Iraq placed on list of countries where religious freedom is under attack

[ck4829]

For the first time since the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein four years ago, a non-partisan federal panel said May 2 that religious freedom in Iraq is gravely endangered.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, in its annual report to Congress and President Bush's administration, said the conditions for religious freedom in Iraq are "alarming and deteriorating." The panel, also for the first time since the late dictator's government fell, has placed Iraq on a list one tier below the world's worst violators of religious freedom.

And without significant improvement in Iraq's human-rights conditions over the next year, the report added, the commission will bump Iraq up to its most infamous list of human-rights violators. Such a move would place Iraq alongside nations like North Korea and Saudi Arabia, where the State Department says religious freedom is nonexistent.

"Despite ongoing efforts to stabilize the country, successive Iraqi governments have not adequately curbed the growing scope and severity of human-rights abuses," the USCIRF report said, noting the explosion of sectarian violence between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the past year. "Although non-state actors, particularly the Sunni-dominated insurgency, are responsible for a substantial proportion of the sectarian violence and associated human-rights violations, the Iraqi government also bears responsibility."

http://www.abpnews.com/2126.article