As government restrictions on religious freedom have increased around the world, the United Nations marked its first commemoration of victims of religious-based violence on Thursday.
The “International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief,” established by the United Nations earlier this year, comes as sectarian violence, or hostility between religious groups, has declined over the past decade.
The most common government regulations include favoritism toward certain religious groups and general policies constraining religious liberty. Those policies “cover a wide range of restrictions,” according to Pew Research, “including a requirement that religious groups register in order to operate.”
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal body that monitors religious persecution, said remembering victims is “critical,” but “only the beginning” in a news release Thursday.
“We must also recognize and work together to halt the continuing ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims and Christians in Burma and violence against Christians in Nigeria by Boko Haram. On this historic day, we must demand accountability, not only to serve the immediate needs and the long-term healing of these victims of violence, but to demonstrate to tyrants and terrorist alike that the international community will truly ‘never again’ tolerate genocide or other atrocities,” read the statement.
The commission has identified 16 “countries of particular concern,” in which the governments engage in, or tolerate, “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” religious freedom violations. Countries on that list include China, Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.
In Defense of Christians, a nonprofit advocating for Christians in the Middle East, expressed gratitude for a day devoted to victims of religious persecution, but noted “religiously motivated violence continues to serve as a leading source of violence, mass atrocities, and genocide in the world today.”
“The Middle East continues to lose crucial pillars of its ethnic and religious diversity due to violence based on religion and belief. For example, the Armenian Genocide, committed more than a century ago, remains unrecognized by many actors in the international community today. Furthermore, Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities are still struggling to recover from the genocide committed by ISIS,” read a statement given to the Washington Examiner.
A spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, an organization which supports the Uighur people, chastised the United Nations’ slow response to persecution in China. The government of China is systematically persecuting Uighurs in the Xinjiang region, subjecting them to surveillance and detention in reeducation camps. The Uighurs are a predominantly Muslim minority group in China.
“Few other communities around the world at the moment require renewed attention to religious persecution than Uighurs in China at the moment. From the outright ban on individual prayer and religious teaching, to confiscations of Qurans and prayer mats, to the outright destruction of mosques and other religious sites, nowhere else on Earth is a religious minority so harshly persecuted,” Peter Irwin, program manager for the Congress, told the Washington Examiner.
“Though the sentiment is admirable, his response to the mass detention and abuse of Uighurs in China — something he has not yet addressed substantively — will stand as a defining moment of his tenure. Like all those before him, he may not so readily be judged on his accomplishments, but on his failures. It’s up to him to decide how he’d like to be remembered by his peers and by those who are most deserving of his support,” said Irwin.
