Simon Cox Blog: State Department's Unusually Short Religious Freedom Update: ISIS Is Bad

Thursday, 17 August 2017

State Department's Unusually Short Religious Freedom Update: ISIS Is Bad

Months late, the new Secretary of State quickly highlights ongoing genocide in the Middle East in intro to annual report.

The US State Department kept its annual assessment of international religious freedom unusually short this year, reiterating the country’s commitment to the cause and calling out ISIS as perpetrators of genocide.

Over the past five years, the executive summaries for the department’s annual religious freedom report have averaged more than 5,000 words. They typically detail problems such as North Korea’s religious prisoners, Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria, and the instability caused by Islamic extremism in the Middle East.

This year, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson skipped the lengthy executive summary and laid out a preface just 440 words, naming only a single concern in his written introduction: ISIS.

“ISIS has and continues to target members of multiple religions and ethnicities for rape, kidnapping, enslavement, and death,” the Trump administration appointee and former Exxon CEO wrote. “The protection of these groups—and others who are targets of violent extremism—remains a human rights priority for the Trump administration.”

The report was also a few months later than normal, released on August 15 rather than by May 1. In his remarks, Tillerson repeated the genocide designation for ISIS and also referenced the nomination of Governor Sam Brownback as the department’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

The annual report reviews the state of religious freedom in 199 countries, and CT has highlighted six places where Christians continue to face significant barriers to worshiping freely: Iraq, Indonesia, India, Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.