. The Council of Europe, the 
European Union, the European Parliament, the Papacy, 
the German Bundestag, and a host of other institutions 
issued pronouncements, resolutions, and declarations on 
the subject, frequently couched in the wider contexts of 
religious freedom and minority rights. Party groupings 
across the spectrum in the European Parliament urged 
that religious freedom become better integrated into 
EU foreign policy. Pope Benedict XVI declared 2011 
the year of religious freedom and dwelt on the plights of 
Christian and other minorities in his October address to 
the Diplomatic Corps.
The still-ambivalent attitudes both of European-Islamic 
populations and of majority cultures toward Christian-
Islamic integration colored legislation, decision-making, 
journalism, and popular reaction. In June, vandals 
defaced a mosque in southern Denmark with the slogan 
“Muslims go home” and with caricatures of the Prophet.1 
In November, the offices of the French satirical weekly 
Hebdomadaire were fire-bombed when the publication 
distributed an issue purportedly “guest edited” by the 
Prophet Mohammed, whose picture appeared on the 
cover, challenging readers to “a thousand lashes if you 
don’t die laughing.”2 Islamic sentiment continued to be 
offended and enraged in France with the passage, at the 
government’s instance, of a law banning prayer in the 
streets. Even for the majority of French Muslims in whose 
lives the niqab did not figure, continued enforcement 
of France’s 2010 law banning the wearing of the niqab 
rankled. In June, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter 
Friederich drew extensive Muslim-community criticism 
when, instead of stressing the resolution of problems 
of integration, he called on Muslim parents to monitor 
their children’s activities lest they fall prey to radicalism.3 
In an editorial in The Guardian, satirist Vikor Navasky 
commented, “For many French Muslims, religion has 
become a cultural identity, a refuge in a troubled society 
where they don’t feel accepted.”4 The observation could 
well have applied to Muslims all across Western Europe.
Against these negative reactions must be weighed the 
perceptions of many Muslim women and men, often 
well-integrated into European cultures, that the actions 
of governments with respect to dress and other matters 
in fact constituted proactive measures intended to make 
certain that Muslim women have choices and the right 
to decide for themselves how to dress, act, work, and 
speak. By availing themselves of such choices, they 
would simply be seeking appropriate measures to modify 
or abolish, as the UN Convention of the Elimination of 
Discrimination Against Women requires, “customs and 
practices that constitute discrimination” and to pursue 
women’s rights, as human beings, to autonomy and 
equality.
Much as this is so, it is equally clear that there are 
European Muslim women who choose, in the context 
of their own faith and culture, of their own free will 
to cover their heads in accordance with their faith 
Egyptian Coptic Christians held a mass in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square 
as a show of solidarity with anti-government protesters in the country. 
(Credit: bikyamasr.com)

-  31  -
traditions. Hence, in Europe and in the wider world, 
bans on religious garb remain highly controversial as 
a means of achieving equality. European Christians, 
secular representatives and Muslims have stressed that 
banning women from wearing specific elements of 
religious garb, even as Sikh and Orthodox Jewish men 
and other people of faith are free to wear their unique 
religious garments and insignia, has less positive impact 
on the establishment of equality than it has negative 
impact on religious-freedom rights as specified under 
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 
and associated rights in a free society. In the context of 
debate over whether the European approach to bans – or 
the absence of such measures in North America – better 
promotes integration, critics of bans have stressed that 
they have arisen more out of antipathy toward Muslims 
than out of respect for equality. That promoting the 
bans has been the cornerstone of campaigns by far-right 
political candidates underscores this concern.
Real efforts at mutual accommodation progressed 
alongside turbulence. New mosques arose in Strasbourg, 
Cologne, and elsewhere. When animal-rights activists 
pressed for legislation in the European and Dutch 
Parliaments curtailing or banning ritual slaughter, 
there was push-back from religious-freedom advocates, 
and, at the very least, the words “halal” and “schechita” 
disappeared from draft texts (though Muslims and 
Jews continued to feel singled out by this initiatives). 5 
Although, in September, a French court fined two 
Muslim women for wearing the niqab, a magistrate in 
Brussels refused to enforce Belgium’s law. 6 When an 
administrative judge in Leipzig refused to permit Islamic 
prayer in a Berlin public school because of violence which 
had surrounded it, he nevertheless stressed that, absent 
that circumstance, religious-freedom provisions would 
have upheld it. In the give-and-take of daily existence, 
Europe’s Christians and Muslims made valuable progress 
learning to construct a common life.
Mitigating against greater accommodation were changes 
within Muslim communities themselves. Across the 
continent, fundamentalism grew more influential in 
mosques and among Muslim youth, not infrequently in 
response to funding, assistance, and counsel emanating 
from Islamist entities in Muslim-majority countries. 
As fundamentalism waxed stronger, Muslim and non-
Muslim human-rights advocates heightened their 
sensitivity to honor killings, child marriages, and other 
extreme manifestations and worried lest these actions go 
unpunished.
Among the most dramatic, and worrying, developments 
of the year was the Hungarian parliament’s passage, 
on July 12, of a highly restrictive “Law on the Right to 
Freedom of Conscience and Religion, and on Churches, 
Religions, and Religious Communities,” which effectively 
legally disenfranchised 344 already-registered minority 
religious communities and restricted to 14 the number 
of communities officially recognized by the state. 7 On 
December 19, Hungary’s Constitutional Court struck 
the law down on technical grounds, but the government 
promptly re-introduced it for passage just after the dawn 
of the new year.8
Equally notably, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan 
decreed in August that, under a complex procedure, 
communal properties expropriated from non-Muslim 
communities in 1936 under Turkey’s idiosyncratic 
interpretation of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and its 
effect on Turkish nationality would be restituted. The 
Bans on religious garb remain highly controversial  
as a means of achieving equality in Europe. 
(Credit: varvara.wordpress.com)

-  32  -
decree would not affect several Christian bodies, such 
as the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, falling 
outside the Lausanne regime, but it stands to benefit the 
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (which the 
Erdogan government denies is in any way “ecumenical” 
and describes as “Greek Orthodox”), Turkish Jews, 
Armenian Orthodox Christians, and a few others. 
Where actual restitution cannot be made, compensation, 
as determined by the Turkish Finance Ministry, is to be 
made.9
The decree has elicited favorable comment, and it does 
indeed represent a major change in Turkish policy. But 
religious-freedom advocates and legal experts have been 
quick to observe that it falls well short of rectifying 
Turkey’s highly deficient climate of freedom for minority 
communities – or even of creating a suitable legal 
framework for their functioning.10 These authorities look 
to prospective broad revisions of the Turkish constitution 
in hopes that the effort will encompass more general 
reforms, perhaps eliminating the constitutional standing 
of the Diyanet, which maintains a strangle-hold on 
every aspect of Islamic life. The Dinayet prevents the 
accommodation of the country’s Alevi Muslims (about 
a third of the population). Human-rights advocates 
also hope that revision will attenuate the constitutional 
enshrinement of Turkey’s laiklik doctrine of secularism, 
which has often injured religious minorities.11 As matters 
stand even after the August decree, legal registration 
and normal functioning far eludes Protestant and other 
communities in Turkey, and the country has simply 
failed to implement a series of decisions of the European 
Court of Human Rights in favor of these minorities. In 
February, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human 
Rights Thomas Hammarberg called on Turkey to take a 
series of major steps for the improvement of its treatment 
of minority religious communities.12
Throughout the year, the European Court of Human 
Rights handed down decisions materially affecting the 
lot of religious minorities in Europe. In Ercep v. Turkey, 
the court decided in favor of a Jehovah’s Witness plaintiff 
seeking relief for his imprisonment and punishment for 
failure, as a conscientious objector, to report for military 
service. Despite rulings of the Court and findings of 
the Council of Europe, Turkey still adamantly refuses 
to make provision for alternative military service. 13 In 
Ligue des Musulmans de Suisse and others v. Switzerland, 
the Court, to the surprise of many, found that plaintiffs 
effectively had no standing to seek relief from 
Switzerland’s 2010 constitutional amendment banning 
the construction of minarets.14 In Association des Temoins 
de Jehovah v. France, the court decided in favor of the 
Jehovah’s Witness plaintiffs to the effect that demanding 
back taxes in the amount of 57.5 million euros 
violated Article 9 of the European Charter of Human 
Rights concerning religious freedom. 15 Perhaps most 
controversially, in Laatsi and others v. Italy, the Court 
found that the mere “physical presence” of crucifixes on 
the walls of public school rooms was “essentially passive” 
and not detrimental to non-Catholic pupils.16
Greek mistreatment of religious minorities – especially 
Protestants – continued to elicit comment. A Pentecostal 
plaintiff obtained an ECHR judgment in his favor 
when he appealed a four-month jail term and an 840 
euro fine ascribed to him for “proselytizing” during a 
trial wherein a prosecutor reportedly mocked him as 
“having the peculiar enlightenment of the Holy Spirit” 
and admonished him against sitting in coffee houses 
“sharing his faith.” 17 Muslims both inside and outside 
Muslims both inside and outside Greece continued to espouse the 
difficult circumstances of Thracian Muslims.
(Credit: Wikipedia)

-  33  -
Greece continued to espouse the difficult circumstances 
of Thracian Muslims who, under the now-repealed 
Article 19 of the Greek Nationality Code, had become 
stateless.18
Monitors of anti-Semitism expressed concern about 
several developments, including the burning of a 
synagogue in Corfu in April, the continuing exodus 
of Jews from several countries where anti-Israeli 
sentiment is strong, including especially Sweden, and 
the publication in December by the City of Warsaw of 
a promotional calendar containing an early-twentieth-
century poster encompassing virulently anti-Semitic 
symbolism (including rats with temple-locks and 
skull caps). When the matter was brought to their 
attention, Warsaw authorities apologized and blocked 
further distribution of the calendar. 19 Jewish and 
religious-freedom advocates were pleased to observe 
the proceedings and results of a conference in March 
hosted in Prague by the Organization for Security and 
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on means of confronting 
anti-Semitism in public discourse. 20 Reaction was 
positive also to the February 27 convening in Rome of a 
session of the Catholic-Jewish Lisaison Committee for 
Interreligious Consultation, which issued a strong call 
for Catholic-Jewish cooperation on behalf of religious 
freedom worldwide.21
Ambivalent reactions to legislation concerning hate 
speech and its implementation surrounded both 
prominent and obscure court cases. In June, at the 
conclusion of his second trial for incitement of violence 
against Muslims, Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders 
was acquitted. The decision drew criticism from 
advocates of reconciliation and understanding and praise 
from some free-speech advocates. An Austrian court 
judgment against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who was 
assessed a fine of 480 Euros when she made accusations 
against the Prophet Mohammed in connection with 
his marriage to a young girl, elicited criticism from civil 
libertarians.22
There was progress in the restitution of communal 
properties seized from both majority and minority 
religious communities in two formerly-communist 
countries. In the Czech Republic agreement in principle 
was reached on 56 percent of the properties on a list 
earlier agreed among negotiators. (A final, binding 
decision on the matter came in early 2012.) In Lithuania, 
during November, Jewish negotiators made substantial 
progress on coming to terms with restitution and/or 
compensation with respect to an agreed list of Jewish 
properties.
Anti-Israeli sentiment is strong, especially in Sweden.
(Credit:  www.warrelics.eu)

-  34  -
lAtin AMeriCA And the CAribbeAn
Geographic Reach: All of the countries of the South American continent, 
Central America and Mexico, and the Caribbean.
Structural Impediments
(These factors impinging negatively upon the circumstances of minority religious  
communities were identified in the First Freedom Center’s 2011 Report.)
• Residual Catholic privilege: Six countries in the region maintain concordats or other agreements 
with the Vatican which enshrine discriminatory privileges for the Roman Catholic Church.
• Harassment of religious communities by central or regional governmental authorities: Active, 
oppressive governmental measures against religious communities are widespread in several regions.
• Onerous registration regimes: Registration regimes in several countries burden minority communities.
• Weak governance: Inability to enforce universal human rights particularly affects minority religious 
communities.
• Banning and official shunning: Specific minority communities in several instances are legally banned.
Changes in the religious demography of the region 
continued, as did the overall, increasing embrace of 
freedom for religious minorities. In Brazil, for example, 
a number of Protestant minorities increased their ranks, 
and the country hosted major public events espousing 
religious liberty. Both Cuba and Venezuela continued 
to inspire concern. Majority and minority communities 
established new channels of understanding and 
cooperation in southern Mexico. At a session of the Latin 
American Parliament and elsewhere, representatives 
vowed to combat anti-Semitism, although Jewish 
communities continued to watch developments 
closely – especially the increasing embrace by populist 
governments of Iran and its leadership.
key developMents
Minority religious communities continue to flourish in 
this region, and a “healthy competition” among religious 
communities for adherents is thriving. Roman Catholic 
leaders in Brazil, for example, looked forward to a 2013 
Papal visit as an opportunity to strengthen Brazilian 
Catholics’ pride in their Church and tradition even as 
change in the growth patterns of some Protestant bodies 
became evident. Growth of Pentecostal communities 
appeared to slow, while that of “traditional” Protestant 
bodies like the Baptist, Lutheran, and Methodist 
churches accelerated – as did the ranks of Brazilians 
leaving Christianity altogether.1
During 2011, several major public events championed 
the cause of religious freedom, especially for minorities. 
On June 9, a Religious Freedom Symposium in Sao 
Paulo drew 200 religious leaders, lawyers, and activists. 
Organized by the Brazilian Association for Religious 
Freedom and Citizenship, the event was widely inclusive. 
2 On September 18, religious leaders and the public 
participated in Rio de Janeiro’s fourth annual Religious 
Freedom Walk “against all forms of intolerance, against 
prejudice, and against hatred.”3 On July 16 in southern 
Mexico, a Religious Liberty Forum brought together 
Protestant, Catholic, and governmental leaders to 
spotlight local challenges to religious freedom, especially 
those facing minority communities. 4 From December 
3-5, high-ranking and influential participants in a B’nai 

-  35  -
B’rith Policy Conference in Montevideo discussed 
a range of issues important to Jewish communities. 
Addressed by former Chilean President Frei and other 
dignitaries, the Conference explored a wide range of 
topics touching on attitudinal and social development 
and the particular challenges facing the region’s Jewish 
population.5
Religious-freedom and minority-community advocates 
found the most numerous and greatest causes for 
concern in Cuba, although some noted at least a few 
positive trends and developments there, as well. Visiting 
Creighton University in Omaha, Cuban Cardinal Jaime 
Lucas Ortega y Alamino stressed the value of Church-
state dialogue as it had developed since the accession to 
power of Raul Castro. The dialogue, the Cardinal held, 
has allowed the Church increasingly to focus seriously on 
“humanitarian and public missions.” 6 Major American 
religious organizations hoped to make progress via 
strengthened engagement. The U.S. Conference of 
Catholic Bishops took a formal position in 2011 in 
opposition to the United States’ long-held policies of 
embargo and travel restriction, and the U.S. National 
Council of Churches, visiting Cuba for consultations 
with the official Cuban Council of Churches, expressed 
a similar disposition.7
Representatives of religious communities awaited results 
of these and other efforts, and numerous religious-
freedom and human-rights advocates remained 
unconvinced that there would be any. On December 3, 
despite appeals by former President Carter and others, 
the second anniversary of Jewish-American civil-society 
worker Alan Gross’ imprisonment rolled around. A few 
religious-minority prisoners were released, including, in 
April, Dr. Oscar Biscet, who had served seventeen years 
of a twenty-five year sentence. Contrary to expectations, 
Biscet was not forced into exile and was allowed to 
continue his residence in Cuba.8 Apostolic Pastor Omar 
Gude Perez, released after three years of a six-and-one-
half-year sentence, was denied permission to leave Cuba, 
although his family was given exit visas for the United 
States (of which they did not make use).9
Most minority-community representatives were still 
skeptical concerning prospects for positive change in 
Cuba. Advocacy organization Christian Solidarity 
Worldwide (CSW) reported that other Apostolic 
adherents in Gude’s Camaguey home district were 
threatened with imprisonment, and that a Baptist pastor 
in Santa Clara province, Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso, 
was placed under house arrest.10 CSW also reported that 
Cuban officials visited the large First Baptist Church in 
Holquin to announce that the Church’s buildings were 
scheduled for seizure. 11 Most Protestant community 
leaders agreed that the Apostolic Church in particular 
has come under increasing pressure. Office of Religious 
Affairs Director Caridad Diego Bello reportedly 
specifically avowed the state’s intention to clamp down 
heavily on Apostolic communities across the island. 12 
In CSW’s analysis, 2011 saw progress in state-Roman 
Catholic dialogue and in the registration and legalization 
of at least “some” of Cuba’s many house churches. On 
the other hand, the organization noted, both registered 
and unregistered religious communities experienced a 
significant increase in visits from security, government, 
and Communist-party representatives, often urging 
that individual adherents who had incurred official 
disfavor be separated from communities. 13 Minority 
community leaders are mindful of the state’s many 
options for repression. The famed Ladies in White who 
have long demonstrated on behalf of political prisoners 
and prisoners of conscience have been the victims of 
well-orchestrated mob attacks in Santiago de Cuba and 
elsewhere, and minority communities and their leaders 
can easily suffer the same fate.
In Venezuela, several of the instruments created by the 
Chavez administration in earlier years continued to 
hang unimplemented over both majority and minority 
religious communities. While legislation creating 
“communal councils” would presumably empower them 
to oversee and investigate religious schools, they have 
not yet been known to do so. Legislation empowering 
the government to confiscate “historic” church property 
has also gone unimplemented. 14 As the United States 
Commission on International Religious Freedom 

-  36  -
has reported, there have been no concrete results of 
investigations previously announced into 2009 attacks 
on the Tiferet Israel Synagogue in Caracas and on 
the Arch-Episcopal Residence. 15 In June, Catholic 
bishops issued a seven-point statement concerning 
attacks, especially upon church sculpture, in Lara state 
and elsewhere, noting that they came in a wider and 
continual context of attacks upon both Catholic and 
other Christian “persons, places, and symbols.”16
In Venezuela and elsewhere, shrinking Jewish 
communities continued to express misgivings about their 
prospects. B’nai B’rith, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, 
and other organizations joined the Jewish Community 
Federation of Venezuela in expressing alarm over the use 
of state media to spread anti-Semitic propaganda. On 
April 4, commentator Cristina Gonzalez of National 
Venezuelan Radio, in the course of her program, La 
Noticia Final, advised listeners to procure and read the 
fraudulent and anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 
On October 26, the television program Contragolpe aired 
an interview with Argentine Professor Saad Chedid in 
which he denied the historical veracity of the Holocaust 
and excoriated Zionism. 17 Venezuelan Jews continue 
to express concern about evidence of strengthening 
diplomatic and other ties between Venezuela and Iran. 
Bolivian President Evo Morales apologized to the 
Argentine Jewish community for inviting to Bolivia the 
Iranian Defense Minister, who also allegedly figured in 
the 1994 bombing of a Jewish Community in Buenos 
Aires.18 A poll conducted and published in 2011 by the 
Gino Germani Institute of the University of Buenos 
Aires showed that large segments of the Argentine public 
entertain very negative views of Jews as prospective 
neighbors, marital partners, or participants in political 
life.19
In Mexico, minority-community attention focused 
primarily on Chiapas and the country’s south, where 
highly traditionalist officials and members of the public 
have directed violence against Seventh-day Adventists 
and Evangelical Christians. In September, Catholic, 
Protestant, and governmental representatives in San 
Rafael Tlanalapan signed an agreement concerning 
improved relations. The agreement came on the heels of 
threats to “lynch and crucify” Protestants, the gunning 
down of a Seventh-day Adventist family which was 
traveling to church, threats to expel Protestant families, 
arguments between minority communities and officials 
concerning water connections for churches, and other 
discord.20
Economies in much of Latin America and the Caribbean 
performed better in 2011 than did economies in many 
other parts of the world, and middle classes strengthened 
and grew. Respect for the rule of law and the rights of 
religious minorities continued generally to improve, 
despite drug violence in Central America and Mexico 
and retrogressive effects of populist policies in some 
countries. 
The above graffiti in Venezuela reads: “Jews, I defecate on your star.”
(Credit: heebonics.blogspot.com)

-  37  -
the Middle eAst And north AfriCA
Geographic Reach: The region encompasses Middle Eastern countries spreading westward from Iran 
(not including Turkey) and African countries along the Mediterranean littoral as far west as Western Sahara.
Structural Impediments
(These factors impinging negatively upon the circumstances of minority religious communities were 
identified in the First Freedom Center’s 2011 Report.)
• Constitutional establishment: Most governments have either constitutionally adopted a state 
religion or describe themselves in terms of a religious identity.
• Banning: Outright bans on various minority religions are common in the region.
• Impunity: Extensive violence committed against minority religious communities frequently goes 
unpunished.
• Religious identity as a basis for full citizenship: In numerous societies, a strong cultural association 
exists between full citizenship and religious identity.
• Strictures adversely affecting women and children: In a number of countries, marriage, divorce, 
and custody laws discriminate against women. Minority religious communities may face severe 
restrictions in trying to operate a school, import texts, or provide religious instruction to their children.
• Travel restrictions: Several countries restrict minority access to travel documents.
• Emergency legislation: Marshal law has prevailed for long periods in some countries, enabling 
authorities to undertake extra-judicial arrests and similar actions.
• Involvement of intelligence personnel in the administration of religious-community affairs: 
Intelligence officials in several countries monitor, detain, and harass minority-community adherents.
The profound political, social, and cultural changes 
associated with the “Arab Spring” reverberated 
throughout the region. As the year ended, governments, 
majorities, and minorities all continued uncertain where 
the wave of change might eventually lead them. Minority 
religious communities, especially Christians, became 
fearful, especially following violence in October directed 
against Coptic Christians in Egypt. Many Christians 
in the region either emigrated or pondered doing so, 
and there was talk of a “litmus test” for the entire Arab 
Spring with respect to the fate of Christians. The rise of 
moderate Islamist political parties in several countries 
held ambiguous implications for minorities. Political 
analysts saw a shift in power in the region away from 
authoritarian rulers who, ironically, had provided some 
measure of protection for religious minorities – even as 
they denied their citizens civil and political liberties – 
toward an alignment of regimes and organizations which 
reject Western culture and universalist human-rights 
doctrine. Iran continued its systematic and oppressive 
treatment of minority religious communities. Iraq, both 
before and after American military withdrawal, provided 
little protection for the country’s dwindling minorities. 
An especially striking aspect of a year of dramatic change 
in the region was the regression it saw in the rights of 
women – including their religious-freedom rights – as 
the reformers who initiated the process of change lost 
ground to Islamist parties.

-  38  -
key developMents
In one of this Report’s Expert commentaries, 
Ambassador Akbar Ahmed provides his perspective on 
change in this region. The First Freedom Center’s own 
monitoring of trends showed, at year’s end, pervasive 
uncertainty among both protagonists and observers as 
to the overall, eventual impact and nature of the “Arab 
Spring.” Members of religious and ethnic minorities 
and analysts who follow issues of violent religious 
extremism feared a strengthening of Salafis and other 
hardliners at the expense not only of former dictators 
and their supporters but also of the secular reformers 
who had been so active in originating change.1 The latter 
expressed increasing frustration and anger as 2011 wore 
on. Socialists and human-rights demonstrators in Libya 
denounced on November 2 the “high-jacking” of the 
Libyan revolution by Islamists and “U.S. militarism.” 2 
Le Monde Diplomatique Editor Alain Gresh wrote, in a 
December article for London-based Middle East Online, 
of a power shift toward “resistance” advocates like Iran 
and Hezbollah. 3 Other analysts commented on the 
relative “loss of standing” of the United States, Europe, 
and Israel and saw in the realignment cause for concern 
about human rights and religious freedom. Elizabeth 
Prodromou of the United States Commission on 
International Religious Freedom emphasized that, with 
the fall from power of authoritarian rulers, the region’s 
overall lack of civil and political liberties made life for 
religious minorities uncertain.4
Elections in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco saw significant 
gains for Islamist parties – the Egyptian Muslim 
Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, Tunisia’s 
Ennahda movement, and Morocco’s (still minority) 
Justice and Development Party. Minority communities 
worried that these parties might enter into coalitions 
with – or otherwise make eventual common cause with – 
Salafists and other hardliners. They worried also as to the 
position these parties might eventually take on the role 
and nature of Shari’a law. Egypt’s Salfist Sheikh Shahat, 
for his part, worried that the Freedom and Justice Party 
was interpreting Islamic law and principles too loosely.5 
Secular reformers and religious minorities also watched 
with some anxiety the evolving relationship between 
Freedom and Justice and Egypt’s transitional military 
rulers.
Although articulate Muslim feminists like Al Hayat 
columnist Raghida Dergham argued that the “Arab 
Spring” offered a unique opportunity to change 
fundamentally the standing of women in predominantly 
Muslim lands, they did not prevail. Islamist opinion 
helped to exclude women entirely from an Egyptian 
committee preparing amendments to the country’s 
constitution, and the efforts of Islamic women to secure 
guarantees of representation in parliaments largely 
failed. “Moderate” or not, rising Islamist political parties 
at year’s end had yet to offer convincing evidence that 
they had agreed to international standards of non-
discrimination against women and minorities.
“Pay attention! One blood, one nation!”  – Tahrir Square protester.
(Credit: Al Jazeera - English)

-  39  -
What change meant for Christians specifically was at 
the heart of the uncertainty. Archbishop of Canterbury 
Rowan Williams, addressing the House of Lords in 
December, said the region’s Christians were “more 
vulnerable than they have been for centuries” and that 
their fate provided “a litmus test for the Arab Spring.” 6 
His comments came in the wake of the killing of twenty-
seven Coptic Christians in Cairo October 9 when they 
assembled to demonstrate against the burning of a Coptic 
church in Aswan. On October 16, in the Upper Egyptian 
town of Mallawi, Coptic Christian seventeen-year-old 
Ayman Nabil Labib was beaten to death by Muslim 
school-mates, possibly incited by a teacher. Following 
these events, Egypt’s military leaders rushed through a 
new anti-discrimination law, but the lack of prosecutions 
of anti-Christian violence seemed to Copts to hollow 
the gesture.7 The Swiss-based Christian human-rights 
group Christian Solidarity issued a “genocide warning” 
for Christians and other minority religious communities 
in the Middle East. After Pope Benedict XVI spoke 
publicly of “a strategy of violence that has Christians as 
a target,” Cairo’s Al-Azhar Sunni Muslim Center broke 
off dialogue with the Vatican. 8 Coptic Christians who 
had favored Mubarak’s remaining in power shifted their 
loyalties to the secular Egyptian Bloc.
In Syria, where the outcome of protest and revolution 
remained undecided, the relationships among religious 
communities were unclear also. Syrian Christians 
appeared to want Bashar al-Assad to remain in office 
but democratize and reform. Assad’s minority Alawite 
community found itself in increasingly violent conflict 
with Sunni Muslims, including those in the Free 
Syrian Army. Syria joined other countries in the region 
in clamping down hard on the use and reach on the 
Internet, mindful as its leaders are of the use of social 
media and e-mails by organizers of events in Tunisia and 
Egypt in early 2011. 
Israelis watched change fearfully, mindful that groups 
like the Muslim Brotherhood have a long history of 
antipathy toward the Jewish state and that any change 
which threatens to empower Salafists might pose risks to 
Israeli security interests. Following border confrontation 
with Egyptians near Eilat and the removal by mobs of the 
flag displaying the Star of David from the Israeli Embassy 
in Cairo, Israel’s Jewish leaders worried increasingly 
about the survivability of negotiated agreements with 
the country’s neighbors. The incident at the Embassy in 
Cairo, during which an invading mob posed a physical 
threat to the safety of Embassy personnel, focused Israeli 
public opinion. In a climate of increasing uncertainty, 
some hard-line Israeli leaders took nationalist positions 
concerning Israel’s own composition, demanding 
“loyalty” from its Muslim Arabs. In January, Israeli 
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael 
Beteinu party, advocated stripping “disloyal” Israelis of 
their citizenship, and his formulations were taken by 
Muslim Arabs and many outside Israel as being directed 
toward Israel’s Muslim minority. West Bank settlers and 
other Israelis challenged Israel’s laws, police, and army 
with so-called “price-tag” attacks meant to respond to 
incidents and attacks against Israelis, including rocket 
attacks coming from Gaza. In October, a mosque in the 
northern-Galilee town of Tuba-Zangariya was torched 
and sprayed with graffiti declaring that the attack came 
in retaliation for the murder of Israeli Asher Palmer and 
his nine-month-old son. Jewish Israelis joined Arabs 
in demonstrating against the violence, which Prime 
Minister Netanyahu denounced. 9 On December 14, 
vandals attacked a disused, twelfth-century mosque in 
Jerusalem. After two Arab cemeteries were vandalized in 
Jaffa, a firebomb was thrown at a synagogue there.
Between the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003 and 
the withdrawal of American forces in December, some 
two-thirds of the country’s Christians left. Minority 
communities under stress and rapidly depleting include 
Chaldean, Syriac, Assyrian, and Circassian Christians, 
Baha’i, and Sabian Mandeans. A Minority Rights 
Group International report issued in November stressed 
that these minorities lack proper access to employment, 
health care, education, and safety for the practice of 
their cultures and faiths. 10 Chaldean Catholic officials, 
fearful after Christmas-time attacks in 2010 on Assyrian 
Christians, cancelled all Christmas Eve observances in 

-  40  -
Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Mosul. 11 Before and following 
American withdrawal, inter-communal and inter-ethnic 
violence in Iraq increased, and the country’s Sunni 
minority became increasingly fearful that the Maliki 
government intended locking them out of proportional 
political representation.
Neighboring Iran’s theocratic leaders worried intensively 
about the prospect of democratic and reformist change 
spreading into their land. They clamped down on 
religious minorities. The U.S. Commission and the 
Department of State singled out Iran in their reports 
on religious freedom as an egregious violator. Heiner 
Bielefeldt, United Nations Special Rapporteur on 
Freedom of Religion or Belief, noted that Iran’s 
“systematic” persecution of Baha’i was among the world’s 
most “extreme manifestations of religious intolerance 
and persecution.”12 Penelope Faulkner of the European 
Platform on Religious Discrimination and Intolerance 
told the European Parliament in May that Iranian 
Baha’i continued to “lose their rights, their livelihood, 
and, in many cases, their lives.” 13 This Report’s section 
on prisoners makes clear the extent to which the 
country incarcerates minority adherents. It discusses the 
case of Christian convert Youcef Nadarkhani. Facing 
death for “apostasy,” Nadarkhani attracted world-wide 
sympathy and attention. Iran’s oldest faith community, 
the Zoroastrians, despite official recognition of their 
religion, faced continuing harassment. In a November 
CNN interview, Indiana University Professor Jamsheed 
Choksy noted the continual disruption by Revolutionary 
Guard troops and others of Zoroaterian funerals.14 
A June Amnesty International report noted Iranian 
oppression of Christian converts, Sunni Muslims, 
dissident Shi’a clerics, Al-e Haq, Dervishes, and Baha’i.15 
In December, authorities in Ahwaz reportedly detained 
an entire Assembly of God congregation, including 
children attending Sunday school.16
Saudi authorities clamped down as well. In November, 
King Abdullah reminded Saudis of their “duty” to 
convert all non-Muslims to Wahabism. 17 From 
January into June, two Indian Pentacostalists who had 
participated in a house church prayer meeting in Riyadh 
were reportedly imprisoned in difficult conditions before 
being expelled from the country.18 The U.S. Commission 
and others noted that, reform promises to the contrary, 
Saudi textbooks continue to teach hatred of non-Wahabi 
religions.
Change brought restiveness to Shi’a and other minority 
communities in Gulf States. Shi’a demonstrated largely 
peaceably in Kuwait. The ”majority-minority” Shi’a 
of Bahrain demonstrated sufficiently extensively that 
Bahrain’s leadership, assisted by Saudi forces, quelled 
their activities and arrested a large number of them – 
as well as doctors and other persons who provided 
them humanitarian or other assistance. The Bahraini 
government and Sunni population continued to harbor 
fears of Iran exerting influence through the Shi’a 
community.
In Lebanon, the season of change evoked Christian 
anxiety. Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai expressed his 
fears for the fate of all Christians in the Middle East 
if the Arab Spring should bring “radical groups” to 
power.19 Further west in Libya, tiny Coptic and other 
foreign-Christian communities dwindled further still. 
The mostly Egyptian-Christian church in Benghazi 
shrank from about 1,000 persons to forty. Tripoli’s 
Anglican Church weathered the season of change and 
the taking of the city by rebel forces.20
Followers of the Sabian Mandean faith in Iran have been forced into exile 
as their religion is not recognized in the Islamic republic.
(Credit: Reuters)

-  41  -
north AMeriCA
Geographic Reach: The United States and Canada
Structural Impediments
(These factors impinging negatively upon the circumstances of minority religious  
communities were identified in the First Freedom Center’s 2011 Report.)
• Denial of rights claims: Native Americans have persistently failed to prevail when they make legal 
claims regarding the protection of sacred lands and practices.
• Evolving concepts of church-state relations: Inconsistent court rulings have left a muddled 
understanding of some “free expression” accommodations.
Our survey of developments concerning minority 
religious communities in North America during 2011 
shows a continual evolution of the laws, norms, and 
regulations surrounding accommodation of minorities. 
In both Canada and the United States, much – but 
by no means all – of the focus has been upon Islamic 
minorities. In the United States, religious freedom 
advocates have engaged frequently on behalf of Islamic 
communities whose rights appeared to advocates to be at 
risk. In Canada, government actions and court cases have 
been defining the parameters of Islamic-community 
existence – often against a background of public debate. 
In both countries, there has been strong focus on the 
relationship between religious liberty and forms of 
marriage, including those associated with minorities, 
on religious symbols and activities in public space, and 
on the relationship between the religious freedom of 
minorities around the world and the conduct of foreign 
policy.
key developMents
In March, Florida pastor Terry Jones inflamed opinion 
both in the United States and around the world when, 
wearing a judicial robe, he declared the Holy Qur’an 
“guilty of crimes against humanity” and ordered it 
burned. As the year ended, American media reported 
the decision of the Lowe’s hardware chain to remove 
its advertising from a cable reality program entitled 
All-American Muslim, allegedly at the behest of the 
Florida Family Association, which felt that the program 
obscured “the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger 
to American liberties and traditional values.” 1 The 
continued strengthening of popular ambivalence and 
antipathy concerning Islamic minorities in the United 
States figured in debates about proposed laws in 
Oklahoma, seeking to prohibit consideration of shari’a 
in judicial matters and, in the case of the Tennessee 
proposal, criminalizing the following of shari’a as a 
threat to homeland security. At year’s end, judicial appeal 
against the Oklahoma law was still underway, and the 
Tennessee law had not yet been passed. The Council 
for American-Islamic Relations urged that Tennessee 
and national Republican-party leaders demand the 
resignation of Tennessee State Representative Rick 
Womick for calling on Muslim-Americans to “go back 
to where they came from” if they failed to support his 
call for the removal of all Muslims from U.S. military 
forces.2
On September 21, organizers opened the doors of a 
portion of the proposed Lower Manhattan Islamic 
Center near the Ground-Zero site of the 9/11 attacks. 3 
Controversy and debate concerning the project continue. 
In November, the wider project became ensnared in a rent 
dispute threatening access to a portion of the proposed 
site.4 The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life 

-  42  -
reported in September that it had documented thirty-
seven proposed mosques and Islamic centers around 
the United States which had encountered community 
resistance during the preceding three years.5
The American Civil Liberties Union identified nine 
major areas of concern in conjunction with its efforts 
to preserve the religious freedom of Islamic minorities. 
These included attempts to ban shari’a, opposition to the 
opening of mosques and community centers, police and 
law-enforcement infiltration of religious communities, 
discrimination based on appearance and clothing, 
legislative hearings on the “radicalization” of American 
Islam, violations of the Constitution in the administration 
of the “No-Fly List,” FBI mapping of communities and 
businesses based on ethnicity, and invasive questioning 
at borders. 6 On November 25, Ibrahim Hooper of 
the Council for American-Islamic Relations formally 
requested that the FBI investigate threats to kill Muslim 
Americans and to destroy mosques, which had appeared 
on the anti-Islamic website Bare Naked Islam.7
The Toronto District School Board came under criticism 
for its decision to allow an Imam to conduct Friday 
prayers in a public school that is 80-90% Muslim. 8 
Opponents of that accommodation contrasted the 
extent to which Canadian courts and officials across the 
country had acted to prevent the conduct of specifically 
Christian or other religious instruction or worship in 
schools and public places. On December 12, Canadian 
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney rendered a binding 
decision that, during naturalization proceedings, at the 
point of taking the oath of loyalty, women uncover their 
faces, including those wearing the niqab as a voluntary 
religious practice.9 On December 8, the Canadian 
Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case, R v. N.S., 
which turns on the desire of a victim of sexual abuse not 
to remove her niqab during testimony. Defendants in the 
case have argued that the right to a fair trial, including 
confronting the facial expressions of a prosecution 
witness, outweighs considerations of minority religious 
freedom.10
Courts in both countries rendered important decisions 
in cases involving the practice of polygamy among 
members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ 
of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS). On August 4, a rural 
Texas jury convicted Warren Steed Jeffs, President and 
Prophet of an FLDS community on two counts of child 
sexual assault, despite his argument that prohibiting 
polygamy would violate his religious-freedom rights. 11 
The case intensified public discussion of putative 
relevance of decisions regarding same-sex marriage to 
polygamy, and vice-versa. California U.S. District Judge 
Vaughn R. Walker’s August, 2010 decision that a state 
constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage 
was contrary to the Federal Constitution because it 
was premised on “religious” considerations had already 
stirred arguments that permitting same-sex marriage 
would ultimately remove barriers to the recognition 
of polygamous marriage. Following the Jeffs decision, 
several commentators argued that, eventually, pressures 
for the decriminalization of polygamy would prevail. 
Public debate intensified further after the Obama 
Administration announced that it would no longer 
defend in U.S. Courts the Defense of Marriage Act. 12 
On November 23, British Columbia Chief Justice 
Robert Bauman ruled that Canada’s anti-polygamy 
law should stand and is consistent with the Canadian 
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. His decision came in 
a case brought by two FLDS bishops who complained 
that the law violated their religious freedom.13
Pastor Terry Jones has inflamed opinion by declaring  
the Qur’an should be burned.
(Credit: www.dailytitan.com)

-  43  -
In the United States, majority religious communities 
complained that their rights were being eroded and that, 
by implication, those of all other religious communities – 
including minority communities – were being weakened 
as well. The United States Conference of Catholic 
Bishops complained that American religious freedom is 
being “whittled away” by policies on same-sex marriage, 
abortion, and health care. It drew attention to a New York 
town clerk who faced legal action because, following that 
state’s legalization of same-sex marriage, he refused to 
officiate at a single-gender wedding. 14 In October, the 
Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Hosana Tabor 
v. EEOC, in which the Evangelical Lutheran Church 
as petitioner argued that its rights under the “ministerial 
exception” were being curtailed because it was being 
denied freedom of employment choice in cases of “called” 
teachers approved for its religiously-denominated school 
by the entire congregation.15
Both countries concerned themselves with the issue 
of religious activity and expression in public space. 
A Marine Corps ruling on the matter of a memorial 
cross (or rather a third replacement memorial cross), to 
which a community of atheists and free-thinkers have 
objected, is expected in early 2012. 16 To accommodate 
Wiccans and other “earth-based” believers, of which 
there are three registered among its student body, the 
United States Air Force Academy constructed a stone-
circle worship facility on Academy grounds, in addition 
to the Academy’s non-denominational chapel, at a cost 
which critics estimated at $80,000. On November 4, the 
City of Montreal fined a Catholic lay leader $144.00 in 
consequence of the lay group’s rental two years earlier of 
a public hall, where they viewed an inspirational video 
and thus, in the City’s view “inappropriately” conducted 
a worship service in public space. 17 Having invited two 
representatives the World Sikh Organization to make 
presentations before the Quebec National Assembly, 
officers of the legislature expressed embarrassment when 
parliamentary security officials denied them access to the 
chamber because their religious costume encompassed 
ceremonial daggers.18
In both Canada and the United States, governments 
and legislators struggled with the institutionalization of 
issues of minority-community rights in the conduct of 
foreign policy. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John 
Baird announced that the Foreign Affairs Department 
would set up an Office of Religious Freedom. Panels and 
expert witnesses participating in the implementation 
of that initiative drew attention to controversies which 
had arisen out of actions undertaken under the aegis 
of the United States’ International Religious Freedom 
Act, to which critics had on occasion imputed a pro-
Christian or pro-Evangelical bias. An internal briefing 
memorandum prepared for Minister Baird counseled 
that, during discussions of the initiative with Pope 
Benedict, he should avoid “controversial” Canadian 
subjects, such as the pending court case examining 
whether Roman Catholic parents in the Province of 
Quebec may withdraw their children from compulsory 
Ethics and Religious Culture instruction. Both critics 
and proponents of the office counseled that Canadians 
and their government would need clearer concepts 
of religious freedom and minority rights, including 
in Canada itself, if it were to function efficiently .19 In 
the United States, financial authorization enabling the 
United States Commission on International Religious 
Freedom lagged in the Senate until the issue was folded 
eventually into a Continuing Resolution on behalf of 
funding for the entire United States Government.
In both countries, demographic and cultural change 
continued to influence attitudes toward religious 
freedom and the rights of religious minorities. Younger 
Americans and younger Canadians continued their 
disassociation from established religious bodies. Among 
younger North Americans, religious affiliation became 
increasingly diverse and transitory. Some analysts 
asserted that these trends may be shifting public-policy 
focus away from religious-community rights and toward 
consensus building and mutual acceptance. Critics 
of that view stressed that rights remain universal and 
their strengthening critical and that the weakening of 
domestic support for freedom of religion and conscience 
threatened to weaken it world-wide. 

-  44  -
the forMer soviet union
Geographic Reach: The region includes all now-sovereign states which were formerly 
constituent republics of the USSR, with the exception of the three Baltic States.
Structural Impediments
(These factors impinging negatively upon the circumstances of minority religious communities were 
identified in the First Freedom Center’s 2011 Report.)
• Discrimination against “non-traditional” religions: Official distinctions between “traditional” and 
“non-traditional” faiths create wide disparities between the two categories in legal, property, financial, 
and educational privileges.
• Controls on interaction with foreign co-religionists: Most countries exercise severe controls on the 
granting of visas to foreign religious workers, on travel abroad for religious purposes by adherents to 
religious communities, on the flow of funding for religious communities from foreign sources, and on the 
importation and distribution of religious literature.
• Restrictive and arbitrary registration regimes: Registration regimes are becoming more restrictive 
and unwelcoming for minority communities.
• Discrimination against religious “extremists”: Minority religious communities which authorities 
and publics disfavor are made subject to anti-terrorism and anti-“extremism” laws and policies.
• Soviet-era regulatory and monitoring bodies: Lineal descendants of Soviet-era security and 
regulatory organs and/or analogous, newly-created bodies often oversee the affairs and the suppression 
of minority religious communities.
• Lack of clarity and consistency in property matters: Restitution of previously nationalized 
communal religious property has been uneven.
• Rejection of international obligations and/or views of international organizations: Most 
countries in the region either re-interpret or ignore human-rights obligations encompassed by the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related conventions.
• Impunity: Acts of violence, harassment, theft, and intimidation against minority communities and 
their adherents often go unprosecuted.
• Banning: Many religious communities are specifically banned.
• Controls on religious indoctrination of children: Several countries severely control the involvement 
of minors in religious activities.
• Officially tolerated hate speech: Public warnings from government leaders and official media about 
“sects” and “foreign religions” cast minority religious communities in an extremely negative light.

-  45  -
Countries of the former Soviet Union regressed 
noticeably during the reporting period in their treatment 
of minority religious communities. Concerted efforts, 
both in legislation and in implementation and policing, 
to strengthen state regulation of what people believe, 
express, and share with respect to matters of religion and 
conscience made manifest the direct correlation between 
such authoritarian tendencies and severe weakening of 
the rule of law. Several countries which come under the 
purview of the Council of Europe and the European 
Court of Human Rights showed strong tendencies to 
ignore the court’s rulings. Somewhat encouragingly, 
the Russian Supreme Court instructed prosecutors 
to construe the country’s laws against “extremism” 
narrowly, but there was little evidence by year’s end 
that the instruction had had impact. Somewhat more 
encouragingly still, an amendment to existing Georgian 
law on religious communities made possible the official 
registration and legalization of any religious community 
recognized by any other member government of the 
Council of Europe.
key developMents
The climate for minority religious communities grew 
palpably worse in 2010 in all of the former Soviet 
republics save Georgia and the Baltics. The most 
powerful and influential of them, Russia, provided a 
paradigm. In a November analysis in The Christian 
Century, Jonathan Luxmore highlighted increasing 
police raids against communities, ever-expanding 
use against communities of laws against “extremism,” 
coordination of approaches to minorities with leading 
figures of the Russian Orthodox Church, and a decline 
in the international community’s willingness to hold 
Russia to account for its lapses as major points of origin 
for the current tightening of the state’s grip.1 Central 
Asian states also regressed. In a detailed review of 
religious freedom in Tajikistan prepared on the eve of 
the UN Human Rights Council’s October Universal 
Periodic Review of that country, Forum 18 News 
Service found that proposed, pervasive new restrictions 
on religious activity by persons under 18 years of age 
(since passed into law), the targeting for prosecution of 
all religious activity on the parts of Muslims, Christians, 
Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others not expressly pre-
approved by the state, wide-spread demolitions and 
closures of places of worship, outright bans on several 
communities, increasing limitations on the right to share 
beliefs, and tightening censorship – among other factors 
– had helped to worsen the climate for communities.2
To be sure, Tajik authorities confronted real terrorism, 
including a spate of actual terrorist bombings and clashes 
with militants, but, in Tajikistan, Russia, Belarus and 
elsewhere, laws intended nominally for the constraining 
of political terrorism provided an all-too-convenient 
mechanism for the repression of cultural and religious 
non-conformity. In the Caucasus, both Armenia and 
Azerbaijan tightened controls as well.
Growing authoritarianism translated into derogations 
from the rule of law in key areas:
■■ Abuse of due process: Police and security personnel 
across most of the region – sometimes specifically-
designated anti-terror and anti-riot units – entered 
premises, searched places of worship, offices, and 
homes, and seized equipment, funds, and literature 
– without warrants. Sometimes during these raids, 
personnel reportedly resorted to unwarranted 
violence. In February, when Russian police arrested 
Woman being baptized by a Russian Orthodox priest in Sevastopol.
(Credit:  02varvara.wordpress.com)

-  46  -
Azeri national Rashid Abdullov for reading the 
banned works of Islamic writer Said Nursi in 
Ulyanovsk, they reportedly committed violence 
against others, including children.3 Even considering 
that some evidence suggests that Nursi readers have 
in some instances been associated with separatism, 
the actions of security personnel in dealing with 
them seem difficult to justify. Some arrests were 
carried out without citation of an existent statute. 
Also in February, an Armenian prosecutor charged 
a Pentecostal clergyman with “obstructing the 
lawful professional practices of a journalist” when 
the pastor asked an inimical television crew which 
had invaded Sunday services to leave the premises .4 
In July, Kazakh police arrested Protestant pastor 
Yerzhan Ushanov for “hypnotizing by prayer” a sick 
parishioner.5 In numerous instances, members of 
minority communities were informed of fines and 
punishments levied against them following court 
proceedings of which they had not been notified.
■■ Falsification of evidence: In Uzbekistan in August, 
defense attorneys offered extensive evidence and 
testimony as to the outright fabrication by the state of 
evidence alleging financial irregularities on the part 
of a Baptist community, to no avail. 6 In the course 
of at least two raids on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ homes 
during the year, Kyrgyz police reportedly planted 
DVDs containing Islamic terrorist content, one 
featuring statements by members of the outlawed 
Islamic terrorist group Hizb-ut-Tahir.7
■■ Arrest without charge: According to the Russian 
human-rights center Memorial, Russian authorities 
increasingly during 2011 simply kidnapped without 
charge ordinary Muslims from the North Caucasus 
in order to demonstrate effective action against 
“extremists.” While it was unclear whether the 
victims caught the authorities’ eyes by virtue of their 
religion or of their ethnicity, the two appear to have 
become more or less conflated.8
■■ Threats to attorneys and contracting parties: 
According to Forum 18, Russian authorities 
“quietly” threatened defense lawyers with adverse 
actions affecting their careers during April cases 
involving Jehovah’s Witnesses and Nursi readers. 9 
In several instances, businesses providing services to 
minority communities in Russia and Central Asia 
were pressed by authorities to cease doing so.
Other questionable practices to which authorities 
reportedly made frequent recourse involved forced self-
incrimination (e.g., requiring communities to complete 
questionnaires reporting how they had combated 
“extremism” within their own ranks, to call authorities 
at regular intervals for the same purpose, or to submit 
to police interviews without the filing in advance of 
charges and without benefit of counsel), the widespread 
denial of prison visitation rights, including by clergy 
(especially in Belarus), denial of medical care to persons 
imprisoned for religious “offenses,” the imposition of 
restrictions on travel and other activities of persons who 
had been acquitted of charges brought against them, and 
disproportionately heavy fines in multiples – sometimes 
as high as 100 – of the legal minimum monthly wage.
Overall worsening of conditions in most of the 
region arguably bespeaks a growing indifference to 
outside opinion. Russia began the year by attempting 
unsuccessfully to influence the Council of Europe to 
accept a Russian-created, twenty-five-point “Road-
Map” document which would have closed out all 
outstanding COE concerns about religious freedom in 
the country.10 Like other countries in the region, during 
the ensuing year Russia effectively ignored several 
decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, 
views and recommendations of the Council of Europe 
and its Venice Commission for Democracy through 
Law, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in 
Europe and its Office for Democratic Institutions and 
Human Rights, and other bodies. Armenian officials 
promised during the year to take Venice Commission 
and ODIHR comments into account in revising 

-  47  -
proposed, restrictive amendments to the country’s laws 
on religion but apparently did not do so. 11 Russian 
authorities took no actions to comply with European 
Court of Human Rights decisions in favor of Jehovah’s 
Witnesses and Scientology communities seeking 
registration and redress from heavy fines. In a major 
ECHR case involving the conscientious-objector status 
of Jehovah’s Witness Vahan Bayatyan, the court decided 
that Armenia was in violation of its international 
obligation to provide alternative service. Armenian 
authorities claimed that draft regulations would remove 
alternative service matters from the control of the 
military, but human-rights advocates were not satisfied 
that they promised to do so.12 Authorities in Azerbaijan 
appear to have ignored entirely an ECHR decision in 
the Jehovah’s Witness conscientious objector case of 
Farid Mammedov.13
Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and other 
countries in the region framed new laws and regulations 
during 2011, significantly increasing restrictions on 
minority communities. Russian draft legislation severely 
restricted the acquisition and distribution of religious 
literature, as did a new law in Tajikisan. 14 The new 
Kazakh Law on Religion required re-registration of 
all previously-registered communities under restrictive 
circumstances requiring, for example, a minimum 
membership of 5,000 for recognition at the national 
level. The law restricts distribution of religious literature, 
the opening of places of worship, and the entry into the 
country of foreign religious workers. It requires that the 
founders of successfully-registered communities be/
have been Kazakh citizens and bans communities which 
“encourage citizens not to carry out legal obligations.”15 
A new Azeri law may have been aimed at halting a re-
registration process mandated and begun in 2009 and 
beginning it all over again. The law stipulates that, to 
qualify for registration, religious communities must 
show that they have fifty adult “founders.” 16 A new 
Tajik Law on Parental Responsibility bans participation 
in any religious activity except funerals by persons under 
18 years of age.17
Without recourse to new legislation, Uzbekistan stood 
out as a major abuser of religious-minority rights. 
Authorities cracked down on everything from Bible 
imports to sales of previously-tolerated religious CDs 
and pamphlets. In their efforts to extirpate readers of 
works of the Turkish Sunni theologian Said Nursi, they 
expelled Turkish businesses and closed Nursi schools. 
They put hundreds of Muslims on trial without evidence 
and imprisoned more of their citizens for religion-
related reasons than did officials of any other country in 
the region.
Both in practice and in legislation, countries in the post-
Soviet region targeted the conditions and the process 
of registration as a means of controlling and stifling 
minority religious communities. Kazakh President 
Nursultan Nazarbayev made clear the objective of 
restricting and delaying registrations when he spoke 
during a public address of “one nation, one religion” 
and the need to create “order.” Nazarbayev has referred 
to “sects” and “destructive religious movements” in 
his characterizations of minority communities. 18 
Russia’s Human Rights Ombudsman, who reportedly 
believes that his country’s criminal and administrative 
approaches to religious communities violate citizens’ and 
organizations’ rights, points to the failure to register the 
New Generation Church in Blagoveshchensk, among 
others, as an example of a violation. 19 Azerbaijan has 
Tajik children may be banned from attending mosques and churches.
(Credit: centralasiaonline.com)

-  48  -
so severely restricted registration that, by 2011, only 
some 150 individual religious communities in the entire 
country were registered.20 Across the region, Council of 
Churches Baptists reject the validity of any registration 
requirement and refuse to apply on the principle that, 
under both international and individual-country norms, 
registration is an option for the procurement of legal 
personality but not a requirement for exercise of rights.21 
This posture has gained individual Baptist communities 
little or no headway in fending off repression.
Denied registration, often despite pervasive and repeated 
efforts, not a few communities faced outright closing. 
Minority and majority communities in Kazakhsatan 
saw the closing of prayer rooms in prisons, hospitals, and 
social institutions.22 Ahmadi facilities across Kazakhstan 
faced closing. 23 In Azerbaijan, the Turkish mosque in 
the Nakichevan enclave was first closed and then given 
to a Shi’a community. Other closings in the country 
involved places of worship with long and well-established 
histories.24 Large-scale closing of mosques and churches 
took place throughout the year in Tajikistan.25
Governments also, both in the legislative initiatives 
described above and otherwise, tightened their grips 
on religious literature. Russia effectively criminalized 
possession and distribution of all Jehovah’s Witnesses 
literature.26 Azerbaijan provided for five-year prison 
sentences for transgressions against the restriction of 
religious literature.27
Anti-Semitic sentiment and actions remained pervasive. 
In Russia, at Rostov on Don, local authorities took a 
decision late in 2011 to replace a memorial plaque to 
Jews killed in the Holocaust with one that mentions only 
“peaceful citizens of Rostov on Don and Soviet prisoners 
of war.” In May, in Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine, vandals 
daubed a swastika on a monument to Holocaust victims 
in the city’s Yury Gagarin Park. There were sporadic acts 
of anti-Semitic violence in Russia and elsewhere.28
It has been the premise of this Report that treatment 
of minority religious communities provides an unusually 
accurate measure of countries’ and societies’ overall 
human-rights climates. The severe and increasing 
restriction in post-Soviet states of the rights of majority 
and minority faith communities and repression of their 
individual members during 2011 clearly delineates the 
overall growth of authoritarianism and movement away 
from universal human-rights norms in the region. 
Thousands of Jamat-ud-Dawa and Sipah-e-Sahaba militants 
participated in the anti-Ahmadi rally in Rawalpindi.
(Credit: Pakistan Blogzine)

-  49  -
P risoners
This year, we offer the innovation of a “representative list” of religious prisoners.  
Most are members of religious minorities in their own lands.
Uzbek religious/political prisoners.
(Credit: myspace.com)

-  50  -
No advocacy or monitoring organization – and, to our 
knowledge, no government – maintains or attempts 
to maintain a representative list of persons in prison 
because of their exercise of rights guaranteed under the 
United Nations Charter, the 1948 Universal Declaration 
of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil 
and Political Rights, or other binding international 
documents, as confirmed by the Vienna Declaration and 
Program of Action – or for advocating those rights. As a 
practical matter, it is not possible accurately to ascertain 
the totality of persons wrongfully imprisoned, especially 
in countries like North Korea and Somalia or, for that 
matter, to obtain complete and reliable information 
about those who have been released from confinement. 
Suffice it to say that hundreds of thousands of persons 
around the world are imprisoned for religious-freedom-
related reasons and that, because of the vast extent of 
this phenomenon, it represents one of the most grievous 
human-rights outrages on earth.
Imprisonment remains widespread, however, and in 
some countries – certainly in China and in Iran – it 
is on the increase. One cannot argue, or even illustrate 
effectively, by simple analogy, but it is at least interesting 
to contemplate the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 
2011 finding that there had been a twenty-percent 
increase in the imprisonment world-wide of journalists, 
year-over-year, since 2010.1
The First Freedom Center, mindful that it is the 
individual circumstances both of minority religious 
communities and of their individual members which most 
concretely illustrate deficiencies in the performance of 
governments and regimes, has compiled a representative 
list of persons who, according to available evidence, have 
been imprisoned because they exercised internationally 
guaranteed rights – whether of free exercise of religion 
or of advocacy of minority human rights. We by no 
means consider it exhaustive. Nor, given the difficulties 
we and our sister organizations experience in amassing 
and analyzing data, do we assert that it is unfailingly 
accurate in all of its details. We do, however, believe 
that imprisonment is an especially important indicator 
of overall oppression and denial of rights. Governments 
and regimes (such as the al-Shabaab network exercising 
effective authority in much of Somalia) resort to 
imprisonment first and foremost to deter the exercise of 
rights by minorities and to instill fear among their wider 
populations. By so doing, they demarcate their own 
distance from compliance with international human-
rights obligations.
We divide our list into two parts: prisoners in 
authoritarian countries and prisoners in culturally 
and religiously intolerant countries. The categories 
overlap, but the motivations for imprisonment and 
oppression differ between the two. Burma/Myanmar 
is an authoritarian country with a Theravada Buddhist 
majority, possibly engaged in a process of reform. We 
adjudge its motivations in imprisoning opponents, 
the most prominent of whom have themselves been 
Buddhists, as authoritarian. Iran is a largely authoritarian 
country organized as an Islamic state. Its widespread 
imprisonment of Baha’i and Christian Iranians who 
do not participate in political activity arises, we believe, 
primarily out of religious intolerance.
Sources for information concerning prisoners and 
imprisonment are uneven in quality. They vary from well-
established human-rights monitoring organizations like 
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to 
denominational monitors to blogs. We have scrutinized 
sources to the best of our ability and, in most cases, have 
been able to verify the assertions of sources we cite with 
at least one other report available to us either on the 
Internet or by other means.
prisoners

-  51  -
ArMeniA
Armenia has, as a member of the 
Council of Europe, several times 
espoused the objective of bringing 
its practices in the matter of 
conscientious objection into 
compliance with decisions of the 
European Court of Human Rights 
and with recommendations of 
the Council’s Venice Commission 
for Democracy through Law. It has not yet done so, 
and the Armenian government’s treatment of Jehovah’s 
Witnesses, both in the matter of military service and 
otherwise, remains problematic. On November 28, a 
court in Yerevan sentenced Andranik Makvetsyan, a 
Jehovah’s Witness, to six years in prison on a charge of 
“disrespectful behavior against the Armenian Church 
and Armenian Society,” arising, apparently, out of the 
accused’s public preaching activities.2
Azerbaijan stands in a comparable posture with respect 
to Witnesses and the findings of pan-European bodies 
to which it is subject. In March, an Azeri court sentenced 
Farid Mammedov to nine years imprisonment for 
failure to meet his military service obligations.3
bAhrAin
Bahrain’s response to unrest among 
its Shi’a populace during 2011 
resulted in numerous detentions, 
notably of health workers, lawyers, 
and demonstrators. Among the 
most prominent was that of Dr. Abdul Jalil Al Singace, 
an advocate of Shi’a rights and a spokesperson for 
the Bahraini human-rights organization Haq, who 
was arrested in August following his return from a 
conference in the British House of Lords on human 
rights in Bahrain. Accused or leading “sabotage cells,” 
he awaits in prison a determination as to whether he will 
face the death penalty.4
burMA/MyAnMAr
Released after the close of the reporting period for this 
report, Ashin Gambira, Buddhist Monk and a leader 
of the 2007 “Saffron Revolution,” endured solitary 
confinement, sleep and food deprivation, beatings, and 
other mistreatment during his imprisonment at the 
Insein Detention Facility. He advocated the rights of all 
Burmese, including those of the Rohynga Muslim and 
Kachin Christian ethnicities.5
ChinA
Chinese arrest, harassment, 
and imprisonment of both 
secular and religious dissidents 
increased markedly during 
2011. For the outside world, the 
continuing detention of Nobel 
laureate human-rights and 
religious-freedom advocate Liu Xiaobo, a key drafter of 
the Charter ’08 human rights manifesto and author of 
more than 800 essays on the rights of Chinese citizens 
and believers, was of enormous interest. Christian 
dissident Yu Jie, Mr. Liu’s good friend, was under house 
arrest and confinement until, after the New Year, he was 
released for travel to the United States. He reportedly 
experienced beatings, cigarette burns, and other forms 
of physical abuse. Mr. Yu recalls a December, 2011 
conversation with a state security officer who claimed 
that there were no more than about 200 “intellectuals” in 
the country who oppose the Communist Party and that 
the state can “capture them all in one night and bury 
them alive.”6
The Cardinal Kung Foundation and other Roman Catholic 
organizations reported the continuing imprisonment 
of prelates and parish priests unrecognized as such by 
the government because of the prisoners’ acceptance of 
Papal authority. Bishops include Shi Enxiang of Yixian 
and Su Zhimin of Baoding. Priests include Father Huo 
Junlong of Baoding, Father Jiang Yanli of Qing Yuan, 
prisoners in AuthoritAriAn stAtes
Andranik Makvetsyan
Dr. Abdul Jalil Al Singace
Liu Xiaobo
(Credit: Voice of America)
ndra

-  52  -
Father Liu Hong Geng of Baoding, Father Lu Genjun 
of Baoding, Father Ma Wuyong of Baoding, Father 
Pang Guangzhao of Baoding, Father Wang Quanjunof 
Baoding, and Father Wang Xiongwei of Qing Yuan. 7 
To these, the Vatican added, in its January, 2012 appeal 
to Chinese President Hu Jintao, Monsignor James Su 
Zhimin, underground Bishop of Baoding, Monsignor 
Cosma Shi Exiang, underground Bishop of Yixian, 
Father  Joseph LU Genjun, underground Vicar General 
of Baoding, and six other priests arrested since 2004. 
The first two prelates on that list have been in detention 
nearly continuously for several decades.8
In the wake of continuing unrest among Muslim Uyghurs 
in western China, detentions continue. Sons of the 
“Mother of All Uyghurs,” Rebiya Kadeer (resident in the 
United States) Ablimin Abdureyim Kadeer and Alim 
Abdureyim Kadeer languish in Urumqi Autonomous 
Region Prisons 3 and 4.9 Gulmire Imin, reportedly 
arrested in July 0f 2009 on a charge of “splitism” for 
advocating on his blog Uyghur demonstrations on behalf 
of political, cultural, and religious rights, is serving a life 
sentence.10
Tibetan Buddhists are also collecting in China’s jails and 
prisons. As far as the outside world knows, the Eleventh 
Pachem Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyimas, arrested at 
the age of 6 in 1995, remains in confinement, although 
he has not been seen since the time of his arrest. Kunga 
Tseyang, whose pen name Gangyi means Son of the 
Snow, was a monk at the 
Labrang Monastery until his 
arrest in 2009. Kunga Tseyang 
is an environmentalist, 
blogger, and film producer, 
and his essay “China Must 
Apologize to His Holiness 
the Dalai Lama” especially 
irritated security personnel. 
Migmar Dhondup, serving a fourteen-year sentence 
for “collecting intelligence concerning the security and 
interests of the state and providing it to the Dalai clique,” 
refused to disavow the Dalai Lama and worked openly 
for the Kunde Foundation. Jigme Guri, a Tibetan monk, 
was arrested August 20, 2011 at a hotel in Kanlho. He 
remains in prison. Police seized his possessions, including 
thirty images of the Dalai Lama. Monks Gyatso Ratsa 
and Lobsang Gendun were arrested November 21 
at the Kitri Monastery, where a recent series of self-
immolations began.11
Arrest and imprisonment of House Church Christians 
also continues. Pastor Almu Jiang Yimiti, a convert from 
Islam to Christianity, received a fifteen-year sentence 
from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region People’s 
Court for “revealing state secrets to overseas groups.” 
He reportedly was present when a foreign journalist 
discussed documents from a Religious Affairs Bureau 
file on another person.12 Shi Enhao, sentenced by police 
without trial in July to two years in a labor camp for 
“organizing illegal religious gatherings,” was Deputy 
Chairman of the country-wide Chinese House Church 
Alliance.13 Fan Yafeng, founder of Christian Human 
Rights Lawyers of China and of the Beijing Shengshan 
Church, Newsweek magazine’s 2005 “Person of the Year 
in Asia,” was placed under house arrest on November 
1.14 Jian Tianyong, a Christian lawyer and tireless 
advocate of religious rights, was seized and imprisoned 
on unknown charges February 19.15
Falun Gong organizations estimate that there may 
be as many as 100,000 mostly unkown Falun Gong 
prisoners in China. During 2011, reports continued 
to circulate that Chinese authorities were conducting 
organ harvesting among that prison populace, a matter 
on which the United Nations 
Committee on Torture had 
requested an investigation 
in November of 2008. Three 
Falun Gong prisoners, Qin 
Yueming, Yu Yungang, and Liu 
Chungjiang reportedly died in 
violent circumstances during 
a lock-down at Jiamusi Prison 
(Credit: Panchen Lama Association)
Yu Yungang

-  53  -
in Heilongjiang Province in February and March. 16 
The whereabouts of attorney Gao Zhisheng, who 
defended Falun Gong and Christian clients before his 
disappearance and presumed imprisonment in 2009, 
remain unknown.
CubA
Cuban authorities released some prominent prisoners of 
religious conscience during 2011. Alan Gross, however, 
a Jewish American contractor administering a USAID-
sponsored project to assist the Cuban Jewish community 
achieve Internet access, remained in prison despite 
appeals by former President Jimmy Carter and former 
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
egypt
Concerned about continuing demonstrations and unrest, 
both the Mubarak regime at the beginning of 2011 and 
the interim military government, thereafter, detained and 
imprisoned Egyptian citizens for activities associated 
with religion as well as with politics. Kareem Amer, 
accused of “atheism,” was reportedly arrested in January 
in connection with posts on his blog deemed “anti-
religious and insulting to President Mubarak.” Released 
on November 17, he was reportedly subsequently once 
again detained and imprisoned.17 Maikel Nabil Sanad, 
was sentenced to three years imprisonment reportedly 
in connection with a blog post on Facebook deemed 
insulting to Islam.18
eritreA
Eritrean authorities continue arresting and detaining 
Evangelical Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses. As of 
October 14, Witness monitors counted 51 of their co-
religionists and dependents in Eritrean prisons at the 
Sawa Camp, the Metir Camp, in Serejjeba, and at the 
Fourth Police Station facility. They ranged in age from 
the 4-year-old girl Yocabed Natnael Ghebreyesus to 
77-year-old Asfaha Haile. Most were arrested during a 
broad sweep of detentions of Witnesses in 2008 and 2009, 
but three, Paulos Eyassu, Isaac Mogos, and Negede 
Tekelmariam had languished in deplorable conditions 
since September 24, 1994. 19 Amnesty International 
estimated as of 2009 that there are approximately 2,000 
Christians in prison in Eritrea.20
north koreA
In its 2011 report, the human-rights group Open 
Doors estimates that there is some 50,000-70,000 
Christians imprisoned in North Korea, mostly in labor 
and concentration camps. 21 Amnesty International 
human-right advocate Sam Zaaifi told CBN News in 
August that “These are places where, based on what we 
understand, two out of every five prisoners die due to 
malnutrition….Food is very scarce, they work at least 
ten hours a day, seven days a week.”22
russiA
Russian authorities continued to apply extremism laws 
in ways which the Russian Supreme Court itself found 
questionable (see the Regional Update on Former Soviet 
Union countries in this report.) This pertained especially 
to readers of the texts of early-twentieth-century Turkish 
Muslim scholar and Quranic commentator Said Nursi. 
Elshan Gasanov and five other Russian citizens were 
sentenced on October 11 by a Nizhny Novgorod court 
to one-year sentences for possessing and reading the 
works of Nursi, actions which the court construed as 
running a “home madrassah.”23
turkMenistAn
Forum 18 reported that eleven Jehovah’s Witnesses and 
one Evangelical Pastor remained in detention at Seydi 
Labor Camp. Witnesses Dorvan Matyakubov, Sunet 
Japbarov, Dovlet Byashimov,  Akhmet Hudaybergenov, 
Mahmud Hudaybergenov, Matkarim Aminov, and 
Dovran Matyakubov are serving eighteen-month to 
two-year sentences. Pastor Ilmurad Nurliev of the 
Light of the World Protestant Church in the town of 
Mary, reportedly denied medication for treatment of his 
diabetes, is serving a four-year sentence for “swindling 
funds,” a charge of which his parishioners say he is 
innocent.24 

-  54  -
uzbekistAn
Uzbek authorities continued detaining and imprisoning 
active and dissident Muslims and at least one Muslim 
convert to Christianity. Two brothers, Dilshodbek 
Amnturdiev and Rutsam Amnturdiev, members of the 
banned Muslim community Hizb ut Tahrir, originally 
sentenced in 1999 and 2000 respectively and resentenced 
in 2008 following the expiration of their original terms 
under charges of “failure to obey the legal requirements 
of the institution,” remain in the Zhaslyk Penal 
Colony.25 Zulikhumor Khaddamova, Mekhriniso 
Khamdamove, and Shakhlo Pakhmatova, three 
Muslim women who participated in prayer meetings at 
their local mosque, were sentenced in April to six-and-
one-half to seven years imprisonment for “attempting to 
overthrow the constitutional order” and “posing a threat 
to public order.”26 According to Amnesty International, 
a series of trials conducted against unnamed readers of 
the writings of Said Nursi on charges of the “creation of 
an illegal extremist order” reportedly resulted by 2010 in 
the sentencing of 114 persons to six to twelve years in 
prison.27 According to the United States Commission 
on International Religious Freedom, in the course of a 
“stepped up government crackdown” beginning in 2010, 
Uzbek authorities imprisoned for six years Hainulla 
Hamidov, a popular television journalist, and six other 
persons for organizing a banned “Muslim extremist” 
group. Hamidov’s broadcasts offered reflections on 
Islam.28
vietnAM
Long-imprisoned and continually harassed human-
rights and religious-freedom activist Father Nguyen 
Van Ly was re-arrested in July, 2011 following a period 
of medical parole. The Roman Catholic priest, who 
reportedly had suffered three strokes and a brain tumor, 
was committed to Ba Sao Prison, five hundred kilometers 
from his home.29 Buddhist dissidents Nguyen Van Lia 
and Tran Hoaian, arrested July 30, 2011, were sentenced 
to five and three years respectively for “abusing 
democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of 
the state” after briefing foreign diplomats and officials 
concerning restrictions on religious freedom and human 
rights in Vietnam.30
prisoners in religiously And CulturAlly intolerAnt stAtes
AlgeriA
Algerian authorities reportedly focused importantly 
during 2011, as in previous years, on combating 
Christian proselytism. Siagh Krimo, a Christian 
convert, was sentenced to five years for “blasphemy” 
following his April 14 arrest, on the insistence of a 
Muslim neighbor in Oran, to whom he had given 
a CD containing Christian material. The neighbor 
reportedly failed to appear at the trial, and the CD 
reportedly was never presented in evidence, but the 
judge nevertheless invoked the maximum penalty. 31
bAnglAdesh
On January 21, 2011, Christian Biblop Marandiwas 
arrested near the facilities of the Bishev Ijtema World 
Muslim Congregation, where he reportedly had 
distributed Christian booklets and tracts, on a charge 
of “creating chaos at a religious gathering.” He received, 
and has appealed, a one-year sentence.32
greeCe
Pentacostalist Christian Emmanuel Damavolitis was 
sentenced in Crete in October to four months for “pros-
elytizing” and is reportedly contemplating an appeal to 
the European Court of Human Rights.33

-  55  -
indiA
As in past years, Hindu nationalists in various locations 
exerted pressure during 2011 on police and court officials 
to prevent and punish conversions and those associated 
with them. Six Christians in Karnataka, identified as 
Appachu, Sharanu, Ganesh, Mani, Raghu, and Mani, 
members of the Full Gospel Church and laborers on a 
coffee plantation, were arrested for “forced conversions” 
and sentenced under Article 295A of the Indian Penal 
Code (“deliberate and malicious acts, intended to offend 
religious or class feelings”) to three-year prison terms for 
“forced conversions.”34
irAn
No country on earth, with the exceptions of North 
Korea and China, imprisons more people for exercising 
universal rights of freedom of religion and conscience 
than Iran, which is a narrowly-intolerant explicitly Shi’a 
Muslim state. According to the most recent reporting of 
Baha’i organizations, at least 103 Baha’i adherents are 
behind bars in Iran. 35 Most prominently, seven major 
Baha’i leaders were arrested in August of 2010 and 
remain in prison. Charged with “espionage for Israel,” 
“insulting religious sanctities,” and “corruption on earth,” 
they have been moved from Ervin to Raja’i Shahr Prison. 
Their case has been raised by United Nations Secretary 
General Ban Ki Moon and by the United Nations 
High Commission for Human Rights as a violation of 
the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil 
and Political Rights. They reportedly languish in poor 
circumstances in small cells with few if any visits. Iranian 
authorities made efforts to ban their lawyers from 
participation in their 2010 trials and have more recently 
reportedly arrested one of the defending attorneys. They 
include Fariba Kamalabadi of Tehran, a developmental 
psychologist and graduate of the Advanced Baha’i 
Studies Institute, Jamoloddin Khanjani of Tehran, 
a former factory owner and member of the National 
Spiritual Association of Baha’is of Iran, Afif Naimi of 
Tehran, a former factory manager and teacher at the 
Baha’i Institute of Higher Education, Saeid Rezaei 
of Tehran, a former agricultural engineer and active 
Baha’i teacher and scholar, Mahvash Sabet of Mashad, 
a former school principal and Director of the Baha’i 
Institute of Higher Education, Behrouz Tavakkoli of 
Tehran, a former government social worker and member 
of the Baha’i Governing Council, and Vahid Tizfam 
of Tehran, an optometrist and former member of the 
Baha’i National Youth Committee.35 Baha’i adherent 
Sahba Rezvani, imprisoned in 2008 with a sentence of 
three years and eight months, held in Ervin Prison, has 
reportedly been denied legally prescribed furloughs and 
medical treatment.36
Arrests and imprisonments of Christians, a 
constitutionally recognized community in Iran, continue. 
In December, 2011, Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani learned 
that Iran’s highest-ranking judge, Ayatollah Sadegh 
Larijani, had ordered that the death penalty invoked 
against him for converting to Christianity be held in 
abeyance for a year. The judge reportedly hoped to provide 
additional time for Nadarkhani to recant and “return” to 
Islam, a faith to which he maintains he never previously 
subscribed.37 Azeri-speaking Christians Vahid Rofegar 
and Reza Kahmamoei, reportedly were arrested on 
July 24, 2011 in Kalibar for carrying Bibles and remain 
imprisoned despite promises of release. Their arrests 
figure in increasing pressures being brought to bear 
on Iran’s Azeri-speaking Christians. 38 House Church 
Christians Mustafa Shokrollahi and Khalil Yahrali of 
Ahwaz, arrested January 15 and temporarily released 
in March, reportedly were to face charges of apostasy, 
punishable by death or imprisonment, when brought to 
trial.39 Mehdi Furutan, a member of the Church of Iran 
transferred from a prison in Shiraz to an underground 
cell in Adelabad Security Prison during 2011, is serving 
a one-year sentence for “crimes against public order,” 
reportedly in connection with alleged proselytism. 40 
Pastor Benham Irani, also of the Church of Iran, who 
had led a congregation in Karaj, began serving a five-
year sentence in October, 2011 for “actions against the 
security of the country.” The text of his verdict defined 
him as an “apostate,” which poses the threat of his being 
assigned a death sentence. 41 In December in Shiraz, 

-  56  -
three additional Christian clergy, Pastor Parviz Khalji, 
Pastor William Belyad, and Pastor Behrouz Sadegh 
Khandjani were sentenced to two, five, and five years 
respectively for “crimes against public order.”42
lAos
Although monitoring organizations reported overall 
improvement in the treatment in Lao cities of religious 
minorities, improvements reportedly lagged in the 
countryside. In Nakoon village and Tonglar village 
in Hinboun District, for example, village authorities 
harassed and arrested Christian converts. Two, identified 
as Pastor Wanna and Pastor Yohan, leaders of House 
Churches, ran afoul of authorities for organizing 
Christmas celebrations. Both are currently imprisoned 
in Khamnouan Provincial Prison and are reportedly 
being pressed to recant their Christian faith.43
MoroCCo
Moroccan authorities also 
continue trying to suppress 
Christian conversion, following 
their efforts in 2010 to expel 
from the country as many 
Christian religious workers as 
they could (see 2011 Report). 
Jamaa Ait Bakrim has served 
five years of a fifteen year 
sentence for “proselytizing.” 44
pAkistAn
Pakistani authorities continue deploying their 
controversial blasphemy law against Christians. Asia 
Noreen Bibi, an illiterate agricultural worker, is, despite 
world attention and many external appeals on her 
behalf, still in the Sheikpura Women’s Prison awaiting 
the appeal of her death sentence. She contends that 
charges instigated against her by a Muslim co-worker 
of making disparaging remarks about the Holy Prophet 
Mohammed are false. Her husband and three children 
visited her on December 22. She maintains that no 
investigative personnel 
have ever interviewed 
her concerning her own 
recollection of events and 
conversations underlying 
the charge against her. 45 
Two Christian prisoners 
charged with blasphemy died under uncertain 
circumstances during 2011. Aslam MasihH died of 
an untreated case of dengue fever on September 9. 
Qamar David died in a Karachi prison in March. Prison 
authorities provided conflicting accounts as to whether 
his death occurred in the prison or in a hospital. He had 
long expressed fears for his life and, following threats 
against his lawyer, the latter had dropped his case.46
Authorities also continue zealously enforcing the 
country’s discriminatory anti-Ahmadiyya law. Tahit 
Ahmad, arrested in 2010 for wearing a T-shirt bearing 
the word “Kalima” (Islamic Creed) – Ahmaddi are 
forbidden by Pakistani law to in any way identify 
themselves as Muslim – remains in prison in Mirpur 
Khas in Sindh. In the same locality, Masood Ahmad 
Chandio, Abdul Razzaq, and Abdul Ghani are serving 
three-year sentences at the instigation of two mullahs.47
sAudi ArAbiA
Eritrean Christian Mussie Eyob is in Briman Prison 
facing a possible death penalty in Jeddah following 
his arrest in February, 2011 on charges of proselytism, 
reportedly arising from conversations he held near a 
mosque. At year’s end, Ismaili Shi’a Saudi Hadi Al 
Mutif had remained in prison for the past 19 years 
following a joke he told concerning Islam when he was 
a teenager, which led to his conviction for blasphemy. 
In 2009, he was given an additional five-year sentence 
for participation in a video interview smuggled out of 
the prison in which he criticized Saudi Arabia’s human-
rights and religious-freedom record. (He was released 
in early 2012, subsequent to the period this Report 
covers.)48
 
 Jamaa Ait Bakrim
Asia Noreen Bibi
(Credit: Christian Freedom International)

-  57  -
Communities Most At Risk
A look at what has transpired during the past year with regard to the seven communities  
we identified as being most at risk of extinction over the coming decade.
Refugee camp in Chad.
(Credit: miafarrow.org)

-  58  -
Last year’s report listed and described seven minority 
religious communities “most at risk” of disappearing 
entirely by 2020, by reason of demographic change, 
political and/or cultural antagonism, violence, or other 
factors. Although in some cases, especially that of the 
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, there were 
significant positive developments during the reporting 
period, the situations of these communities for the 
most part deteriorated further. The dire demographic 
circumstances of the Ecumenical Patriarchate continue 
to threaten its survival, and we find no grounds to 
remove any of the seven communities from our list. 
While brutality and oppression directed against religious 
minorities in many lands over the period since our last 
report has been heart-rending, we have added no new 
communities. We will, however, be looking further 
during the coming year at some individual communities 
or groups whose circumstances might warrant their 
inclusion. One is the Turkish Sunni community in the 
Nakhichevan enclave of Azerbaijan. That community’s 
mosque, its sole facility, has reportedly been reassigned 
for use by a Shi’a community. We also remain watchful 
concerning Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus in Afghanistan.
key developMents
The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople – In 
the section of this report updating 
our Regional Assessment of 
Europe, we discuss the decision of 
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to 
restitute a large number of religious 
properties. While this may benefit 
the Patriarchate materially in some 
measure and provide a basis for 
better cooperation between it and 
the Turkish government overall, it is far from clear that 
it will include the Patriarchate’s former Halki Seminary, 
which remains essential to the community’s survival. 
Although American and other officials have pressed for 
the return of the Halki facility, Prime Minister Erdogan 
has reportedly continued to demand that a “reciprocal” 
gesture be undertaken by the Greek government with 
respect to Muslims in Thrace and elsewhere.1
The Jehovah’s Witnesses of Eritrea – We have 
discovered no information which would in any way 
incline us to believe that circumstances for Witnesses in 
Eritrea have improved. In July, Witnesses learned of the 
death in prison of Misghina Gebretinsae, a sixty-two-
year-old Witness who reportedly had been confined 
solitarily in a metal hut.2 Most of the Witnesses arrested 
and imprisoned without charge during a wide sweep of 
arrests lasting from July of 2008 through June of 2009 
remain imprisoned, including at least two children.3
Jews in the Arab World – We refer the reader also to 
the article in this report by Ambassador Akbar Ahmed 
concerning change in North Africa and the Middle 
East, as well as to the updated Regional Assessment on 
that area.
The first of the large-scale demonstrations which 
threatened authoritarian regimes – in Tunisia – 
reportedly initially aroused anxieties among the country’s 
remaining Jews,4 although these appear subsequently in 
some measure to have subsided. Some Tunisian Jews 
contemplated undertaking extended stays in France or 
immigrating to Israel, but few actually did so. 5 There 
was an inimical demonstration by Salafists and other 
antagonists at the Grand Synagogue and an attack upon 
a Jewish wedding in Djerba. 6 Tunisian Jewish leaders 
met with transitional and newly-elected political leaders, 
however, and received assurances of their safety and 
rights. President Moncef Marzouki called in December 
for the return to Tunisia of all Jews who had emigrated 
during the preceding 20 years. 7 New Tunisian leaders 
reportedly took umbrage at Israel’s encouragement of 
Jewish emigration.8
At the outset of large-scale demonstrations in Egypt, 
both demonstrators and the failing Mubarak regime 
accused one-another of being “stooges” of Israel.9 Unease 
Ecumenical Patriarch

-  59  -
among the country’s few remaining Jews grew, especially 
as the political fortunes of the Muslim Brotherhood 
ascended. An August attack on the Israeli Embassy in 
Cairo and widespread praise for the demonstrator who 
ripped down the Embassy’s Israeli flag aroused further 
anxiety, as did severe Egyptian reaction to altercations 
on the Israeli-Egyptian border near Eilat, in the course 
of which Israeli Defense Forces fired upon and killed 
Egyptian security personnel. Egyptian Jews watched 
carefully for signs that the interim military government 
or the Muslim Brotherhood might advocate abrogation 
of Egypt’s peace agreement with Israel. In December, 
prominent Salafist cleric Yasser Borhami reiterated his 
pronouncement that Jews are “infidels.”
Yemen’s vestigial Jewish community, which saw its 
fortunes as being tied to those of President Saleh, 
watched events with concern, especially as, in the 
country’s south, Salafist and extremist Islamists occupied 
territory. Despite some initial departures, however, few 
Jews left the country, and Jewish leaders called upon 
their followers to remain.10
There was little change in Morocco, where, during 
September, a large, government-sponsored exhibit 
on Moroccan Jewish historic sites and antiquities was 
expanded.11
There were few if any reported instances of violence 
against Jews in Arab lands during the reporting period, 
and a large number of Jewish leaders and community 
members expressed confidence that remaining in place 
was and is a desirable course for them. The slow and 
steady diminishment of these communities continued, 
however, and, in uncertain circumstances, seems like to 
proceed if not accelerate.
The Jews of Venezuela – Hugo Chavez’ continuing 
close embrace of Iran and Ahmed Ahmadinejad aroused 
concern among Venezuelan Jews as did occasional anti-
Semitic rhetoric directed at major opposition figure 
Henrique Capriles Radonski – a practicing Catholic 
but the grandson of Holocaust Survivors. 12 More 
particularly, the airing on 
state radio in May of a 
commentary on Protocols of 
the Elders of Zion, which the 
commentator took at face 
value and recommended 
as an aid to understanding 
Jewish opinion, aroused 
formal protest both by 
the Jewish community’s 
leadership and its friends abroad. 13 During an autumn 
meeting with President Chavez, Jewish leaders provided 
a list of offensive statements and broadcasts and asked 
that the President make clear that his criticisms of 
Israel, with which they requested renewed diplomatic 
relations, were not intended to arouse anti-Semitism. 
Chavez undertook only to “study” these requests. Earlier 
in the year, after former Cuban President Fidel Castro 
had publicly foresworn anti-Semitism, Chavez had done 
the same.14 At the end of 2010, construction began on a 
new synagogue for the Jewish community under intense 
protective security.15 In general, while the exigencies of 
the community’s life intensified its internal coherence, 
emigration continued, not least because of the overall 
violence of life in Caracas and in the country generally.16
The Muslim Masalit of Sudan – We placed the Masalit 
on our list because of the horrendous demographics 
of the Darfur conflict and the rapid dislocation of the 
Henrique Capriles Radonski
(Credit: talcualdigital.com)
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the pre-eminent spiritual leader of Sephardi  
Jews around the world, greets a family of Yemenite immigrants.
(Credit: ISRANET)

-  60  -
regions ethnic minorities. Although the Masalit were still 
numerous, displacement and emigration involved large 
numbers. That circumstance continued during 2011. 
Eighty-three thousand Darfuris, including Masalit, were 
internally displaced and pushed toward Chad during the 
first quarter of the year.17 There was an additional, overall 
destabilization of Darfur and of its living circumstances 
as the formal Doha peace process broke down and the 
parallel, sometimes-contradictory “Political Process” 
involving Sudanese government negotiations with a 
separate group of rebel leaders stumbled forward.18
The Nazarene Christians of Somalia – We placed this 
tiny community on our list because, according to several 
sources, the largest number of Somalis who converted 
to Christianity during the twentieth century cohered 
in the Evangelical Wesleyan Nazarene faith. There are 
reportedly only about 1,000 Christians in Somalia. 
While there have been additional, individual conversions 
to Christianity, including during the current reporting 
period, numbers of Nazarene and other Christians 
continue to fall. In Al-Shabab-controlled territory and 
beyond, as in break-away Somaliland and Puntland, 
violence against Christians continued. At least two 
persons were arrested – and one jailed – for converting 
to Christianity in Somaliland.19 Reports indicate that a 
Christian convert was shot in Shalambad in April. 20 A 
seventeen-year-old Christian convert was beheaded in 
October, after the beheaded body of another had been 
found in early September.21 There were almost certainly 
numerous other attacks. International Christian Concern 
reported systematic starvation of Christian detainees.22
The Sabian Mandeans of Iraq – The Mandean 
Associations Union’s September Human Rights Report 
lists continuing instances of murder and robbery against 
Iraqi Mandeans. It stresses that, if the dispered Sabian 
community is to survive at all, the diaspora will need 
to be collected and resettled somewhere outside Iraq, 
noting that more than eighty-five percent of Iraq’s former 
Mandean population has already left the country.23 The 
United Nations High Commission for Refugees reported 
the disenfranchising effects of Iraq’s Election Law, which 
permits Mandeans to elect a Mandean representative in 
parliament only if they reside in Bagdad – neither their 
traditional home nor the temporary residence of any 
significant portion of the Mandean community. 24 The 
law adds an additional dislocating pressure.
Displaced family in Darfur.
(Credit: pieandcoffee.org)
Mandaean Refugee Boy in Jordan
(Credit: humanrightsinitiative)

-  61  -
Conclusion
A protester carries a crate of Molotov cocktails near Manama, Bahrain.
(Credit: Hasan Jamali/Associated Press)

-  62  -
As the year turned, one of the hopeful signs among so 
many global worries was that integration of countries 
into wider communities can and does still lead to 
positive change. Because Hungary was failing to meet 
the standards of the European Union both in its financial 
and fiscal actions and in its adherence to democracy, the 
EU leadership in Brussels was able to exercise at least 
limited leverage. More dramatically, the new civilian 
government in Burma/Myanmar began taking action on 
prisoner release, the opening up of its electoral system, 
and other matters as it sought relief from sanctions 
and alternatives to its growing dependence on China. 
Sadly, there are many more examples of leaderships 
willing to ignore the protestations of democratic 
countries and human-rights monitors than there are of 
willing reformers. But where leverage exists, it is still a 
precious and valuable commodity, and where it does not, 
opportunities to strengthen it should not be overlooked.
It is the premise of the First Freedom Center that 
freedom of religion and freedom of conscience are, first 
and foremost, aspects of the rule of law as practiced in 
cultures of democratic accountability. Engagement of 
countries and leaders where these fundamental human 
rights are either deficient or non-existent is the sole 
promising means whereby leaders’ interests can become 
enmeshed in processes which affect their human-rights 
performance. It is all well and good to monitor, to “name 
and shame,” and to denounce injustice. But changing a 
country’s human-rights performance means changing 
that country’s overall culture, and that is a daunting task, 
fraught with the risk of failure, likely to provoke charges 
of “imperialism” and other misdeeds.
It is better, we would say, to be for something than it 
is to be purely against something. While we monitor 
and, in what follows, offer suggestions for improvement 
to the United States government as much as we do to 
any other, we reacted positively to American handling 
this year of the matter of “defamation of religion” in the 
United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee, 
where, as in years past, some countries sought to pit 
freedom of religion against freedom of expression, to the 
detriment of both. The United States and its partners 
were successful in advocating a resolution that did not 
proscribe forms of critical speech, but their success 
rested on being open to undertakings which could 
strengthen best practices in combating hatred without 
restricting freedom of expression. The resultant Istanbul 
Process brought together experts from thirty countries 
and from international organizations to discuss practices 
for engaging religious minorities, training officials in 
religious awareness, and enforcing laws which prohibit 
discrimination on the basis of religion or belief. In the 
course of these discussions, leaders and officials who had 
been genuinely concerned about treatment of Islam in 
open media – and about instances in which they believed 
Muslims were being denied fair treatment – were able 
to air their misgivings and help design approaches in 
order at least in some measure to address them. (To be 
sure, the venture left unchanged the Organization of the 
Islamic Conference’s view that speech bans are worthy 
of advocacy and adoption, and, for that reason, one of the 
Editors of this Report dissents from the perspective that 
the approach proved valuable.)
This achievement was an important example. It can 
be a pyrrhic victory to have the law – international 
or otherwise – on your side if you lose the culture. 
Proponents of the rights we work to advance need to 
make far better use of engagement on behalf of changing 
practices toward better adherence to the rule of law. And 
it is not as if there is a dearth of broad-based institutional 
frameworks in which to do so. In 2006, United Nations 
Secretary General Kofi Annan established the United 
Nations Rule of Law Unit, chaired by a Deputy Secretary 
General, for the purpose of coordinating what the UN’s 
specialized agencies and other elements were already 
undertaking to encourage the rule of law and to identify 
further opportunities and objectives. 
Beyond the UN, there are numerous, well-established 
rule-of-law organizations. The International Network to 
Promote the Rule of Law is a global, on-line community 
comprising 1,700 rule-of-law practitioners in 120 
countries and among 300 organizations. Its Advisory 
Council includes senior Western experts like Paddy 
Ashdown and former U.S. diplomat James Dobbins, 
alongside such experts as Satish Nambiar of the 
Universal Service Institute of India and Yash Ghai of the 

-  63  -
Constitution of Kenya Review Commission. The Hague 
Rule of Law Network, an enterprise of The Hague 
Institute for the Internationalization of Law, functions 
as a “networking vehicle” for all who are interested in 
rule-of-law improvements and issues. Its 180 academics 
and senior practitioners are readily accessible to 
governments and NGOs. Among its projects is the 
generation of Coordinated Procedural Guidelines for 
the International Criminal Court, the creation of a 
World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, and country-
specific projects in India, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere. 
The Institute for International Law and Human Rights, 
which has developed out of the experiences of warfare 
and reconstruction in Iraq, has a special focus in its 
human-rights work on minority rights. There are many 
others. In the Organization for Security and Cooperation 
in Europe, the Council of Europe, the Association of 
Southeast Asian Nations, the Organization of American 
States, and elsewhere, there are institutional plug-in-
points for engagement, discussion, and the crafting of 
common approaches on behalf of the rule of law.
What our assessment of all of these venues reveals, 
however, is that freedom of religion and freedom of 
conscience rarely if ever figure on their agendas. We 
could wish that that were otherwise. If the United States 
Government or any other government wishes to make 
progress in this crucially-important but notoriously 
difficult field, practical engagement in such broad-based 
fora could certainly provide additional opportunities for 
progress.
If governments are reluctant to raise freedom of religion 
in these organizations directly, they can at least work 
on matters which materially affect the circumstances 
of minority religious communities – especially police 
and judiciary training. We stressed the need for this in 
our Report last year. Many organizations have a well-
established record of practical work and measures 
which could readily be related to freedom of religion 
and the treatment of minorities. The OSCE Strategic 
Police Matters Unit, as well as its Tolerance and Non-
Discrimination Program, is available for work in all 
OSCE member states. It makes widely available its 
curricular and training products. ASEAN has begun 
work on police training, focused for now primarily upon 
narcotics crime and other organized-crime issues. It held 
its first major conference on police training in Hanoi 
on December 10. If governments and organizations 
increased their exchanges with ASEAN on police 
training, they might broaden its focus to encompass 
issues like standards for search and arrest warrants and 
other practical measures which directly affect minorities.
Improving the standards and performance of courts 
and judges is also very much in the interest of minority 
religious communities. The International Organization 
for Judicial Training, established in 2002, promotes 
rule of law through judicial education. It conducts 
international and regional conferences and exchanges. Its 
five deputy-presidents combine expertise from Morocco, 
Spain, Chile, Australia, and the United States. The 
Commonwealth Judicial Educational Institute, based 
at the Dalhousie Law School in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 
reaches out to the entire Commonwealth and actively 
engages experts and personnel from Commonwealth 
countries. Judicial training figures importantly on 
the agendas several developing countries. With the 
assistance of the World Bank’s Judiciary Performance 
Improvement Project, Kenyan judiciary members and 
international experts gathered in Mombasa in June of 
2008 to found the Kenyan Judiciary Training Institute. 
The OAS devoted prominent attention at its 2001 
Second Summit of the Americas to strengthening justice 
systems and judiciaries, elaborating a recurring series of 
high-level meetings of justice ministers and attorneys 
general to indentify practical measures for strengthening 
the work of judges, prosecutors, and other officials. 
When circumstances require, even some of the most 
egregious violators of religious-freedom rights request 
international assistance in judiciary training. Recently, 
when minority opposition figures were arrested in a 
political confrontation involving accusations about the 
influence of the State of Israel and of Christian clergy, 
the government of the Maldives asked the United 
Nations Human Rights Council for training assistance. 
Although, following the conclusion of our reporting 
period, political circumstances and the rule of law in the 
Maldives deteriorated significantly, the point remains 
valid that judicial training offered a mechanism for 

-  64  -
discussion or courts and the roles of judges. Over the last 
fourteen years, at the request of the Chinese government, 
the British government and the Supreme People’s Court 
of China have cooperated to provide judicial training 
for 79 Chinese judges, although Chinese authorities 
severely limited the focus and access of trainers.
We wander through the organizational topography 
of rule of law, police-training, and judicial-training 
structures for the purpose of underlining how vast a field 
of opportunities exists for doing the kind of thing the 
U.S. Department of State and other governments did in 
handling the defamation-of-religion issue during and 
after 2011’s General Assembly. Engagement, something 
to be for as well as something to be against, opportunities 
to influence change – in laws, and in culture – is the 
chief and hugely unexploited mechanism for bringing 
about improvements in the lots of minority religious 
communities.
But a great deal will depend on the leading role of the 
United States government and the extent to which it 
is willing to perform it. As it has embraced the “Arab 
Spring,” the United States has had comparatively little 
to say about the instances in which that transformation 
has actually worsened – or at least not ameliorated – the 
repression of women. Those and other silences diminish 
the United States’ ability to lead in matters of human 
rights and religious freedom. For that reason, in addition 
to urging engagement and dialogue as we have just 
outlined, we offer two further recommendations:
Internal Organization of the Department of State – During 
the past year, as legislation circulated for the purpose 
of re-authorizing the United States Commission for 
International Religious Freedom, there were efforts 
to re-locate the Ambassador-at-Large position in the 
Department of State devoted to religious freedom, 
specifically to the Office of the Secretary. We believe 
that Congress should entertain legislation to re-locate 
the position in the Office of the Under Secretary for 
Political Affairs. Moreover, both the Under Secretary 
and the Ambassador should be required annually to 
review the circumstances of Countries of Particular 
Concern as recommended by the Commission and 
designated by the Department and report to Congress 
concerning what progress has been made in identifying 
and using available diplomatic and other leverage 
for improving those countries’ freedom-of-religion 
performance. Locating the position and its function in 
the Office of the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, 
the senior official of the Department most responsible 
for the conduct of bilateral and multilateral relations, 
ties freedom-of-religion diplomacy directly to conduct 
of relations, which is the single most meaningful source 
of available leverage on its behalf.
Freedom of Religion Impact Statements – Congress 
should entertain legislation mandating that, when 
an Administration undertakes formal diplomatic 
engagement, in the form of consultation or negotiation, 
with a Country of Particular Concern, the Department 
should be required to submit to the Congress a Freedom 
of Religion Impact Statement no more than three months 
after the inception of such an initiative describing how 
that engagement has improved or sought to improve the 
country’s performance in freedom of religion, especially 
its treatment of minority religious communities.
We are aware of the continuing proliferation of reporting 
requirements to Congress. Tying efforts on behalf of 
freedom of religion more directly to the day-to-day 
conduct of diplomacy seems to us the most effective 
means available for enhancing the United States’ leading 
role. Broad engagement on behalf of rule-of-law issues 
directly affecting religious communities would provide 
additional enhancement.
For our own part, we do not customarily advocate 
improvements in freedom of religion and freedom of 
conscience primarily as a nostrum for combating terrorism 
and violence. Rather, as did Jefferson and as have many 
of the global protagonists of these freedoms whom we 
have honored over the years, we advocate rights because 
that is the right thing to do. If governments and citizens 
genuinely wish to increase stability and prosperity in a 
threatening world, then there is no more practical and 
promising avenue open to them than engagement and 
material accomplishment on behalf of these essential 
First Freedoms. 

-  65  -
Notes
Unrest in Bahrain.
(Credit: AP/Hassan Jamali)

-  66  -
sub-sAhArAn AfriCA
1 “Boko Haram.” The News Machine. Web. 15 November, 2011. <http://www.thenewsmachine.com/top-stories/2011-11-06/
boko-haram/> pp. 1-5.
2 “Nigeria Boko Haram attack ‘kills 63’ in Damaturu.” BBC. Web. 15 November, 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
africa-15605041> p. 1-3. AND “Islamists kill dozens in Nigeria Christmas bombs.” Reuters. Web. 3 January, 2012. <http://www.
reuters.com/article/2011/12/25/us-nigeria-blast-idUSTRE7BO03020111225> pp. 1-2.
3 “Nigeria Boko Haram clashes: ‘Thousands flee Damaturu.’” BBC. Web. 3 January, 2012. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
africa-16344610> pp. 1-3.
4 “Nigeria Christians ‘to defend churches from Boko Haram.’” BBC. Web. 3 January, 2012. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
africa-16350635> pp. 1-3.
5 Leo, Leonard A. and Rev. William Shaw. “In Nigeria, getting away with murder.” Baltimore Sun. Web. 29 January, 2012. <http://
www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-nigeria-20120123,0,6743343.story> pp. 1-2.
7 “Christian Genocide in Somalia.” FrontPage Magazine. Web. 15 December, 2011. <http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/19/
christian-genocide-in-somalia/> p. 1-2. AND “Somali Islamists Prevent starved Christians From Receiving Food Aid.” 
Persecution. Web. 15 September, 2011. <http://www.persecution.org/2011/08/15/somali-islamists-prevent-starved-christians-
from-receiving-food-aid/> p. 1.
7  Gettleman, Jeffrey. “Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine.” New York Times. Web. 6 September, 2011. 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/world/africa/02somalia.html> p. 1.
8 “Islamic Extremists in Somalia Behead 17-year-old Christian.” Compass Direct News. Web. 18 November, 2011. <http://www.
compassdirect.org/english/country/somalia/article_122124.html> pp. 1-2.
9 McGuire, Michael. “Persecution of Christians continues in Eritrea, clerics charge.” Examiner. Web. 29 January, 2012. <http://
www.examiner.com/united-nations-in-national/persecution-of-christians-continues-eritrea-clerics-charge> p. 1.10 “Kunouga gets control.” The Zimbabwean. Web. 16 December, 2011. <http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/news/
zimbabwe/51774/kunonga-gets-control.html> p. 1.
11 Butt, Riazat and David Smith. “Rowan Williams takes Mugabe to task in Zimbabwe sermon.” The Guardian. Web. 10 October, 
2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/09/rowan-williams-zimbabwe-mugabe-sermon> p. 1-3. AND Smith, David. 
“Robert Mugabe offers Rowan Williams tea but little sympathy.” The Guardian. Web. 10 October, 2011. <http://www.guardian.
co.uk/world/2011/oct/10/robert-mugabe-offers-rowan-williams> pp. 1-2.
12 “Ethiopia’s tyrant incites religious clash; 5 churches burned. Ethiopian Review. Web. 14 September, 2011. <http://www.
ethiopianreview.com/content/32041> p. 1-2. AND “In Ethiopia, dozens of Christian churches, among them Adventist, 
burned in interfaith violence.” Adventist News Service. Web. 14 September, 2011. <http://news.adventist.org/en/archive/
articles/2011/03/10/in-ethiopia-dozens-of-christian-churches-among-them-adventist-burned-in-int> pp. 1-2.
13 “Bashir says Sudan will adopt Islamic constitution.” Reuters. Web. 15 October, 2011. <http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/
idAFJOE79C00F20111013> p. 1. AND “Sudan To Write Islamic Constitution.” Persecution. Web. 3 November, 2011. < http://
www.persecution.org/2011/10/24/sudan-to-write-islamic-constitution/> p. 1-2. AND “Kidnappings, Shrinking Finances: 
Sudan’s Christians Reveal Fears.” Persecution. Web. 29 January, 2012. <http://www.persecution.org/2011/12/23/kidnappings-
shrinking-finances-sudans-christians-reveal-fears/> pp. 2-3.
14 “Officials in Sudan Threaten to Raze Three Church Buildings.” Compass Direct News. Web. 15 October, 2011. Web. 15 October, 
2011. <http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/sudan/article_121869.html> pp. 1-2.
15 Pendergrass, Jordan. “Justice Zakeria Delivers Symposium 2011 Keynote Address.” International Center for Law and Religious 
Studies. Web. 29 January, 2012. <http://iclrs.org/index.php?pageId=2&contentId=19&blurbId=1469> p. 1.
16 “Zambia” in July-December, 2010 International Religious Freedom Report. Department of State. Web. 15 October, 2011. <http://
www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2010_5/168437.htm> p. 2. AND “Zambia Will Be Governed By Biblical 10 Commandments 
– New President Sata.” Vibe Ghana. 3 October, 2011. <http://vibeghana.com/2011/09/25/zambia-will-be-governed-by-
biblical10-commandments-new-president-sata/> p. 1.

-  67  -
AsiA And oCeAniA
1 “Inner Mongolia, 21 Protestant leaders arrested.” Asia News. Web. 13 September, 2011. <http://www.asianews.it/news-en/
Inner-Mongolia,-21-Protestant-leaders-arrested-22445.html> p. 1.
2 “Religious Freedom Worsens in China.” VOA News. Web. 28 September, 2011. <http://www.voanews.com/policy/editorials/
asia/Religious-Freedom-Worsens-In-China-130288573.html> pp. 1-2.
3  “China: End Crackdown on Tibetan Monasteries.” Human Rights Watch. Web. 3 November, 2011. <http://www.hrw.org/
news/2011/10/12/china-end-crackdown-tibetan-monasteries> pp. 1-3.
4 Gurubackarya, Binaj. “Tibetan Monk Reportedly Sets Self on Fire to Protest China.” Huffington Post. Web. 3 December, 2011. 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/10/tibetan-monk-fire_n_1085540.html> p. 1. AND “Exile Tibetan monk sets on 
fire.” Tibet Express. Web. 3 December, 2011. <www.tibetexpress.net/en/news/exile/6973-2011-11-10-03-09-41> p. 1.
5 “Religious freedom in China at lowest point since Tiananmen Square crackdown.” China Aid. Web. 3 December, 2011. <http://
www.chinaaid.org/2011/11/religious-freedom-in-china-at-lowest.html > p. 1.
6  “Rights group slams Vietnam on religious freedom.” Associated Press in Chapel Hill Herald Sun. Web. 6 August, 2011. <http://
www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/12564130/article-Rights-group-slams-Vietnam-on-religious-freedom> p. 1.
7 Benge, Michael. “What Religious Freedom Means in Vietnam.” American Thinker. Web. 11 August, 2011. <http://www.
americanthinker.com/2011/06/what_religious_freedom_means_in_vietnam.html> pp. 1-2.
8 “Laos, Vietnam troops kill four Hmong Christians: NGO.” Agence France Presse. Web. 3 August, 2011. <http://www.google.
com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5idxNnRhkVWwnlTrzWBGgekWQhYLQ> p. 1.
9 “Vietnam: Free Religious Activists Immediately.” Human Rights Watch. Web. 3 October, 2011. <http://www.hrw.org/
news/2011/09/30/vietnam-free-religious-activists-immediately> pp. 1-2.
10 “Vietnam: Catholics arrested during land rally.” UNHCR. Web. 15 December, 2011. <http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,464
db4f52,464dbda12,4ee9f17dc,0,,,.html> pp. 1-2.
11  “Savannakhet Provincial Authorities Unlawfully Seized a Building of 50 Years Old Church.” Human Rights Watch for Lao 
Religious Freedom. Web. 27 January, 2012. <http://www.laohomelao.activeboard.com/t47293829/human-rights-watch-for-lao-
religious-freedom-hrwlrf/> pp. 1-2.
12 Teoh, Shannon. “Malaysia has ‘very high’ religious restrictions, says report.” 4 Freedoms Community. Web. 3 November, 2011. 
<http://4freedoms.ning.com/group/maps/forum/topics/pew-updates-its-report-on-religious-persecution> p. 1. 
13 “Malaysia’s security law will restrict religious freedom.” (Hong Kong) Sunday Examiner. Web. 27 January, 2012. <http://
sundayex.catholic.org.hk/node/267> p. 1.
14 “Fiji: Government cracks down further – only Sunday worship allowed.” The Methodist Church in Britain. Web. 3 September, 
2011. <http://www.methodist.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=opentogod.newsDetail&newsid=527> p. 1.
15 “USCIRF Annual Report 2011 – The Commission’s Watch List: India.” UNHCR. Web. 6 September, 2011. < http://www.
unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,IND,,4dbe90bac,0.html> pp. 1-14.
16  “Forum addresses freedom of religion.” UCANEWS. Web. 3 November, 2011. <http://www.ucanews.com/2011/10/13/forum-
addresses-freedom-of-religion/> pp. 1-2.
17 “Christianity Surging in India?” The American Interest. Web. 4 September, 2011. < http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/
wrm/2011/07/17/christianity-surging-in-india/> p. 1.
18 “Muslim Extremists in India Attack, Threaten Christian Women.” Compass Direct News. Web. 3 September, 2011. < http://
www.compassdirect.org/english/country/india/article_116022.html> pp. 1-2.

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19 “India Briefs: Recent Incidents of Persecution.” Compass Direct News. Web. 3 September, 2011. < http://www.compassdirect.org/
english/country/india/article_111500.html> p. 1.
20 “Christians in India Face Widespread Persecution.” Persecution. Web. 13 December, 2011. < http://www.persecution.
org/2011/04/29/christians-in-india-face-widespread-persecution/> pp. 2-3.
21 “Indonesian authorities must investigate Ahmadiyya killings.” Amnesty International. Web. 3 August, 2011. <http://www.
amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/indonesian-authorities-must-investigate-ahmadiyya-killings-2011-02-07> p. 1. AND 
“Indonesian court lets anti-Ahmadi mob perpetrators off ‘lightly.’” The Express Tribune. Web. 3 August, 2011. <http://tribune.
com.pk/story/219368/indonesian-court-lets-anti-ahmadi-mob-perpetrators-off-lightly/> p. 1.
22 “Indonesia Pentecost Church Pastor Arrested.” International Human Rights Group. Web. 3 November, 2011. <http://ihrg.org/
indonesia-pentecost-church-pastor-arrested> pp. 1-2.
23 Khan, Jibran. “Punjab: Muslim Extremists attack, forcing Christian families to flee.” Asia News. Web. 7 August, 2011. <http://
www.asianews.it/news-en/Punjab:-Muslim-extremists-attack,-forcing-Christian-families-to-flee-21443.html> pp. 1-2. 
24 Shank, Amy. “Call for Bible ban in Pakistan concerns Christians.” Christian Today. Web. 15 August, 2011. <http://www.
christiantoday.com/article/call.for.bible.ban.in.pakistan.concerns.christians/28145.htm> p. 1-2. AND “Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam 
calls for ban on Holy Bible.” Life of a Pakistani Christian (blog). Web. 3 August, 2011. <http://lifeofapakistanichristian.blogspot.
com/2011/06/jamiat-ulema-e-islam-calls-for-ban-on.html> pp. 1-2.
25 Khan, Jibran. “Pakistani Christians ‘number one target’ after death of Bin Laden.” Asia News. Web. 3 August, 2011. <http://
www.asianews.it/news-en/Pakistani-Christians-number-one-target-after-the-death-of-Bin-Laden-21603.html> p. 1.
26 “Pakistan: Prevent Targeted Killings of Shia Muslims.” Human Rights Watch. Web. 3 November, 2011. <http://www.hrw.org/
news/2011/10/04/pakistan-prevent-targeted-killings-shia-muslims> pp. 1-2.
27 “Pakistan: Thirteen killed in attack on bus near Quetta.” BBC. Web. 3 November, 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
south-asia-15162605> pp. 1-2.
28 Mora, Edwin. “Not a Single Christian Church left in Afghanistan, Says State Department.” CNS News. Web. 18 October, 2011. 
<http://cnsnews.com/news/article/not-single-christian-church-left-afghanistan-says-state-department> pp. 1-2.
29 Johnstone, Eleanor. “Indian teacher arrested after religious hymns found on school laptop.” Minivan News. Web. 15 October, 
2011. <http://minivannews.com/society/indian-teacher-arrested-after-religious-hymns-found-on-school-laptop-26793> p. 1.
30 Robinson, J.J. and Eleanor Johnstone. “Maldivian Islamic groups call for arrest of UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.” 
Minivan News. Web. 3 December, 2011. <http://minivannews.com/politics/maldivian-islamic-groups-call-for-arrest-of-un-
high-commissioner-on-human-rights-28676> p. 1.
europe
1 Ritter, Karl. “Europe’s radical right focuses on fighting Islam.” World Wide Religious News. Web. 16 December, 2011. <http://
wwrn.org/articles/36623/?place=scandinavia> pp. 1-4.
2 “French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo attacked in Paris.” BBC. Web. 2 November, 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
europe-15550350> pp. 1-2.
3 “German Islam Meeting Sparks Criticism.” On Islam. Web. 23 September, 2011. <http://www.onislam.net/english/news/
europe/452786-german-islam-meeting-sparks-criticism.html> p. 1.
4 Navasky, Victor S. “Why Are Political Cartoons Incendiary?” New York Times. Web. 14 November, 2011. <http://www.nytimes.
com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/why-are-political-cartoons-incendiary.html> p. 1.

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5 Waterfield, Bruno, “EU wants to label ritually slaughtered meat ‘slaughter without stunning.’” The Telegraph. Web. 7 December, 
2011. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8461697/EU-wants-to-label-ritually-slaughtered-meat-
slaughter-without-stunning.html> pp. 1-3. AND Najibullah, Farangis, “Dutch Move To Ban Kosher, Halal Slaughter.” 
Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty. Web. 7 December, 2011. <http://www.rferl.org/content/halal_kosher_jews_muslims_the_
netherlands/24251249.html> pp. 1-3.
6 “French court hands down first “burqa ban” fines.” Reuters. Web. 9 November, 2011. <http://blogs.reuters.com/
faithworld/2011/09/22/french-court-hands-down-first-burqa-ban-fines/> pp. 1-2. AND “Brussels: Judge rules niqab fine 
illegal.” Islam In Europe. Web. <http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2011/01/brussels-judge-rules-niqab-fine-illegal.html> p. 1.
7 Lechleitner, Elizabeth. “Reintroduced law again jeopardizing status of some churches in Hungary.” ADVENTIST NEWS 
NETWORK. Web. 31 January, 2012. <http://news.adventist.org/en/archive/articles/2012/01/09/reintroduced-law-again-
jeopardizing-status-of-some-churches-in-hungary> p. 1.
8 “Hungarian court strikes down controversial Religious Law.” Christian News Updates. Web. 20 December, 2011. <http://
christiannewsupdates.com/denominations/2011/12/hungarian-court-strikes-down-controversial-religious-law.html> p. 1.
9 da Polis, Nat. “Historic decision: Erdogan returns seized property to religious minorities.” Asia News. Web. 7 December, 2011. < 
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Historic-decision:-Erdogan-returns-seized-property-to-religious-minorities-22481.html> pp. 
1-2.
10 Yildirim, Mine and Dr. Otmar Oehring, “What Does Turkey’s Restitution Decree Mean?” F18News. Web. 14 November, 2011. 
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1621> pp. 1-11.
11 Yidirim, Mine. “Turkey contemplates freedom of religion in constitution draft.” Energy Publisher. Web. 29 December, 2011. 
<http://www.energypublisher.com/a/ZTUFXBYNWR12/64600-Turkey-contemplates-freedom-of-religion-in-constitution-
draft> pp.1-7. AND Yildirim, Mine. “Turkey: can a new constitution solve religious freedom problems?” F18News. Web. 7 
December, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1585> pp. 1-3.
12 “Council of Europe wants better protection of minorities’ rights.” Today’s Zaman. Web. 7 December, 2011. <http://www.
todayszaman.com/news-234471-council-of-europe-wants-better-protection-of-minorities-rights.html> pp. 1-2.
13 Kirchner,Stafan. “Refusal to perform compulsory military service: Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Human Rights Lawyer, EU blog. Web. 
12 January, 2012. <http://iloapp.humanrightslawyer.eu/blog/blog?Home&post=221> p. 1.
14 “Judges make ruling in Swiss ‘minarets’ row.” Human Rights Europe. Web. 19 December, 2011. <http://www.humanrightseurope.
org/2011/07/judges-make-ruling-in-swiss-minarets-row/> p. 1.
15 “European Court of Human Rights Vindicates Jehovah’s Witnesses in France.” Jehovah’s Witnesses Official Media Website. Web. 7 
December, 2011. <http://www.jw-media.org/fra/20110630.htm> p. 1.
16 Borellia, Silvia. “Towards a Less Secular Europe? The Decision of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human 
Rights in Lautsi v. Italy.” American Society of International Law. Web. 15 September, 2011. <http://www.asil.org/insights110512.
cfm> p. 1.
17 Thornton, Joel. “A ‘Sad Day’ for Religious Freedom in Greece.” International Human Rights Group. Web. 30 December, 2011. 
<http://ihrg.org/religious-freedom-in-greece> pp. 1-2.
18 Albayrak, Aydin. “Turks of Western Thrace still struggling for rights, recognition.” Today’s Zaman. Web. 3 December, 2011. 
<http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=263318> pp. 1-3.
19 “Antisemitic placard promotes the capital.” Antisemitism. Web. 30 December, 2011. <http://antisemitism.org.il/article/69085/
antisemitic-placard-promotes-capital> p. 1. AND “Warsaw Municipality halted distribution of Antisemitic calendar.” 
Antisemitism. Web. 30 December, 2011. <http://antisemitism.org.il/article/69093/warsaw-municipality-halted-distribution-
antisemitic-calendar> p. 1.
20 “Participants at OSCE meeting call for more decisive steps to confront anti-Semitism in public discourse.” OSCE. Web. 15 
August, 2011. <http://www.osce.org/odihr/76202> pp. 1-2.

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21 Holdren, Alan. “Celebrating 40 years of dialogue, Catholics and Jews commit to defending religious freedom.” Catholic News 
Agency. Web. 6 December, 2011. <http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/celebrating-40-years-of-dialogue-catholics-and-
jews-commit-to-defending-religious-freedom/> pp. 1-3.
22 Millar, A. “Law in Austria: Guilty for Questioning Islam.” International Free Press Society. Web. 16 September, 2011. <http://
www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2011/03/law-in-austria-guilty-for-questioning-islam/> pp. 1-2.
lAtin AMeriCA And the CAribbeAn
1 “Catholic and Protestant churches fight for members in Brazil.” Deutsche Presse-Agenfur in Worldwide Religious News Service. 
Web. 14 November, 2011. <http://wwrn.org/articles/36479/?&place=south-america> pp. 1-2. AND “Brazil’s Roman Catholics 
shrink as Secular Rise.” Associated Press in Worldwide Religious News Service. Web. 14 November, 2011. <http://wwrn.org/
articles/36325/?&place=south-america> pp. 1-3.
2 “Religious freedom gains new profile in South America.” Adventist Liberty. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://www.
adventistliberty.org/index.php?id=45> p. 1.
3 “Religious tolerance takes center stage on Copacabana Beach.” NTN24 News. Web. 4 November, 2011. <http://www.ntn24.
com/news/videos/religious-tolerance-takes-center-stage-copacabana-beach> pp. 1-2.
4 Lozano, Raul. “Southern Mexico’s religious liberty forum spotlights local challenges to freedom of belief.” Adventist News 
Network. Web. 4 November, 2011. <http://news.adventist.org/2011/07/southern-mexicos-rel.html> pp. 1-2.
5 “Just-concluded B’nai B’rith International Policy Conference, First in Latin America, Addressed Delegitimization of Israel, 
Iranian Threats, Global Anti-Semitism.” B’nai B’rith. Web. 15 December, 2011. <http://www.bnaibrith.org/latest_news/
PolicyConference120611.cfm> pp. 1-3.
6 Burbach, Christopher. “Cuban religious freedom rising.” Omaha World Herald. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://www.omaha.
com/article/20110513/NEWS01/705139922> pp. 1-2.
7 “Bishops Welcome New Obama Policies on Cuba, Express Hope.” – News release. UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF 
CATHOLIC BISHOPS. Web. <http://www.usccb.org/news/2011/11-013.cfm> p. 1. AND Kuhn, Josef. “US, Cuban Church 
Leaders Seek “Normalized Relations.’” Eurasia Review. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://www.eurasiareview.com/08122011-us-
cuban-church-leaders-seek-normalized-relations/> pp. 1-3.
8 “CUBA: Dr. Oscar Biscet released from prison.” Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://dynamic.csw.
org.uk/article.asp?t=news&id=977> pp. 1-2.
9 “CUBA: Family of pastor Omar Gude Perez blocked from leaving Cuba.” Christian Solidarity Network. Web. 8 December. 2011. 
<http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/article.asp?t=news&id=1087> pp. 1-2.  
AND “CUBA: Pastor Omar Gude Perez and family granted asylum in the United States.” Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Web. 
8 December, 2011. <http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/article.asp?t=news&id=1046> pp. 1-2.
10 “CUBA: Three pastors detained and interrogated.” Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://dynamic.
csw.org.uk/article.asp?t=news&id=1003> pp.1-2. AND “CUBA: Pastor detained over support for expelled leader.” Christian 
Solidarity Worldwide. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/article.asp?t=news&id=1028> pp. 1-2.
11 “CUBA: Thriving church requests CSW’s urgent prayer and letters.” Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Web. 8 December, 2011. 
<http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/article.asp?t=news&id=1000> pp. 1-2.
12 “Top Cuban official admits targeted Christian persecution.” Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://
dynamic.csw.org.uk/article.asp?t=news&id=939> p. 1.
13 “CUBA Summary of concerns.” Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/article.
asp?t=report&id=145> pp. 1-2.

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14 “Venezuela 2011 Chapter Summary.” United Stated Commission on International Religious Freedom. Web. 8 December, 2011. 
<http://www.uscirf.gov/government-relations/other-advocacy-materials/3403-venezuela.html> pp. 1-2.
15 Ibid., p. 1.
 16 “Venezuela Bishops Decry Attacks on Religious Images.” Zenit. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://www.zenit.org/
rssenglish-32782> pp. 1-2.
17 “Venezuelan Jews protest broadcast of “Protocols.’” JTA News Service. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://www.jta.org/news/
article/2011/05/25/3087870/venezuelan-jews-protest-anti-semitic-broadcast> p.2. AND “B’nai B’rith calls for Response to 
Anti-Semitism on Venezuelan TV.” JSpace. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://www.jspace.com/news/articles/b-nai-b-rith-calls-
for-response-to-anti-semitism-on-venezuelan-tv/5596> pp. 1-2.
18 “Latin America Condemns Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism in Religion.” Fox News. Web. 9 December, 2011. <http://latino.
foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/12/06/latin-american-parliment-signs-resolution-against-anti-semtism/> p. 5.
19 “Reports show Argentina with an anti-Semitism problem.” JTA News Service. Web. 9 December, 2011. <http://www.jta.org/
news/article/2011/10/06/3089737/reports-show-anti-semitism-problem-in-argentina> pp. 2-3.
20 “After turmoil, Adventists in Chiapas make plans to celebrate religious freedom.” Adventist Liberty. Web. 9 December, 2011. 
<http://www.adventistliberty.org/index.php?id=48> p.1. AND “Religious Communities Agree to Promote Religious Freedom 
in Mexican Dispute.” BCNN1 News Service. Web. 9 December, 2011. <http://www.blackchristiannews.com/news/2011/10/
religious-communities-agree-to-promote-religious-freedom-in-mexican-dispute.html> pp. 1-2.
the Middle eAst And north AfriCA
1 Nelson, Fraser. “We can’t ignore the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.” Spectator. Web. 27 December, 2011. <http://
www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7516508/we-cant-ignore-the-persecution-of-christians-in-the-middle-east.thtml> pp. 1-2
2 Namazie, Maryam. “For a free and secular Middle East and North Africa. EveryOne Group for International Cooperation on 
Human Rights Culture. Web. 18 November, 2011. <http://www.everyonegroup.com/EveryOne/MainPage/Entries/2011/11/3_
For_a_free_and_secular_Middle_East_and_North_Africa.html> p. 1.
3 Gresh, Alain. “Upheaval Across the Middle East.”: Middle East Online. Web. 7 December, 2011. <http://www.middle-east-
online.com/english/?id=49399> p. 1
4 “Anti-Christian Violence in Muslim World.” Boston University. Web. 23 September, 2011.<http://www.bu.edu/today/2011/anti-
christian-violence-in-muslim-world/> p. 1.
5 Kirkpatrick, David D. “Egypt’s Vote Puts Emphasis on Split Over Religious Rule.” New York Times. Web. 4 December, 
2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/world/middleeast/egypts-vote-propels-islamic-law-into-spotlight.
html?pagewanted=all> p. 1
6 “Archbishop fears for Christians in Middle East.” BBC. Web. 30 January, 2012. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16111973> p. 1
7 Werthmuller, Kurt J. “Copt’s Murder a Test of Egypt’s New Anti-Discrimination Law.” National Review Online. Web. 15 
December, 2011. <http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/281728/copts-murder-test-egypts-new-anti-discrimination-law-
kurt-j-werthmuller> pp. 1-2.
8 Shea, Nina. “Sunni Muslim Center Ends Dialogue with Vatican.” National Review Online. Web. 7 December, 2011. <http://
www.nationalreview.com/corner/257637/sunni-muslim-center-ends-dialogue-vatican-nina-shea> p. 1.
9 “Mosque in northern Israel in ‘price tag’ arson attack.” BBC. Web. 3 October, 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-
east-15147840> p. 1.

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10 “Discrimination, threats and violence still prevent Iraq’s minorities from accessing public services – MRG’s new report.” 
AlertNet. Web. 29 November, 2011. <http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/discrimination-threats-and-violence-still-prevent-
iraqs-minorities-from-accessing-public-services-mrgs-new-report> p. 1.
11 “Midnight Masses canceled in Iraq because of growing security concerns.” Catholic News Service. Web. 22 December, 2011. 
<http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1105024.htm> p. 1.
12 “UN religious freedom expert: Iran is systematically persecuting Baha’is.” Baha’i World News Service. Web. 11 November, 2011. 
<http://news.bahai.org/story/862> p. 1.
13 “ ‘Baha’i Question’ cited at European Parliament human rights hearing.” Baha’i World News Service. Web. 23 September, 2011. 
<http://news.bahai.org/story/830> p. 1.
14 Choksy, Jamsheed K. “How Iran persecutes its oldest religion.” CNN. Web. 14 November, 2011. <http://www.cnn.
com/2011/11/14/opinion/choksy-iran-zoroastrian/index.html?hpt=hp_c2> p. 1.
15 Kiani, Alaleh. “Amnesty International Annual Report Human Rights Iran 2011.” Religious Freedom Iran. Web. 1 June, 2011. 
<http://www.religiousfreedomiran.com/?p=48> p. 1.
16 Danut, M. “Iran’s Assault on Religious Freedom May Worsen.” Wordpress. Web. 30 January, 2012. <http://danutm.wordpress.
com/2011/12/30/irans-assault-on-religious-freedom-may-worsen/> p. 2.
17 Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Response to Arab Uprising. 21 December, 2011. p. 1. Print.
18  “Saudi releases two Indian Pentecostals.” Catholic Christian Secular Forum. Web. 30 January, 2012. <http://thecsf.org/
csf/2011/07/26/saudi-releases-two-india-pentecostals/> p. 2.
19 “Lebanon Maronite Church patriarch fears Arab Spring Extremism.” Reuters. Web. 30 January, 2012. <http://blogs.reuters.com/
faithworld/2011/11/02/lebanon-maronite-church-patriarch-fears-arab-spring-extremism/> pp. 1-2.
20  Abbas, Mohammed. “Libya war pushes Christian presence to the brink.” Reuters. Web. 30, January 2012. <http://blogs.reuters.
com/faithworld/2011/05/19/libya-war-pushes-christian-presence-to-the-brink/> p.1. AND “Libyan Christians Remain Safe in 
Tripoli Amid Ongoing Battle to Oust Gaddafi.” Christian Post. Web. 30 January, 2012. <http://www.christianpost.com/news/
libyan-christians-remain-safe-in-tripoli-amid-ongoing-battle-to-oust-gaddafi-54513/> p. 1.
north AMeriCA
1 Dailey, Kate. “Is anti-Muslim politics on the rise in Florida?” BBC. Web. 16 December, 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
magazine-16152509> p. 1.
2 “CAIR: TN GOP Rep. Tells Muslims to ‘Go Back to Where Came From.’” Worldwide Religious News. Web. 21 November, 
2011. <http://wwrn.org/articles/36557/?&place=united-states> p. 1.
3 “Ground zero Islamic center opens doors.” Associated Press on CBS News. Web. 28 December, 2011. <http://www.cbsnews.com/
stories/2011/09/22/national/main20109949.shtml> p. 1.
4 Flegenheimer, Matt. “Rent Dispute Endangers Mosque Plan.” New York Times. Web. 28 December, 2011. <http://www.nytimes.
com/2011/10/17/nyregion/islamic-center-and-mosque-near-ground-zero-imperiled-by-rent-dispute.html> p. 1.
5 “Controversies Over Mosques and Islamic Centers Across the U.S.” Pew Forum. Web. 28 November, 2011. <http://features.
pewforum.org/muslim/controversies-over-mosque-and-islamic-centers-across-the-us.html> p. 1.
6 “Protecting the Religious Freedom of Muslims.” American Civil Liberties Union. Web. 9 December, 2011. < http://www.aclu.
org/protecting-religious-freedom-muslims> p. 1.
7 “Islamic civil rights group asks FBI to investigate threats posted on anti-Muslim website.” Worldwide Religious News. Web. 28 
November, 2011. <http://wwrn.org/articles/36609/?place=united-states> p. 1.

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8 “Muslim prayers during class time draws fire at Toronto school.” National Post. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://life.
nationalpost.com/2011/07/05/muslim-prayers-during-class-time-draws-fire-at-toronto-school/> pp. 1-2.
9 Ali Khan, Mohammed A. “Niqab decree against Canadian tradition.” Arab News. Web. 27 December, 2011. <http://arabnews.
com/opinion/columns/article552540.ece> p. 1.
10 “Niqab case goes to Canada’s top court.” CBC. Web. 28 December, 2011. <http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/12/08/
niqab-supreme-court.html> p. 1.
11 Sandell, Clayton, and Christina Caron. “Polygamist Warren Jeffs Guilty of Child Rape.” ABC News. Web. 26 August, 2011. 
<http://abcnews.go.com/US/warren-jeffs-guilty-child-rape/story?id=14228198> p. 1.
12 “Polygamists Share Their Faith And Family Lives.” NPR. Web. 2 December, 2011. <http://www.npr.
org/2011/08/19/139784963/polygamists-share-their-faith-and-family-lives> pp. 1-3. AND Jaynes, Lorna. “Gay Marriage, 
Sister Wives, Polygamy, Contracts, Personal Freedom”. Bay Area Divorce Lawyer Blog. Web. 27 December, 2011. <http://www.
bayareadivorcelawyerblog.com/2011/12/gay-marriage-polygamy-contract.html> p. 1.
13 “Canada judge backs anti-polygamy law.” BBC. Web. 9 December, 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-15865533> pp. 1-2.
14 “U.S. Catholic bishops say religious freedom waning, pledge to fight.” Reuters. Web. 9 December, 2011. <http://blogs.reuters.
com/faithworld/2011/11/15/u-s-catholic-bishops-say-religious-freedom-waning-pledge-to-fight/> pp. 1-2.
15  “In Brief: The Supreme Court Takes Up Church Employment Disputes and the ‘Ministerial Exception.’” Pew Forum. Web. 
28 November, 2011. <http://www.pewforum.org/Church-State-Law/The-Supreme-Court-Takes-Up-Church-Employment-
Disputes-and-the-%E2%80%9CMinisterial-Exception%E2%80%9D.aspx> p. 1.
16 Rodda, Chris, “The Camp Pendleton Cross: The Facts vs. What the ‘Persecuted’ Christians are Saying.” Huffington Post. Web. 9 
December, 2011. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/the-camp-pendleton-cross-_b_1124251.html> pp. 1-2.
17 Hamilton, Graeme. “Canada’s new secular norm: $144 fines for religious worship.” National Post. Web. 9 December, 2011. 
<http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/11/03/quebec%E2%80%99s-new-secular-norm-fines-for-worship/> pp. 1-2.
18 “A shameful violation of religious freedom.” Montreal Gazette. Web. 12 November, 2011. <http://www2.canada.com/
montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=7ef59898-b289-4383-8b82-74d5bf524387> p. 1.
19 Elliott, Louise, “Religious freedoms panel drawn largely from western religions.” CBC. Web. 9 December, 2011. <http://www.
cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/12/07/pol-religious-freedoms-panel.html> pp. 1-3.
the forMer soviet union
1 Luxmore, Jonathan, “Freedom of religion in Russia faces increased limits.” The Christian Century. Web. 7 December, 2011. < 
http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-11/freedom-religion-russia-faces-increased-limits> pp. 1-2.
2 Bayram, Mushfig, “TAJIKISTAN: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM SURVEY, MARCH 2011.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 14 
September, 2011. < http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1553> pp. 1-18.
3 Griffin, Rosemary, “RUSSIA: ‘It is, in my opinion, religious persecution.’” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 20 September, 2011. < 
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1536> p. 1.
4 Corley, Felix. “ARMENIA: Pastor prosecuted after journalists refuse to leave church.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 20 
September, 2011. < http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1546> pp. 1-2.
5 Bayram, Mushfig. “KAZAKHSTAN: ‘Absurd’ criminal charge for praying for the sick.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 19 
September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1590> p. 1.

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6 Bayram, Mushfig. “UZBEKISTAN: ‘Spiritually rich and for freedom of conscience and religion?’” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 
20 September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1600> p. 1.
7 Corley, Felix. “KYRGYZSTAN: Seven year sentences despite ‘fabricate evidence’ and ‘procedural violations.’” Forum 18 News 
Service. Web. 20 September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1573> pp. 1-3.
8 Vermeulen, Mathias. “Memorial accuses Russian law enforcement agencies of abducting and torturing ordinary Muslims in 
Moscow.” The Lift. Web. 19 September, 2011. < http://legalift.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/memorial-accuses-russian-law-
enforcement-agencies-of-abducting-and-torturing-ordingary-muslims-in-mosco/> pp. 2-3.
9 Griffin, Rosemary. “RUSSIA: More raids and trials, pressure on lawyers, defendant forced to resign from job?” Forum 18 News 
Service. Web. 12 September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1562> pp. 1-2.
10 von Twickel, Nikolaus. “Moscow Seeks End to Council of Europe Reviews.” The St. Petersburg Times. Web. 2 February, 2011. < 
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=33480> p. 1.
11 Corley, Felix. “ARMENIA: ‘A kind of theatrical farce – I see no progress.’” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 18 September, 2011. 
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1593> p. 1.
12 Corley, Felix. “ARMENIA: European Court finds conscientious objector was wrongfully convicted and jailed – but what will 
government do?” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 20 September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1591> 
pp. 1-3.
13 Corley, Felix. “AZERBAIJAN: Continued defiance of UN and Council of Europe.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 19 September, 
2011. < http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1544> pp. 1-4.
14 Corley, Felix. “Will Duma approve ‘anti-constitutional’ religious literature restrictions?” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 11 
November, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1555> pp. 1-4. AND Bayram, Mushfig. “TAJIKISTAN: 
‘Why should I ask the Government what books I can read?’” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 11 November, 2011. <http://www.
forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1528> pp. 1-4.
15 Corley, Felix. “KAZAKHSTAN: New draft regulations outlive official religious censorship.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 22 
September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1639> pp. 1-7.
16 Corley, Felix. “AZERBAIJAN: Communities to be forced to begin re-registration again?” Forum 18 News Service. 
Web. 18 September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1578> pp. 1-5.
17 Corley, Felix. “TAJIKISTAN: ‘Religious activity is only banned up to the age of 18.’” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 
20 September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1595> pp. 1-3.
18 Bayram, Mushfig. “KAZAKHSTAN: ‘One nation – one religion?’” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 15 August, 2011. 
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1599> pp.1-2. AND Bayram, Mushfig. “KAZAKHSTAN: 
‘Great political efforts are made.’” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 15 August, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/
Archive.php?article_id=1568> p.1. AND Bayram, Mushfig. “KAZAKHSTAN: New Religion Law to ‘bring order 
to our house.’” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 3 October, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_
id=1608> pp. 1-4. 
19 Corley, Felix and Rosemary Griffin. “RUSSIA: “One complex of measured against religious communities.’” Forum 
18 News Service. Web. 11 September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1587> pp. 1-5.
20 Corley, Felix. “AZERBAIJAN: Pressure and punishments increasing?” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 11 July, 2011. 
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1531> pp. 1-4.
21 Corley, Felix. “KAZAKHSTAN: Punishments for worship meetings re-start.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 7 July, 
2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1557> p. 2.
22 “Kazakhstan to ban prayer rooms at state agencies, schools.” INTERFAX. Web. 7 October, 2011. <http://www.
interfax.kz/?lang=eng&int_id=in_focus&news_id=752> p. 1.

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23 Bayram, Mushfig. “KAZAKHSTAN: Ahmadi Muslim mosque closed, Protestants fined 100 times minimum 
monthly wage.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 11 September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_
id=1577> pp. 1-4.
23 Corley, Felix. “AZERBAIJAN” Another Sunni mosque disappears, heavy fines feared.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 
12 July, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1570> pp. 1-2.
25 Bayram, Mushfig. “TAJIKISTAN: Religious Freedom Survey, March, 2011.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 14 
September, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1553> pp. 1-18. AND “Mosques and Islamic 
Education Under Increasing Scrutiny in Tajikistan.” Tajikistan Monitor. Web. 11 September, 2011. <http://
tjmonitor.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/islam_scrutinized/> pp. 1-2. AND Allen, Bob. “Judge in Tajikistan orders 
Baptist church to close.” Associated Baptist Press. Web. 12 December, 2011. <http://www.abpnews.com/content/
view/4610/103/> p. 1.
26 Kishkovsky, Sophia. “Russian Terror Law Has Unlikely Targets.” New York Times. Web. 11 November, 2011. Web. 
11 November, 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/world/europe/russian-terror-law-has-unlikely-targets.
html> pp. 1-2.
27 Corley, Felix. “AZERBAIJAN” Up to five years’ imprisonment for uncensored religious literature?” Forum 18 News 
Service. Web. 11 November, 2011. <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1632> p. 1.
28 “Russia row over Nazi massacre site in Rostov-on-Don.” BBC. Web. 24 January, 2012. <http:www.bbc.co.uk/
news/world-europe-16697485> p.1. AND “Swastika daubed on Ukraine monument to Jews slain by Nazis.” Anti-
Semitism. Web. 13 October, 2011. <http://anti-Semitism.org.il/article/65020/swastika-daubed-ukraine-monument-
jews-slain-nazis>
prisoners
1 “Imprisonments jump worldwide, and Iran is worst.” Committee to Protect Journalists. Web. 20 December, 2011. 
<http://www.cpj.org/reports/2011/12/journalist-imprisonments-jump-worldwide-and-iran-i.php> p. 1.
2 “Jehovah’s Witness sent to prison in Armenia.” The Armenian News by A1. Web. 4 December, 2011. < http://www.
a1plus.am/en/social/2011/11/28/andranik-makvetsyan> p. 1. 
3 Paulsworth, Sarah. “AZERBAIJAN: Detention of Youth Activist Highlights Failure to Provide Alternative to 
Military Service.” Jurist Legal News & Research. Web.16 August, 2011. < http://jurist.org/dateline/2011/03/
azerbaijan-detention-of-youth-activist-highlights-failure-to-provide-alternative-to-military-service.php> pp. 1-2.
4 “Dr. ‘Abdul-Jalil Al-Singace.” New School for Social Research. Web. 11 November, 2011. <http://www.newschool.edu/
cps/subpage.aspx?id=56447> p. 1.
5 Hla Tuu, Aung. “Insight: Freed prisoners add momentum, risk to Myanmar reform.” Reuters. Web. 20 January, 2012. 
< http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/us-myanmar-prisoners-idUSTRE80I2DQ20120120> pp. 1-4.
6 “‘Bury them alive.’” Washington Post. Web. 25 January, 2011. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/
crackdown-on-chinese-dissidents/2012/01/20/gIQAwA9wGQ_story.html> pp. 1-3.
7 “Prisoners of Religious Conscience for the Underground Roman Catholic Church in China.” The Cardinal Kung 
Foundation. Web. 11 December, 2011. < http://www.cardinalkungfoundation.org/prisoners/index.htm> pp. 1-2.
8 Cerveilera, Bernardo. “Appeal: Bishops and priests disappeared or in prison, home for the Chinese New Year.” Asia 
News. Web. 16 January, 2011. <http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Appeal:-Bishops-and-priests-disappeared-or-in-
prison,-home-for-the-Chinese-New-Year-23704.html> pp. 1-2.
9 “Continuing Action on Behalf of Ablikim Abdureyim and Alim Abdureyim.” Amnesty International Group 30. Web. 
18 January, 2012. <http://www.aigroup30.org/Actions/G30_Kadeer_action.php> p. 1.

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10 Shao, Jiang. “Political list of Prisoners of Conscience and the Disappeared by 15/06/11.” Amnesty Blogs.. Web. 23 
December, 2011. <http://www2.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/countdown-china/partial-list-prisoners-conscience-and-
disappeared-150611> p. 3.
11 Ivor, Samuel. “Dharamshala Holds Candlelight Vigil for Tibet’s 11th Panchen Lama.” The Tibet Post. Web. 14 
November, 2011. <http://www.thetibetpost.com/en/news/exile/1706-dharamshala-holds-candlelight-vigil-for-
tibets-11th-panchen-lama> pp. 1-2. AND “Kunge Tseyang.” Earth’s Third Pole. Web. 11 December, 2011. <http://
earthsthirdpole.org/tibet/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10&Itemid=23> p. 1. AND “Current 
prisoners.” Free Tibet. Web. 15 January, 2012. <http://www.freetibet.org/campaigns/current-prisoners-11> p. 1. 
AND “Tibetan monk Jigme Guri arrested.” Asia News. Web. 14 September, 2011. <http://www.asianews.it/news-
en/Gansu,-Tibetan-monk-Jigme-Guri-arrested-22453.html> p. 1. AND “Two Tibetan monks from Kirti arrested 
in Sichuan.” Asia News. Web. 14 September, 2011. <http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Two-Tibetan-monks-from-
Kirti-arrested-in-Sichuan-23283.html> p. 1.
12 “China Court Upholds 15 Year Imprisonment for Pastor Yimiti.” Worthy Christian News. Web. 11 December, 2011. 
<http://www.worthynews.com/10056-china-court-upholds-15-year-imprisonment-for-pastor-yimiti> p. 3.
13 Hallowell, Billy. “Chinese Pastor sent to Labor Camp for Organizing ‘Illegal Religious Gatherings.’” Associated Press 
in The Blaze. Web. 11 September, 2011. < http://www.theblaze.com/stories/chinese-pastor-sent-to-labor-camp-for-
organizing-illegal-religious-gatherings/> pp. 1-2.
14 “Fan Yafeng, a Christian, is arrested, he signed Charter 08.” Asia News. Web. 3 December, 2011. <http://www.
asianews.it/news-en/Fan-Yafeng,-a-Christian,-is-arrested,-he-signed-Charter-08-20106.html> p. 1.
15 “Chinese Human Rights Attorney Jiang Tianyong Arrested and His Wife Beaten in Front of Their Daughter.” 
Christian News Wire. Web. 5 December, 2011. <http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/9298212229.html> p. 1.
16 “Northeast China Prison Under Lockdown After Deaths Exposed Online” Falun Dafa Information Center. Web. 15 
August, 2011. < http://faluninfo.net/article/1128/> pp. 1-3.
17 Hobbet, Anastasia. “Where Is Kareem Amer?” Huffington Post. Web. 6 August, 2011. <http://www.huffingtonpost.
com/anastasia-hobbet/where-is-kareem-amer_b_821018.html> p. 1. AND “Who is Kareem Amer? (etc.)” Free 
Kareem. Web. 6 August, 2011. <http://www.freekareem.org/kareem-faq/> pp. 1-6.
18 “Egypt: Blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad Freed After Being Held for 10 Months.” All Africa. Web. 2 February, 2012. 
<http://allafrica.com/stories/201201261183.html> p. 1.
19 “Fifty-one imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Jehovah’s Witnesses Official Media Website. Web. 12 December, 2011. < 
http://www.jw-media.org/eri/20110405rpt.htm> pp. 1-3.
20 “ERITREA – Imprisoned Protestant Pastors.” Amnesty International USA. Web. 28 December, 2011. < http://www.
ehrea.org/Pa.pdf> p. 1.
21 “Death of Kim Jong-Il may not change much for North Korean Christians.” Open Doors UK and Ireland. Web. 30 
December, 2011. <http://www.opendoorsuk.org/news/stories/kim_jong_il.php> p. 1.
22 Thomas, George. “Houses of Horror: North Korea’s Secret Prison Camps.” CBN News. Web. 14 September, 2011. < 
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2011/august/houses-of-horror-north-koreas-secret-prison-camps/> pp. 1-5.
23 “Six Muslims convicted of reading Nursi’s works in Russia.” The Muslim News. Web. 8 November, 2011. <http://
www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=5532> p. 1.
24 “Individuals continue to be at risk of violations in Turkmenistan.” Amnesty International. Web. 11 December, 
2011.<http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR61/001/2009/en/d006ee43-f8ef-11dd-92e7-c59f81373cf2/
eur610012009en.html> pp. 13-14. AND Corley, Felix. “TURKMENISTAN: Eleven religious prisoners of 
conscience of conscience in one camp.” Forum 18 News Service. Web. 11 August, 2011. <http://www.forum18.
org/Archive.php?article_id=1566> pp. 1-5. AND Fitzpatrick, Catherine A. “Turkmenistan: Religious Believers 
Languish in Desert Prison.” EurasiaNet. Web. 2 December, 2011. <http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64559> pp. 1-2.

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25 “Torture of prisoners indicted for religious crimes continues, news report say.” UZ News. Web. 3 December, 2011. 
<http://www.uznews.net/news_single.php?nid=18163> p. 1.
26 “Uzbekistan Annual Report 2011.” Amnesty International. Web. 28 December, 2011. < http://www.amnesty.org/en/
region/uzbekistan/report-2011> p. 2.
27 Ibid., p. 3.
28 Bayram, Mushfig. “ UZBEKISTAN: Sports journalist arrested for religious activity.” Forum 18 News Service in 
Worldwide Religious News. Web. 15 August, 2011. < http://wwrn.org/articles/32769/> p. 1.
29 “Ailing dissident Catholic priest sent back to prison.” Reporters Without Borders. Web. 16 August, 2011. < http://
en.rsf.org/vietnam-ailing-dissident-catholic-priest-28-07-2011,40711.html> p. 6.
30 Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. Press Release of January 19, 2012. Washington. pp. 1-3. Print.
31 Blake, Daniel. “Christian Man Given Five Years in Prison for Sharing Faith.” Christian Post. Web. 18 August, 2011. 
< http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-man-given-five-years-in-prison-for-sharing-faith-50663/> pp. 1-2.
32 “Christian in Bangladesh Goes to Prison for Evangelism.” Compass Direct News. Web. 13 September, 2011. <http://
www.compassdirect.org/english/country/bangladesh/article_99015.html> pp. 1-3.
33 “Greek Evangelist Faces Prison Time for Proselytizing.” CBN News Service. Web. 11 November, 2011. <http://www.
cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2011/October/Greek-Evangelist-Faces-Prison-Time-for-Proselytizing-/> p. 1.
34 Carvalho, Nirmala. “Karnataka, six more Christians in prison for forced conversions.” Asia News. Web. 13 
November, 2011. <http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Karnataka,-six-more-Christians-in-prison-for-forced-
conversions-22891.html> p. 1.
35 “Third anniversary in prison for Iran’s Baha’i leaders.” Baha’i News. Web. 11 August, 2011. <http://news.bahai.org/
story/821> pp. 1-2. AND “Jailed Iranian Baha’i Leaders Moved to Ward With Dangerous Prisoners.” Radio Free 
Europe. Web. 11 August, 2011. <http://www.rferl.org/content/iran_bahai/2312667.html> p. 1.
36 “Sahba Rezvani.” Rahana. Web. 11 August, 2011. <http://www.rahana.org/prisoners-en/?p=1575> p. 1. AND 
“Detained Baha’i Citizen Sahba Rezvani Deprived of Medication.” Rahana. Web. 11 August, 2011. <http://www.
rahana.org/en/?p=4278> p. 1.
37 “Pastor Yousef: Convert or die.” The Washington Times. Web. 31 December, 2011. <http://www.washingtontimes.
com/news/2011/dec/16/pastor-yousef-convert-or-die/> p. 1. AND “Iran Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani Likely to 
Remain in Jail Another Year.” Christian Post. Web. 31 December, 2011. <http://www.christianpost.com/news/iran-
pastor-yousef-nadarkhani-likely-to-remain-in-jail-another-year-65003/> pp. 1-2.
38 Ireland, Michael. “Condition of two Azeri-speaking Christians unknown after arrest and beating by Iranian 
authorities.” ASSIST News Service. Web. 14 September, 2011. <http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2011/s11080038.
htm> pp. 1-2.
39 “Mustafa Shokrollahi and Khalil Yarali.” Prisoners of Faith. Web. 16 September, 2011. <http://www.
releaseinternational.org/media/download_gallery/Prisoners%20of%20Faith%20Alert%20June%202011v2.pdf> p. 1.
40 “Iran: crackdown on Christians intensifies.” Independent Catholic News. Web. 11 November, 2011. <http://www.
indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=19175> p. 1.
41 “Iranian Pastor Languishes in Jail as he awaits Ayatollah’s Verdict on Apostasy.” ASSIST News Service. Web. 26 
October, 2011. <http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2011/s11100104.htm> p. 2. 
42 “Three Iranian pastors report to prison.” Canada Free Press. Web. 31 December, 2011. <http://www.canadafreepress.
com/index.php/article/43432> p. 2.

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43 “Laos: Two Church Leaders Languish in Prison.” Worthy News. Web. 18 August, 2011. <http://www.worthynews.
com/10597-laos-church-leaders-languish-prison> pp. 3-4.
44 “Convert Serving 15 Years for His Faith.” Compass Direct News. Web. 4 October, 2011. <http://www.compassdirect.
org/english/country/morocco/25655> pp. 1-3.
45 Wooding, Dan. “Pakistan Christian mother-of-five, Asia Bibi, is in ‘good spirits’ despite prison ordeal.” ASSIST 
News Service. 31 December, 2011. <http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2011/s11120134.htm> pp. 1-3.
46 Oleszczuk, Luiza. “Christian Accused of Blasphemy in Pakistan Dies in Jail. Christian Post. Web. 3 October, 2011. 
<http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-accused-of-blasphemy-in-pakistan-dies-in-jail-56005/> pp.1-2. 
AND “Pakistani Christian Sentence for ‘Blasphemy’ Dies in Prison.” Compass Direct News. Web. 11 August, 2011. < 
http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/pakistan/98521> pp. 1-2.
47 “Prisoners of conscience (2005-2010).” Persecution of Ahmadis. Web. 20 December, 2011. <http://www.
persecutionofahmadis.org/prisoners-of-conscience-2005-2010/> pp. 1-20.
48 “Mussie Eyob.” Prisoners of Faith. Web. 11 November, 2011. <http://www.releaseinternational.org/media/
download_gallery/Prisoners%20of%20Faith%20Alert%20May%202011.pdf> p. 1. AND “Saudi Arabia: Release 
Hadi Al-Mutif (Press Release).” United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Web. 12 September, 
2011. <http://www.uscirf.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3027&Itemid=1> p. 1.
CoMMunities Most At risk updAte
1 Jones, Dorian, “Turkey Announces Return of Properties to Non-Muslim Minorities.” VOA News. Web. 14 
September, 2011. <http://www.voanews.com/english/news/europe/Turkey-Announces-Return-of-Properties-to-
Non-Muslim-Minorities-128712928.html> pp. 1-3.
2 “One of Jehovah’s Witnesses dies while imprisoned in Eritrea.” Jehovah’s Witnesses Oficial Media Website. Web. 12 
October, 2011. < http://www.jw-media.org/eri/20111005.htm> p. 1.
3 “Torture fears for Eritrean Jehovah’s Witnesses.” afrol News. Web. 11 September, 2011. <http://www.afrol.com/
articles/11334> pp. 1-2.
4 Glick, Caroline. “Non-democratic Arab states target Jews for attack.” Jewish Refugees Blog. Web. 15 August, 2011. 
<http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2011/02/non-democratic-arab-states-target-jews.html> p. 1.
5 Cohen, Gili. “Tunisian Jews consider leaving as violence spreads.” Jewish Refugees Blog. Web. 15 August, 2011. 
<http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2011/01/tunisian-jews-consider-leaving-as.html> pp. 1-2.
6 Gilbert, Ben. “Tunisian Jews And The Country’s New Rulers.” The World. Web. 26 November, 2011. < http://www.
theworld.org/2011/11/tunisia-jews-ennahda/> pp.1-2. AND “Tunisian Jews told to keep mum over Djerba attack.” 
Jewish Refugees Blog. Web. 16 August, 2011. <http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2011/07/tunisian-jews-told-to-
keep-mum-over.html> pp. 1-2.
7 “Tunisia Jewish leader meets interim PM over safety concerns.” JTA News Service. Web. 12 August, 2011. <http://
www.jta.org/news/article/2011/02/15/2742997/tunisias-jews-concerned-for-safety> p. 2. AND Greenberg, 
Samara. “Tunisian President Asks Jews to Return.” Jewish Policy Center. Web. 28 December, 2011. <http://www.
jewishpolicycenter.org/blog/2011/12/tunisian-president-asks-jews-to-return> p. 1.
8 “Despite Pressure From Tel Aviv, Tunisian Jews Have Little Interest in Emigrating to Israel.” Robert J. Prince’s Blog. 
Web. 11 August, 2011. <http://robertjprince.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/remaining-tunisian-jews-have-little-
interest-in-emigrating-to-israel/> pp. 2-5.
9 “Egypt ‘Spiderman’ hero pulls down Israel flag.” Agence France Presse in Ninenews. Web. 14 September, 2011. 
<http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8288241/Egypt-Spiderman-hero-pulls-down-Israel-flag> pp. 1-2.

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10 “Jews of Yemen rally for embattled President.” Jewish Refugees Blog. Web. 11 August, 2011. <http://jewishrefugees.
blogspot.com/2011/05/jews-of-yemen-rally-for-embattled.html> pp.1-2. AND “Jews of Yemen staying put.” JTA 
News Service. Web. 11 August, 2011. <http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/03/30/3086636/jews-of-yemen-
staying-put> p. 1.
11 “September 2011 – Major Expansion of D’fina ( Jewish Morocco) Exhibit.” Diarna. Web. 13 October, 2011. 
<http://www.diarna.org/wordpress/Diarnawp/wordpress/uncategorized/september-2011-major-expansion-of-
dfina-jewish-morocco-exhibit-2/> pp. 1-2.
12 “Venezuela 2011 Chapter Summary.” United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Web. 8 
December, 2011. < http://www.uscirf.gov/government-relations/other-advocacy-materials/3403-venezuela.
html> p.1. AND Kelemen, Jasmina. “Rival to Chavez, demonized for his Jewish roots, is opposition’s new hope in 
Venezuela.” JTA News Service. Web. 18 August, 2011. <http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/06/06/3088028/rival-
to-chavez-demonized-for-his-jewish-roots-is-oppositions-new-hope-in-venezuela> pp. 2-7.
13 “Venezuelan Jews protest broadcast of ‘Protocols.’” JTA News Service. Web. 8 December, 2011. <http://www.jta.org/
news/article/2011/05/25/3087870/venezuelan-jews-protest-anti-semitic-broadcast> p. 2.
14 Kelemen, Jasmina. “Venezuelan Jews report shift in tone from Chavez government.” AZ Jewish Post. Web. 11 
August, 2011. <http://azjewishpost.com/2011/venezuelan-jews-report-shift-in-tone-from-chavez-government/> 
pp. 2-4.
15 Ibid. p. 1.
16 Finkelstein, Allan. “Hanukkah in Venezuela.” 1,000 Jewish Conversations ( Jewish Community Centers Association 
Blog).” Web. 28 December, 2011. <http://conversations.jcca.org/hanukkah-in-venezuela/> p. 1.
17 “March 2011 – Update on the humanitarian and security situation in Darfur.” Waging Peace. Web. 11 August, 2011. 
<http://www.wagingpeace.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=362:march-2011-update-on-the-
humanitarian-and-security-situation-in-darfur-&catid=11:sudan-briefings&Itemid=27> p. 2.
18 Ismail, Omer, Laura Jones, and John Pendergast. “How to save Darfur’s peace process.” ICC NOW (website of the 
Coalition for the International Criminal Court). Web. 11 November, 2011. <http://www.iccnow.org/documents/
SaveDafurPeaceProcess_0.pdf> pp. 1-3.
19 Reynolds, Jeremy. “Christians in Somalia Bear the Brunt of al-Queda-Linked Terror Group.” ASSIST News 
Service. Web. 11 November, 2011. <https://nazmissions.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/christians-in-somalia-bear-
the-brunt-of-al-qaeda-linked-terror-group/> pp. 1-6. AND “Converts from Islam Jailed, Pursued in Somalia’s 
Breakaway Region.” Compass Direct News. Web. 14 November, 2011. <http://www.compassdirect.org/english/
country/somalia/9383> pp. 1-2. AND Bos, Stefan J. and Joseph DeCaro. “Somalia’s Starving Christians Struggle 
After Beheading.” BosNewsLife. Web. 11 November, 2011. <http://www.bosnewslife.com/18209-somalias-starving-
christians-struggle-after-beheading> p. 1.
20 “New Christian Convert from Islam Murdered in Somalia.” Compass Direct News. Web. 16 August, 2011. <http://
www.compassdirect.org/english/country/somalia/article_111281.html> pp. 1-2.
21 “Islamic Extremists in Somalia Behead 17-year-old Christian.” Compass Direct News. Web. 18 November, 2011. <pp. 
1-2. 
23 Crimi, Frank. “Christian Genocide in Somalia.” Front Page Mag.com (blog). Web. 12 September, 2011. <http://
frontpagemag.com/2011/08/19/christian-genocide-in-somalia/> pp. 2-3.
24 Mandaean Associations Union. Mandaean Human Rights Annual Report September 2011. Morristown, New Jersey. 
pp. 7-10 and 25-29. Print.
25 “State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2011 – Iraq.” UNHCR. Web. 12 September, 2011. <http://
www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic.464db4f52.4b17c0472.4e16d36e5f.o....html> pp. 1-2.

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Bibliog raphy
(The reader is referred to the Bibliography in the 2011 Report. Many of the websites and published works it cites informed 
judgments this year as well. This Bibliography lists only the major reports the Center monitors and considers in its work  
and does not contain the many news reports, articles, and other citations referred to in the Notes.)
A Christian sister testifies to the violence she suffered from a fundamentalist Hindu attack in Kandhamal.
(Credits: AsiaNew.it)

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reports
Amnesty International Report 2011
Amnesty International Secretariat. Displaced in Darfur: A Generation of Anger. (AI Index: AFR 54/001/2008) 2008 
Human Rights Watch Assessments and Reports 
Human Rights First Assessments and Reports
International Crisis Group Country Reports
Office of General Counsel of Jehovah’s Witnesses. International Religious Freedom Report 2011.
Mandean Human Rights Group. Sabian Mandeans in Iraq Face Annihilation. 2007
Minority Rights Group International. Peoples Under Threat. 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.
UN General Assembly. Report of the Independent Expert in the Field of Cultural Rights, Ms. Farida Shaheed, 2011.
UNICEF. State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2011.
U.N. Special Rapporteur on Religious Freedom or Belief Annual Reports
U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Annual Report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious 
Freedom May 2011. Washington. 2011.
U.S. Department of State. International Religious Freedom Report 2009. Washington. 2009.
U.S. Department of State. International Religious Freedom Report 2010. Washington. 2010.
internAtionAl doCuMents
United Nations General Assembly. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 10 December, 1948.
United Nations General Assembly. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 16 December, 1966.
United Nations General Assembly. International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. 3 January, 1976.
United Nations General Assembly. World Conference on Human Rights. Vienna Declaration and Programme of 
Action. 25 June, 1993.

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