{"id":656,"date":"2008-05-05T15:44:21","date_gmt":"2008-05-05T15:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou.php"},"modified":"2008-05-05T15:44:21","modified_gmt":"2008-05-05T15:44:21","slug":"watchdog-panel-issues-religiou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou","title":{"rendered":"Watchdog Panel Issues Religious Freedom Recommendations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Adelle M. Banks<br \/>\nReligion News Service<\/strong><br \/>\nWASHINGTON (RNS) A federal watchdog panel said Friday (May 2) that 11 countries should be named &#8220;countries of particular concern&#8221; for their records on religious freedom, including three that are not currently on the State Department&#8217;s list.<br \/>\nThe U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the inclusion of Vietnam &#8212; which was removed from the State Department&#8217;s list in 2006 &#8212; and Pakistan and Turkmenistan.<br \/>\nCommissioners who traveled to Vietnam in 2007 found &#8220;very uneven&#8221; progress on the improvement of conditions for religious freedom, said commission Chair Michael Cromartie in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. &#8220;Arrests, detentions, discrimination, and other restrictions continue,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\nCromartie also cited continuing &#8220;religiously motivated violence&#8221; in Pakistan and &#8220;official harassment of religious adherents&#8221; in Turkmenistan.<br \/>\nThe other countries recommended for the designation of &#8220;countries of particular concern&#8221; are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan, which have been on the State Department&#8217;s list since 2006.<br \/>\n&#8220;Developments of the past decade have strengthened the importance of freedom of religion or belief, as the U.S. government navigates a world threatened by religion-based extremism and religion-imbued conflict,&#8221;<br \/>\nCromartie said in a statement that accompanied the release of the commission&#8217;s annual recommendations.<br \/>\nThe commission also cited countries on its &#8220;Watch List&#8221; that require monitoring because of religious freedom violations permitted or implemented by the governments: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria.<br \/>\nCommissioners say they continue to be &#8220;seriously concerned&#8221; about religious freedom in Iraq, which was on their 2007 Watch List, and will be traveling to the region in May. They plan to issue a report on Iraq after the trip.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal watchdog panel said Friday (May 2) that 11 countries should be named &#8220;countries of particular concern&#8221; for their records on religious freedom, including three that are not currently on the State Department&#8217;s list. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the inclusion of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Watchdog Panel Issues Religious Freedom Recommendations<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Watchdog Panel Issues Religious Freedom Recommendations\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal watchdog panel said Friday (May 2) that 11 countries should be named &#8220;countries of particular concern&#8221; for their records on religious freedom, including three that are not currently on the State Department&#8217;s list. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the inclusion of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-05T15:44:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Watchdog Panel Issues Religious Freedom Recommendations","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Watchdog Panel Issues Religious Freedom Recommendations","og_description":"By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal watchdog panel said Friday (May 2) that 11 countries should be named &#8220;countries of particular concern&#8221; for their records on religious freedom, including three that are not currently on the State Department&#8217;s list. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the inclusion of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-05-05T15:44:21+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou","name":"Watchdog Panel Issues Religious Freedom Recommendations","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-05-05T15:44:21+00:00","dateModified":"2008-05-05T15:44:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/05\/watchdog-panel-issues-religiou#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Watchdog Panel Issues Religious Freedom Recommendations"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}