Though lost amid prison news, report casts light on religious abuses

Published: 2004-05-14

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- While the eyes of the world were focused on the cruel treatment of inmates in American-run prisons in Iraq, Father Thaddeus Nguyen Van Ly was spending his third year in a Vietnamese jail cell as punishment for testifying in the United States about religious freedom restrictions in his country. In Sudan, prison inmates, displaced people and kidnapped children have reportedly been forced to convert to Islam. Meanwhile in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, Muslim religious expression is arbitrarily linked to separatist or terrorist acts and authorities are reported to prohibit teaching of Islam to those under 18. As horrified as the world was about the treatment of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison, the release of the annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom caused barely a ripple in the news, despite its details about the deterioration of sometimes deadly conditions worldwide for those who would practice their religion in peace. The May 12 report by the independent governmental commission highlighted problems in 21 countries. They ranged from aggressive government action against religious activity in China, North Korea, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia to a growing climate of official religious intolerance in France and the Indonesian government's ineffective efforts to stop religion-related violence.

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