6 Nations Suggested for List of Oppressors

WASHINGTON--An independent advisory group funded by the U.S. government has recommended that the administration add India, Laos, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam to its list of countries that restrict religious freedoms.

The State Department, which compiles the list, has ignored similar recommendations on Laos, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan in the past while denying that the decisions are political.

The advisory group is the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, created by Congress in 1998 to advise the executive branch on the International Religious Freedom Act.

The list of “countries of particular concern,” updated in October 2001, contains six nations: China, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, North Korea and Sudan.

Critics of the designations say the administration chooses countries with which it already has poor relations, rather than antagonize countries with which it is friendly.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the administration would take the commission’s advice into account but made no promise that it would act on it.

“We’ve always considered their advice very carefully, but we haven’t always put out the same list as they have,” he said.

The commission, in a statement available Tuesday, said the Indian government had tolerated severe violence against religious minorities, particularly Muslims in the western state of Gujarat.

In Pakistan, the statement said, the government has likewise failed to protect the Christian, Ahmedi and Shiite communities from sectarian violence.

“As noted in past years by the State Department, religious freedom ‘does not exist’ in Saudi Arabia,” the statement added, citing the ban on non-Muslim religious expression in public and the detention, arrest and deportation of Christian workers.

In the case of Vietnam, it said the government was repressive toward all religions. It imprisons religious dissidents and harasses clergy and the leaders and followers of unregistered religious groups, it said.

The commission said it was “very concerned” about violations of religious freedom in Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria and Uzbekistan and suggested that they go on a new “watch list.”