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THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, 

GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND 

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 27, 2015

Serial No. 114–145

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

DANIEL DONOVAN, New York 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

DANIEL DONOVAN, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

AMI BERA, California 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable David N. Saperstein, Ambassador-at-Large for International 

Religious Freedom, U.S. Department of State ................................................... 5

Robert P. George, Ph.D., chairman, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom ...................................................................................................... 34

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable David N. Saperstein: Prepared statement ................................... 10

Robert P. George, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ....................................................... 40

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 68

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 69

(1)

THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF RELIGIOUS 

FREEDOM 

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2015

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:30 p.m., in room 

2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. SMITH. The subcommittee will come to order, and good afternoon to everyone. 

The world is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of international religious freedom, a crisis that has and continues to create 

hundreds of millions of victims, a crisis that undermines liberty, 

prosperity, and peace, a crisis that poses a direct challenge to the 

U.S. interests in the Middle East, Central and East Asia, Russia, 

China and sub-Saharan Africa, to name just a few. 

In large parts of the world this fundamental freedom is constantly and brutally under siege. The worldwide erosion of respect 

for this fundamental freedom is the cause of widespread human 

suffering, grave injustices, refugee flows and significant threats to 

peace. 

This Congress has heard the cries of Iraqi and Syrian Christians 

who face the threat of extinction, slavery, and death. 

We have heard about the plight that Rohingya Muslims who face 

attacks and such unimaginable discrimination from hardline Buddhist groups that many choose slavery elsewhere than life in 

Burma. 

We have heard about the persecution faced by Chinese Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims and Falun Going at the 

hands of the Communist Party, suspicious of organized religion. 

Many of us on this subcommittee have seen first-hand the religious dividing lines in sub-Saharan Africa that are the cause of so 

much death and destruction, especially by groups like al-Shabaab 

and Boko Haram. 

In a world where some people are willing to kill those whose beliefs are different from theirs, where anti-Semitism persists even in 

the most tolerant of places, and where authoritarian governments 

use strong religious faith as a potential threat to their legitimacy, 

it is more important than ever that the United States engage in 

robust religious freedom diplomacy, which uses all the tools availVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:18 Apr 13, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\102715\97331 SHIRL
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able enshrined in the landmark International Religious Freedom 

Act of 1998. 

The stakes are too high and the suffering too great to downplay 

religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy. But, unfortunately, we 

often hear from religious groups globally and from NGOs working 

on the issue that this administration has sidelined the promotion 

of religious freedom. 

This criticism does not discount the exemplary work done by our 

men and women at the State Department and the efforts of Ambassador Saperstein himself. 

They do important and substantive work but it seems too often 

that the issue is marginalized and isolated from issues of national 

security or economic development even though we know from academic research that countries with the highest levels of religious 

freedom experience more prosperity and less terrorism. 

Religious persecution has catastrophic consequences for religious 

communities and for individual victims. But it also undermines the 

national security of the United States. 

Without religious freedom, aspiring democracies will continue to 

face instability. Sustained economic growth will be more difficult to 

achieve. 

Obstructions will remain to the advancement of the rights of 

women and girls and perhaps most urgent of all religious terrorism 

will continue to be nourished and exported. 

The global religious freedom crisis will not disappear anytime 

soon. According to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 75 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where severe religious persecution occurs regularly. 

It has been almost 17 years since the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. For the record, I chaired 

virtually every one of the hearings that led to its passage, and as 

we all know it was authored by Congressman Frank Wolf, a tremendous advocate for religious freedom. 

Religious freedom diplomacy has developed under three administrations of both parties. Unfortunately, the grim global realities 

demonstrate that our Nation has had little effect on the rise of persecution and the decline of religious freedom and it is worth asking 

why. 

Is it worth asking not only what the State Department is doing, 

but more importantly, what can be done better? Are new tools and 

new ideas needed to help U.S. religious freedom diplomacy address 

one of the great crises of the 21st century? 

Does the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 need to be 

upgraded to reflect 21st century realities? That is why I introduced 

the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act of 2015. 

This legislation named after the author, as I mentioned a moment ago, of the original IRF Act would, among other things, 

strengthen the role of the Ambassador-at-Large for International 

Religious Freedom and the International Religious Freedom office 

at State and give more tools to the administration to address the 

crisis we face. 

The bill is roundly endorsed and supported by a broad diverse 

array of religious freedom, civil society, and diaspora organizations. 

3

They acknowledge what too many policymakers and administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, have been unable to appreciate. 

America’s first freedom ought to be infused at every possible 

level into our foreign policy. Upgrading and strengthening U.S. 

international religious freedom policy and further integrating it 

into U.S. foreign policy, and national security strategy, will send 

the clear message that the U.S. will fight for the inherent dignity 

of every human being and against the global problems of persecution, religious extremism, and terrorism. 

In so doing we can advance the best of our values while protecting vital national interests. 

I would like to yield to Mr. Cicilline for any opening comments 

he might have. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank 

you and Ranking Member Bass for your leadership and for calling 

today’s hearing on the global crisis of religious freedom to give us 

an opportunity to discuss the current state of religious freedoms 

throughout the world. 

And while the hearing title suggests solely a focus on crises, it 

is my hope that we might also hear about examples of positive 

trends in policy development and successful efforts to open spaces 

for religious expression all across the world. 

Spirituality and deeply held religious beliefs are central to the 

lives of billions of people in the world and the freedom to hold 

those beliefs without fear of persecution is essential for the respect 

of basic human rights. 

I want to offer my appreciation to today’s witness for agreeing to 

participate in this hearing including Ambassador David Saperstein 

from the United States State Department and Mr. Robert George, 

chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. 

I commend your dedication and commitment to ensuring religious freedom in the world as an extension of the ethos of the 

human rights of all people regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or political affiliation must be respected. 

I look forward to hearing your perspectives on the status of displaced persons on the continent, the status of religious freedom in 

the world, and the impact it has had on the human rights of all 

people. 

In a time when sectarian violence rages within and between various world religions and the repression of religious minorities persists, it is critical that we raise awareness of these challenges as 

well as offering continuous support to national, regional, and global 

institutions which seek to address these issues. 

The infringement of religious beliefs and exercise goes beyond 

just a human rights violation. It poses a threat to national and regional peace and stability and creates conditions for 

marginalization and poverty within persecuted groups as well as so 

many other negative consequences on the individual and on society. 

Whether it is the desecration of mosques, churches, or synagogues or the defamation of violent assaults against adherents to 

particular religious groups, it is critical to provide oversight and 

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forward-thinking policy in these matters to ensure that we can help 

to expand religious freedoms worldwide. 

As a proud representative from the state of Rhode Island, a state 

founded by Roger Williams in pursuit of religious liberty, this is an 

issue particularly important to me and to my constituents. 

And I know that I stand with all of my colleagues in Congress 

in our commitment to uphold the religious freedoms and to expand 

global human rights and I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses today, and I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. 

I would like to now yield to the chairman of the Subcommittee 

on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, Dana Rohrabacher. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much and thank you, Mr. 

Chairman, for your stalwart efforts over the years on the issues of 

human rights but particularly on this particular human right, 

which is the right to worship God or not worship God according to 

one’s own conscience. 

And you have played such an important role. You personally 

have saved thousands of lives and I want to thank you for that and 

people ought to know that our activism here has an impact overseas for people who are living in a shadow of tyranny and repression and murder. 

We know that suppression of religious freedom has been—always 

been part of the human condition. 

We know that the history of Christians, even 1,000 years ago we 

had Christian armies slaughtering each other or going into separate countries and slaughtering the Huguenots for killing the 

Catholics and et cetera, et cetera. 

That, I am pleased to say, thanks to people like you in the 

United States and in the Western world is something we have put 

behind us now and it is important that America needs to lead the 

way on issues like this. 

And today, of course we face an enormous challenge and that 

challenge is that Christians in the Middle East in particular are 

being targeted for extinction. 

They are targeted for genocide and we know that during the 

Communist era that the Communists who we help defeat wanted 

an atheist dictatorship and are responsible for murdering millions 

of people, but of all faiths, I might add. 

But today, we have the threat of our generation is to cope with 

the rise of radical Islamic terrorism which is targeting Christians 

in the Middle East for extinction. 

Unless we act, those people who represent a culture, a large population of people who worship God, will be wiped out. Genocide will 

be successful. 

Now, we have some challenges with Muslims, like in Burma and 

elsewhere. Muslims are being denied their rights. We need to acknowledge that. 

But we need to tell the Muslim world without hesitation that 

this fight with Christianity to the point that they are exterminating Christians in Syria and elsewhere, the church—when Morsi 

was in charge there in Egypt they were burning down Catholic 

churches—this has got to stop. I have a piece of legislation I would 

like to work with you, Mr. Chairman, on. I have one that is a sense 

5

of the House that the Christian community in the Middle East are 

targets of genocide and that our immigration policy from that part 

of the world should put anyone who is a target of genocide at the 

top of the list of priorities of being admitted to the United States. 

And that’s the sense of the House. I am currently working on a 

resolution that would actually change the basic law—immigration 

law to reflect that priority. 

If people are targeted for extermination, targeted for genocide, 

we should make them a priority to offer the safe haven of the 

United States, which we are so proud of, that we have been the 

shining light and the refuge to the world. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Chairman Rohrabacher, and 

just for the record, thank you for all of your leadership going back 

to your days as a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. 

Just last week, we met with Prime Minister Sharif from Pakistan and I followed you, but you led very, very effectively, raising 

issues of religious persecution and blasphemy laws and the like 

and I want to thank you for that leadership. 

I would like to now yield to Dan Donovan, who is the former district attorney for Staten Island and now a Member of Congress and 

a welcome member of this subcommittee. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and to 

show you how smart my mother and father raised me I am not 

going to speak after somebody who wrote speeches for President 

Reagan. 

I am very interested in hearing the witnesses’ testimony so I will 

yield my time until further into the proceedings. 

Thank you, sir. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Donovan. 

I would like to now welcome our very distinguished first witness, 

Rabbi David Saperstein, who is Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. He was confirmed by the Senate on 

December 12, 2014, sworn in, and assumed his duties on January 

6 of this year. 

Ambassador Saperstein previously served for 40 years as the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, a rabbi 

and an attorney for 35 years. 

Rabbi Saperstein taught seminars in First Amendment churchstate law and in Jewish Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has served on the boards of numerous national organizations including the NAACP. 

In 1999, Ambassador Saperstein served as the first chair of the 

U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and he has 

been a great friend of this subcommittee on human rights, to this 

chairman and many of us in the House and Senate and I want to 

thank him for his leadership and yield the floor to him. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DAVID N. SAPERSTEIN, AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE FOR INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS 

FREEDOM, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

6

I am honored to be here, Mr. Cicilline, Mr. Donovan, Mr. Rohrabacher, and my compliments to Ranking Member Bass for the extraordinary work she has done as well. 

I am honored to appear before you today on International Religious Freedom Day and the 17th anniversary of the IRF Act here. 

Mr. Chairman, you did play—and everyone should know it—an 

extraordinary role in the passage of that and in urging its effective 

implementation and empowering the effective implementation in 

all these years. 

It has been an honor to have had the opportunity to work with 

you over these years. It is a connection I cherish deeply. The law 

has had a significant impact on the way religious freedom is 

viewed, not only in the United States but around the world. 

In far too many countries people face the kind of daunting, 

alarming, growing challenges you have all so articulately described. 

In countries with proud traditions of multi-faith cooperation, 

often for centuries, where positive coexistence was once the norm, 

we witness growing numbers of religious minorities being driven 

out of their historic homeland and in too many countries prisoners 

of conscience suffer cruel punishment and torture for their religious 

beliefs and practices. 

Now, in our report this year there are several key trends I would 

like to lift up and highlight. First is the abhorrent acts of terror 

committed by those who falsely claim the mantle of religion to justify their wanton destruction. The action of non-state actors in this 

regard is the fastest growing challenge to religious freedom worldwide. 

In Iraq and Syria, ISIL has sought to eliminate anyone assessed 

as deviating from its own violent and destructive interpretation of 

Islam. 

The group has displaced over 1 million from their homes based 

solely on their religion or opposition to ISIL’s interpretations, be 

they Sunni or Shi’a. Shi’a were targeted by ISIL. Christians and 

Yazidis were also targeted by ISIL or anyone of the many other 

ethno-religious groups for whom Iraq and Syria are home and they 

are suffering greatly—the Turkmens, Sabean Mandaean, the 

Kaka’is, the Shabaks and the others. Their victim stories are deeply troubling. 

When I was in Iraq, the first trip that I took as the Ambassadorat-Large for International Religious Freedom, I heard the story of 

an 18-year-old Yazidi woman from Mosul whom ISIL fighters kidnapped and raped. 

I heard this from members of her village, her family. She was 

then taken to Kocho village near Sinjar Mountain where the fighters separated out the village’s men and boys over 12 years old, and 

as she watched helplessly, lined them up next to shallow ditches 

and shot them all. After a while, her cell phone stopped working. 

We do not know this poor woman’s ultimate fate. What we do 

know is that that same story has replayed itself countless numbers 

of times with other victims. 

We talk about the numbers, but every one of those numbers is 

a human being. Every one of those numbers represents the most 

horrific suffering that we can imagine. 

7

We continue to see the negative impacts, secondly, of blasphemy 

and apostasy laws in countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, 

Egypt, and Sudan. 

Such laws have been used in some countries as a pretext to justify violence in the name of religion, which can lead to false claims 

of blasphemy, creating an atmosphere of impunity for those in social hostilities who choose to resort to violence. 

Repressive governments routinely subject their citizens, third, to 

violence, detention, discrimination, undue surveillance for simply 

exercising their faith or identifying with the religious community. 

We see this dramatized by those countless number of prisoners of 

conscience and we are deeply committed to seeing them free everywhere in the world. 

In China, members of unregistered religious and spiritual 

groups, their advocates including Falun Gong, the house churches, 

continue to face widespread harassment, detention and imprisonment. 

This reality has only been exacerbated by the growing crackdown 

on human rights lawyers in China including those seeking to work 

within China’s legal system to enhance religious freedom such as 

human rights lawyer Zhang Kai who was arrested just before he 

and a group of other religious and human rights activists were to 

meet with me on my trip. 

Many governments have also used the guise of confronting terrorism or violent extremism to justify repression of religious 

groups, nonviolent religious activities or imposition of broad restrictions on religious life. 

Chinese officials have increased controls on Uyghur Muslims’ 

peaceful religious expression and practice, including reported instances of restricting the ability to fast during Ramadan, banning 

beards and head scarves. Tibetan Buddhists face government interference under the cause of combatting separatism. 

Societal violence and discrimination continue to shape the government’s vital role in protecting religious freedom. 

Even though these are not actions facilitated by the government, 

governments are responsible under international law to take appropriate action to ameliorate the conditions that lead to such violence 

and protect harassed minority communities. 

And as you indicated, even in Europe many governments are 

struggling to cope with the aftermath of terror attacks such as 

those in France, Belgium, and Denmark, and at the same time 

hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, others have fled 

into Europe in the past months. 

We urge governments to uphold their obligations to protect the 

human rights of refugees and migrants in their countries and take 

steps to prevent them from facing official harassment and discrimination on account of their religion. 

We are deeply inspired by the works of countless religious communities, civil society groups, and individuals around the world 

who hold their governments accountable for international commitments to protect freedom of religion and belief. 

This remains the driving force behind our work. During my confirmation last year, I described several key goals. We have made 

8

progress on many of them in no small measure thanks to the support on Capitol Hill. 

First, we have been working successfully to build partnerships 

with other nations to advance religious freedom together since 

these global challenges require a global response. 

With the leadership of my good friend, Canadian Ambassador for 

Religious Freedom Bennett, we have forged the International Governmental Contact Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief, drawing from every hemisphere, from countries with different majority 

religious traditions to bring together nations, to devise strategies to 

promote and protect religious freedom for all. 

And this parallels parliamentary network help, which our U.S. 

Commission on International Religious Freedom has played such 

an important role in helping to shape. 

Second, we have strengthened significantly our programmatic 

work, an often overlooked but vital area of our work. Through the 

Human Rights and Democracy Fund and other funding sources, the 

State Department supports an ever wider range of programs that 

have a direct impact on international religious freedom, countering 

intolerance, combatting anti-Semitism, increasing public awareness, training civil society and government officials, strengthening 

the capacity of religious leaders to promote interfaith cooperation, 

empowering religious minorities to participate in political life, and 

combatting religiously motivated discrimination and violence. 

Third, we have strengthened our focus on religious minority communities under siege. The Obama administration has appointed 

Knox Thames as our Special Advisor for Religious Minorities in the 

Near East and South/Central Asia. 

We have spoken out frequently about what it would take to allow 

minority communities displaced by violence to return home, and 

Special Advisor Thames is actively focusing on coordinating with 

government-wide efforts in this regard. 

Fourth, we are building our office’s capacity to advance religious 

freedom worldwide. The Department of State has significantly increased the staffing of our office, allowing us to expand ongoing 

work and devote staff to—not just for geographical focus to monitor 

countries across the globe but to focus on thematic issues like the 

relationship between religious freedom, countering violent extremism, the negative effects of blasphemy and apostasy laws, intersection of women’s equality and religious freedom. 

This has helped us engage every segment of the State Department and of the administration and integrated religious freedom 

into our Nation’s statecraft in areas far beyond just religious freedom itself. 

And fifth, we have maintained a very close cooperation with the 

U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom represented 

here by its chair. He served a very exemplary role as chair prior 

to this. 

Professor Robert George is one of this country’s great public intellectuals and it is always an honor and a pleasure to work closely 

with him. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, we continue to face these daunting, 

alarming, growing challenges. We are building new partnerships, 

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investing in new programs, increasing our staff, coordinating with 

USCIRF. 

We face this task with continued vigor and resolve to ensure that 

everyone has a right to live in accordance with the dictates of his 

or her conscience. 

I thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to 

your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Saperstein follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Ambassador Saperstein, thank you very much for 

your testimony, and because we do have votes that may come as 

early as 1:30 to 1:45, I will lay out my questions and ask you to 

answer them and ask others so that we don’t—we can get to Professor George in a timely fashion. 

Just a couple of questions to start off with. There is a perception, 

as you know, among many—the 2013 GAO report cited this concern as well—that religious freedom is not a high priority for this 

administration. 

Now, in a revelation of priorities, as a matter of fact, Robbie 

George did testify a couple of times before our subcommittee at one 

point when—I mean, you are a breath of fresh air. We are so glad 

you sit in this very strategic position. 

But the problem has been for almost 3 years nobody sat in your 

position and CPC designations were not forthcoming even though 

the act prescribed an annual designation. 

They simply didn’t happen and they did not happen so a lot of 

countries that should have been put on notice and held to account 

were not. 

And I am wondering in the system how—I mean, do you meet 

with Secretary Kerry? Does he take your phone calls? Is there an 

integration of religious freedom and religious persecution issues in 

all aspects? 

Does DoD do the same thing? Certainly, whether it be AFRICOM 

or any of our other efforts, I mean, many of our soldiers and service 

members are as much diplomats as they are warriors and I am 

wondering how integrated that is with your efforts. 

I know you have travelled—when you go to a country you have 

an impact. But all the rest of the government it is a whole of government approach, it would seem to me. 

Can you speak to that issue of whether or not it is? Some of the 

designations that USCIRF has—and I and others have called for 

repeatedly are Vietnam and Pakistan. 

We just met, as I mentioned, with the Prime Minister of Pakistan a few days ago talking about blasphemy laws. I remember 

when the minister was gunned down in cold blood on his motorcycle some years ago, Shahbaz Bhatti. 

I was with you. We were in mourning over his loss. Pakistan has 

serious problems and Vietnam got an upgrade in order to get WTO 

and to get MFN or PNTR as it is now called. I opposed it. It said 

let the record speak for itself. 

I went to Vietnam, met with a lot of people. A lot of those that 

I met with are now in jail now, again, like Father Ly, who unfortunately had another show trial, as you know so well. 

I mean, Vietnam ought to be a CPC. What we do in terms of implementing and sanctioning is purely up to the administration. 

But the designation itself ought to be done without any other 

consideration of a foreign policy. And maybe if you would speak to 

the pattern. I wrote the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. We 

have a hearing in this subcommittee on November 4th. 

John Shattuck, who was the Assistant Secretary back in the 

Clinton administration for human rights, testified right where you 

sit against Frank Wolf’s bill, against it on the record. You know, 

it is baffling to look back—he was against it. 

18

I have often thought there are a whole lot of people who still 

haven’t said this is something we need to work on within State this 

patterns suggests that. 

On the trafficking bill, three countries at least—Malaysia, Cuba, 

and China didn’t get Tier 3, egregious violator of trafficking, even 

though the record is absolutely clear. Malaysia was because of the 

TPP, Cuba because of our rapprochement that we have engaged in, 

and China because we don’t want to offend China, which is ludicrous. 

On the child abduction law that I wrote, the Sean and David 

Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention and Return 

Act, Japan mysteriously dropped off even though there are 50 cases 

because of ‘‘other considerations.’’

And I am wondering from your perch, and I don’t want to get you 

fired, but do you see that there is a reluctance to really engage 

these issues? And Vietnam jumps off the page. They need our help. 

You know, China threatens them as never before and it seems 

that there is an effort to try to build bridges there. Calling them 

out on their persecutions seems to me to be a very important thing 

to do. 

So this pattern troubles me when it comes to these fundamental 

human rights issues and the clear points. Again, even on China, as 

you know, China is in a race to the bottom with North Korea when 

it comes to human rights. 

We just issued—I chair the Congressional-Executive Commission 

on China—we just put out our annual report on October 8th. It is 

chilling horrifying reading on every human rights point including 

religious persecution. 

Even the patriotic church and the Three-Self Movement are 

being attacked now and they were supposed to be protected by the 

government. 

So if you could speak to some of those issues I would appreciate 

it. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. All right. Let me take a run at some 

of these as quickly as I can. 

First, the integration issue. It used to be a fight to talk with the 

government over the last 15 years about how connected religious 

freedom was with so many other concerns we have had. I was really heartened when I arrived to find it is no longer a fight here. 

It is absolutely clear to everyone you cannot deal with combatting violent extremism, with countering terrorism, if you can have 

sectarian violence in a country, if you have large numbers of people 

shut out of participation in a country because of what their religious beliefs are. 

It is absolutely clear you cannot build democracies, you cannot 

have effective conflict resolution when you have groups of people 

who have to choose between abiding by the laws of the country and 

living out their lives in accordance with their religious conscience 

where, again, they don’t feel they can affirm their lives in that 

country by following the system and when that happens they are 

filled with the kind of frustration and despair that makes them fertile field for extremists. 

This is widely understood now in the State Department. In the 

work of my colleague, Shaun Casey, on the religion and global afVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:18 Apr 13, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\102715\97331 SHIRL
19

fairs effort that virtually doubles the number of people at the State 

Department working on the broader religious issues here, I have a 

staff of, depending on how you count them, 20, 25 people with parttime people who help write the report, even a little larger than 

that. Shaun has a staff that size—together it gives us a formidable 

ability to really continue to work closely with all the different 

arms. 

Almost all of them are really appreciative. Not just open but appreciative and they recognize you have to deal with these issues. 

It is a different day today. Is it still clumsy for many people? Yes. 

These are very hard issues to deal with in an effective manner. 

I also have to say that I have been struck by, in every country 

I have been to, and I presume it has been your experience as well 

in your travels, how robust is the engagement of the Embassies on 

an ongoing basis with the religious communities. 

When they pulled together their religious leaders they were 

greeted with open arms. They were greeted with, you know, people 

that they really knew and knew them. I think that is one of the 

great contributions with what you did with the report. 

Think about it. Every year 193 Embassies or councils have to assign staff to draft the report. They have to be in touch with beleaguered religious community or oppressed religious community. 

When I travelled in 2000 here that was the most common refrain 

I had—we now have somebody to talk to, we never had anyone to 

talk to, we know someone in the Embassy that we can talk to. 

Over the years, well over 1,000 Foreign Service Officers have had 

the immerse themselves in this kind of work. They are all over the 

place now. 

So we find there is robust interaction in the Embassies, far beyond what I imagined and I was aware of, before I took this position. I find that to be really heartening as well here. 

Let me move on to your question about access and influence. I 

was given a choice of several different variants of how this might 

be arranged. 

I consulted with some very good people, Congressman Wolf, a little bit with yourself, with Tom Farr, others on this. They promised 

me before I took this job I would have as much access as I want. 

I remember Representative Fortenberry asking the Secretary of 

State this question and he said, you know, I had to work for 

months to work it out for him to come on board—do you think I 

did that where he is not going to have access. 

There has not been a time that I have reached out to the Secretary’s staff, to the Secretary, to the other top staff where I think 

within hours I have gotten a response, almost always appreciating—affirming what I asked for and providing what I requested. 

Considering how busy they are, the fact that these responses 

come at the highest levels quickly and so encouragingly and supportive to me kind of speaks volumes about that. 

They really have lived up to that promise. There is not a single 

time that I have been shut out where I wanted access. 

I have had the time both formally and often step-asides with the 

Secretary where he says what is going on here—bring me up to 

20

speed here—what problems do you have here where I have been 

able to share those with him. 

So I have been very heartened and encouraged by that. I agree 

with you about the CPCs. I was clear about that in my testimony. 

I am pushing very hard to revamp the way that we do this. I do 

not think we are going to have this problem in the future here and 

I think within a short period of time that will become clear. 

Let me get into some of the individual countries. It is really hard 

for me on the wonderful work on trafficking which, as you know, 

in my prior life here the coalition met on this bill, met in my offices 

here. 

You know how strongly I feel about the bill and how closely we 

worked on it and the same with your child abduction law. It is really not appropriate for me to answer some of these other questions. 

Obviously, everyone in government should always abide by what 

the law says in terms of implementing these——

Mr. SMITH. If you could yield for 1 second. The concern is that 

there is a pattern. With Malaysia, it is the TPP and there is no 

way that Malaysia could be a Tier 3 country and go forward with 

the TPP. 

Cuba, we are making nice in Cuba even though you read the 

trafficking narrative in the TIP Report and it is inescapable. It is 

a Tier 3 country, it is horrible, and yet they got a country——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I mean, I need to leave it, Mr. Chairman——

Mr. SMITH. So Vietnam ought to be——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I need to leave it to you with your 

great experience and this subcommittee with its great experience 

to make the judgements about patterns. 

May I just offer one comment about it, however? It is absolutely 

true there are problems that emerge over the years. They come in 

ebbs and flows. 

They change over the years where things are not as implemented 

as effectively as we might hope. They remain the exceptions. 

We deal year after year with scores and scores of countries, some 

of whom we have deep relations with, we depend on for important 

interests, where we call it as it was intended to be. We name those 

countries and you focus on the times that it has gone off base. I 

understand that. 

I would just offer that in the main, all these things are working 

and they are evoking change here and, I mean, I remember in the 

very first year of the trafficking report when Israel was named, 

many people said ‘‘a close ally,’’ ‘‘shouldn’t do,’’ and then within a 

year they had passed a series of laws mainly that immediately took 

them out of it. 

Mr. SMITH. It was South Korea. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. You and I could name a score of times 

off the top of our heads where this really has worked. So I leave 

it to you to draw the question about the problematic patterns. 

But I think we ought to really celebrate also the patterns that 

show enormous impact that these pieces of legislation you have 

helped draft have had to beleaguered people all across the globe. 

21

Let me just say a word about particularly Vietnam here. I have 

found over the years that there are often not things that are right 

or wrong but different truths that are in tension with each other. 

So your picture of Vietnam I cannot argue with. You know from 

our report I agree with everything that you are saying. 

There are other parts of the picture, however, that I saw when 

I was there and we heard from different religious leaders, and as 

you know I met with Father Ly in prison. 

He asked me to send his warmest regards to you and to express 

how much he appreciates the staunch support that you have given 

him. We visited other religious prisoners as well. 

If you visit Vietnam today and compare it to when I was there 

last, a number of years ago, or to people who really know the country well and your own visits 15 years ago, wherever I travelled, the 

churches are bursting at the seams in small rural areas of the 

country, in the cities. 

The churches are filled there. There is a vibrancy and power, 

often filled with young families, that is truly inspiring against all 

of these restrictions, in the face of all of these restrictions. 

They at least allow for this kind of life to happen and we have 

found that these restrictions that you have talked about are imposed very unevenly around the country. 

There are many areas where the hand of government is much 

lighter and in those areas the religious communities are organizing. They contribute to the society, are able to provide social 

services. There are extraordinary things that are going on. 

But you go to another city and they crack down all the time and 

throw in jail the unregistered churches. In another city they turned 

a blind eye so long as it is not flagrant. 

That wouldn’t have happened 15 years ago. There was no room, 

no space for any of that. So we are focused right now on using TPP 

where there has been an openness for improvements on human 

rights in several areas, on labor law, on disability rights, and other 

things that we have been engaged with Vietnam on, where TPP 

has been a lever to get them to sign international accords and treaties they have never signed before to reform some of the rule of law 

issues that we have been pushing on for years. 

We are pushing very hard on religious freedom. I hope everyone 

knows that Vietnam is now undertaking a complete revision of 

their religion law. 

On the one hand, there are parts of it that are positive here. It 

would add provisions allowing for religious training facilities, the 

explicit right for religious institutions to raise money for the first 

time. 

It would permit clergy to organize religious ceremonies more extensively than it does. It gives prisoners religious rights that it 

never gave before. 

On the other hand, in the main, it didn’t make the reforms that 

you have been calling for and we have been calling for, the same 

regulatory system that controls every aspect of life—who can go to 

seminary, what they can teach, who can be appointed as a leader 

of a church. 

If you don’t have the right to appoint your own clergy, how can 

you really have religious freedom? I hear the requirement to report 

22

everything you are planning to do for a year with every deviance 

from it having to be approved by the government. 

We have offered a number of suggestions of how to push that. We 

have done that in consultation with the religious leadership of Vietnam. 

We really hope that they will make improvements that will 

change it from permission to notification. If they want to keep some 

awareness and control, at least let the religious communities notify 

them what they are doing and move ahead. 

They ought to have a restriction that says if they ask for approval for something, if it doesn’t come by the time the law says, 

that it becomes a stamp of approval. 

Otherwise, people wait for years and years for permission to do 

things, and to ease the restrictions on the unregistered churches so 

long as they don’t violate some other kind of law. 

So we are pushing very hard. One of the big problems is some 

of the restrictions are written so vaguely it allows the government 

to crack down on whatever it wants to do. You can’t have a legal 

system that does that. 

It can’t have over-broad vague rules controlling religious life this 

way. So we are working to support the religious community and 

the NGO community that are pushing hard for these reforms. 

Let us see what happens on this here. It is a country of key priority for us here and we will continue to keep our focus. 

Mr. SMITH. I thank you. 

Before I yield to Mr. Cicilline, I would just note immediately 

prior to the bilateral trade agreement, Vietnam was taken off the 

list by the previous administration so there is no partisan effort 

here and, very quickly, the day after they won that benefit there 

was a snap back and the people who had signed Bloc 8406, the 

human rights manifesto, many of the religious freedom people that 

I met with on my last trip there, which was right before the bilateral trade agreement were all thrown into jail again. 

And so it is the lack of durability and CPC, I would respectfully 

say, doesn’t mean you have to prescribe penalties. You have the option. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH. But the designation is just a snapshot—what are 

they doing—and it seems to me that they have not made the grade. 

But that is—we will agree to disagree. 

Mr. Cicilline. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ambassador, for your testimony. 

I have three subjects that I would like to cover and I know I have 

other colleagues that are here so I will try to move them quickly. 

You made reference to the sort of, I think, some sense that you 

are revamping or revising the CPC designation process. If you 

could speak to that. 

I mean, I do think there is some evidence of some unevenness 

in this process and, certainly, USCIRF has made recommendations 

about a greater number of countries being designated and I recognize there are waivers that are granted. 

23

But I would also like to hear your thoughts on the impact of 

waivers, particularly waivers which sometimes seem to be permanent. 

The whole notion behind this and it has obviously worked successfully is to identify countries of concern to raise the profile of 

the issue and as a consequence compel them to change their behavior or take action so the even and predictable way in which this 

is done in the sense that it is being done annually, as at least the 

legislation suggests, and then the impact of waivers. So that is one. 

The second thing is if you would just speak to what I think is 

a growing concern for many of us, and that is the action of nonstate actors who very often are some of the worst violators of religious freedom and, obviously, in places sometimes where government is really nonexistent or functioning government is nonexistent, what are the tools available for us to impact that situation and should we consider being able to designate a region even 

if it doesn’t have an actual government responsible as a place of 

concern, which I am not sure the current statute provides? 

And, finally, what are the most effective tools that you have and 

what more can Congress do to enhance the objective of your responsibilities and what are the most effective ways to do it? 

That may include some of the recommendations that were made 

in the International Religious Freedom Report I just released. So 

if you could just address those three I would appreciate it. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Yes. Very quickly, there is an agreement that we need to kind of standardize and regularize the CPC 

process. We haven’t quite completed that yet. 

I can’t comment on the internal deliberations but we are trying 

to move ahead in a way that I think you will feel good about when 

we are able to talk a little more openly about it. 

It is part of the process of the CPC determinations. We not only 

provide internal guidance to all of those in the decision-making 

process and my office in DRL, through all the regional desks all the 

way up to the Secretary, but also the analyses of NGOs, of religious 

communities, and, most particularly, of USCIRF here. 

We take the Commission’s recommendations of what the CPCs 

ought to be. They are seen by everyone including the argumentation for it as part of our process and I just want people to know 

about that. 

In terms of the impact of when waivers are given, the sanctions 

are only one tool that we have in our programmatic work in which 

we strengthen civil society and religious groups are able to fight for 

their rights more effectively, where we move together with international cooperation as we strengthen these international arms to 

work together, to focus so that countries that have better relations 

with some countries we may not, can be effective in terms of fighting for the expansion of human rights and religious freedom. 

All of these are weapons that are tools, that are available to us 

to do that work. We have this panoply of tools and when sanctions 

aren’t going to be imposed because of national interests, national 

security purposes, then we use these other tools as robustly as we 

possibly can. 

24

Nonstate actors are a major challenge for us. We have very little 

control and leverage with them. They are not in diplomatic relations with us. 

We, obviously, in countries like Iraq are committed to strengthening the governments there to fight against these groups. The 

same with those who face Boko Haram, who face al-Shabaab. 

We are working with the governments to try and use the best 

techniques that we can train them in to provide resources for them, 

to learn from best practices elsewhere, to help coordinate efforts of 

countries in the surrounding areas together to try and be more effective in the work that we do on those. 

But this is an evolving crisis that we will be spending more and 

more time on. I have been encouraged to see how in the State Department, and I know in our intelligence agencies and defense 

world, we really have mobilized around these issues. 

We are in touch on an ongoing basis with the defense apparatus, 

particularly vis-a-vis the Near East, Iraq and Syria, and with the 

intelligence agencies in terms of working together on this. 

I think you will be very heartened to know the extent of the cooperation on the sharing of our relevant perspectives and sharing 

of information on this. 

What more? I mean, I think there are ideas you will have to take 

a look and evaluate based on what we have heard here in the 

Frank Wolf bill here. 

There are other bills around. There are some good ideas in those 

and you should, obviously, take a look at them. 

Obviously, any time resources through the State Department are 

expanded it is helpful to us. I want to say what I said over and 

over again every time I have testified. There is extraordinary work 

being done at the State Department. 

There are not enough resources in some of the most vital areas 

that we have. When we are forced to take from one good area to 

another good area including to religious freedom, it really hurts our 

overall mission. 

So where there are additional resources putting in of the work 

that you think is most helpful it really makes a difference in our 

ability to do it and I am feeling that by the funds that the Department was able to free up to allow us to significantly expand our 

staff that will really significantly strengthen our work. 

Mr. CICILLINE. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. I yield back, 

Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Chairman Rohrabacher. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. Just to reiterate, I believe that at this particular moment when we are discussing religious freedom in the world that the overriding issue and attention 

needs to be on the Christians in the Middle East who are literally 

targeted for genocide. And we can see that and we need to deal 

with that is my priority. 

But in terms of the broader scope of religious freedom, with the 

fall of Communism and basically Marxism and Leninism was an 

atheist philosophy of trying to superimpose an atheist dictatorship 

on the world and they killed many believers of all faiths and we 

can be happy that that part of the human history has been, as Ronald Reagan said, put into the ash heap of history. 

25

And there has been progress made in Vietnam but there is a long 

way to go, as you expressed. The very laws that are applicable to 

all other elements of a controlled society are applied to them. 

Thank you for that insight. I think it is important for us to realize those controls are being used by people who fundamentally are 

atheists of the Communist nature who now are in power and they 

have this bias against—the guys in power have this bias against 

Christians because they were part of the Communist tide that was 

going to sweep the world. 

But let me ask you about Russia. That was the heart of it and 

it is where it started. I have been to Russia several times in the 

last couple years and I have been meeting with religious leaders 

every time and they are reporting to me that they have relative 

freedom of religion on Russia now. What would your reaction to 

that be? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Like many countries around the globe, 

it is a mixed story. For those that are recognized in Russia, there 

is a good modicum of ability to live their lives in accordance with 

their freedom. 

But in the name of anti-terrorism and anti-separatism, the Russian Government also has cracked down on some Muslims, some 

minority groups and we think—we understand legitimate concerns 

about terrorism. 

We support countries dealing with them. But when they crack 

down by cracking down on peaceful religious practice as kind of an 

inoculation against letting anything flourish that might lead down 

a path that they fear toward this, it really becomes problematic. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It is a very difficult line to draw, what you 

are talking about——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. It is. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. Because in Russia they—even, I 

mean, as I say, I have met with religious leaders. My last several 

visits I—and the Mormons—even the Mormons said oh, no, we are 

fine—we can knock on doors and seek converts and the only group 

that was complaining were the Scientologists, which, of course, is 

a question in Germany as well. 

But in terms of trying to deal with the Islamic threat at a time, 

we realize it is very easy to see our friends in Saudi Arabia have 

been sponsoring mosques in order to promote radical Islam not—

and changing the society and not just to get together to help people 

worship God together. 

Where you draw that line of how you deal with people who are 

trying to manipulate the Islamic faith toward a political radical 

end, that is a very difficult line to draw. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. We agree it is a difficult line to draw 

and, clearly, one of the tests ought to be where peaceful people are 

acting peaceably they ought to be allowed to——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Sure. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN [continuing]. Live in accordance with 

their religious conscience. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Correct. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Where they are violating laws here 

that have to do with criminal activity and terrorist activity then 

those should be addressed directly about it. 

26

We have found in a number of countries including Russia that 

is an over-broad crackdown on segments of the community and 

they also have a registration process that can be tough. 

There are smaller groups—Jehovah’s Witnesses, other 

groups——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN [continuing]. Who really are feeling 

enormous pressure——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That was the second group that was——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN [continuing]. In this regard as well. So 

some of the smaller groups are really having problems. 

You know, the same thing—if you are talking about those categories in countries and China. China still only recognizes five 

major faiths. If you are not one of those faiths, you risk going to 

jail if you try to function openly there. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I was just about to bring up China. So thank 

you for that analysis. One last note on China—yes, they have to 

be part of those five recognized faiths. 

But do we not also still see a massive repression of, for example, 

the Falun Gong in China? Wouldn’t that be under the umbrella of 

a religious freedom? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I mean, it is why I named it in my testimony here. There are still thousands of Falun Gong imprisoned 

including mostly their leadership. 

Many of them are in prisons where we do not know where they 

are and their families and their lawyers can’t contact. There are 

many reported stories of torture and deaths in prison here but we 

are seeing similar kinds of repression vis-a-vis the Tibetan Buddhists and the Uyghur Muslims. And as I said, as in Vietnam, you 

know, it is uneven around the country. 

There are some places the government hand is lighter and you 

see religious publishing houses and social services and there are 

other places and unregistered churches able to function, but in the 

main in China, unregistered churches are always in danger of 

being arrested and we have this extraordinary situation in 

Wenzhou where one of the deepest concentrations of Christians in 

one area in China where they are pulling down crosses over about 

1,500 churches and demolishing churches in the name of urban reclamation and they talk about it being only a small percentage of 

all the buildings. 

But at 1,500 out of 6,000 churches there is 25 percent of all the 

churches that have been affected by this. And it is a clear effort 

to kind of repress the visible presence of the growing resurgence of 

religious life in China. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, thank you very much for giving us that 

insight of that type of repression. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Chairman Rohrabacher. 

Curt Clawson, the gentleman from Florida. 

Mr. CLAWSON. Thank you for coming in and thank you for your 

service to our country. 

I got two real quick questions so if you will—I know Mark wants 

to go so we will go fast. The first one is really easy. 

27

We read the information. We don’t see anything about Mormons 

and, you know, Mormons they can get mocked on, you know, on 

Broadway and it doesn’t matter. 

So I am just curious no one ever mentions somewhere, I think, 

millions of Mormons around the world. You never stumble across 

it or off the radar, or what is the story there? 

It wasn’t a trick question. I am not——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. No, no, no. 

Mr. CLAWSON. You know, I am just curious because of my own 

ancestry. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I respect that. 

Mr. CLAWSON. Because if you don’t know, you don’t know. You 

can let me know another time. It is okay. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Let me—I am actually—I am pausing 

because I want to say something—I want to phrase what I am saying complimentary about the Mormon Church. 

Because of their practice of young men and some women voluntarily going on mission, they have worked out more successfully 

than most religious groups. 

A modus operandi to work with the powers that be as effectively 

or more effectively than any other religious group that I can—that 

I can think of, they tend to run into problems there for—they try 

to play by whatever the rules are in a different country and they 

are not as likely to push the envelope. 

So there are a score of countries I could name that do not allow 

any kind of religious expression other than the one that is a stateendorsed religious expression. 

Disproportionately, these are Muslim countries in which a Mormon would be arrested if they went around doing the normal 

missionizing that they do, and since they don’t tend to push the envelope and test this but recognize that that is not a country at this 

point they are able to function in——

Mr. CLAWSON. Right. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN [continuing]. They tend to run into this. 

That is why, of course——

Mr. CLAWSON. Right. No, no. I mean, I know. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render under the Lord what is the Lord’s. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Indeed. So they——

Mr. CLAWSON. It is a good approach irrespective. Let me ask one 

other question real briefly. 

I have read the material. I see you speaking. I look at the world 

in terms of global trade and I struggle—and I like what you are 

doing—I like the program because people ought to be able to go to 

church and kneel down and pray to whatever god. 

But it never seems to really impact any trade and therefore anybody’s bottom line. If you are China, your billions of dollars every 

month to the U.S. through Wal-Mart. 

If you are the oil producers, none of that ever gets impacted. 

Cuba is opening up. It feels like this is a program at a big picture 

level I am saying no one’s bottom line with respect to trade is ever 

impacted even though we are the world’s growth engine. 

So what are we really doing here and what am I missing about 

that? Because all the countries that you mention there are a lot of 

28

Nike shoes being made in Vietnam and all the toys and electronics 

are coming from China. They are the factory of the world. 

And whether they abuse folks’ religious freedoms or not seems to 

matter not to the bottom line, which everyone respects. Am I missing the big picture completely here or are we kind of—it had got 

to be a frustrating job for you. 

Tell me if I am missing something here because——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. You raise two issues. Let me just say 

this because it has been alluded in some of the other comments. 

We are all committed to religious freedom and that includes not 

only the right to worship. It includes the right to talk about your 

faith, to change your faith, to proselytize others. It includes, as 

someone said quite appropriately, the right not to believe as well. 

It is a broad right that goes beyond just the right to worship. 

Mr. CLAWSON. Are we moving the needle? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. In some countries, we are. In other 

countries, we are not, and we try to do everything we can to move 

the needle by strengthening the ability of religious groups to advocate for their rights, to work with civil society. 

We try to do it by our direct bilateral relations with these countries to improve rule of law issues on that. There are some countries we make real progress. Other countries are much harder. 

We do use economic levers on this. There are a range of countries 

that are subject to sanctions. Like so, for instance, in Iran; it restricts a whole number of religious communities. 

We have lifted one set of sanctions. But all the human rights and 

religious freedom sanctions remain in place and nothing under this 

agreement stops us from imposing more if the situation deteriorates even further than it does. 

There is a whole range of countries in which we do apply both 

human rights in general and religious freedom, particularly. Restraint sometimes in trade, other financial restraints and access to 

banking here and other things that affect either the government or 

organizations that are involved in this violation of human rights or 

individuals who are involved in these rights. 

They are fairly robust and over a long period of time we think 

they are part of the picture of what we can do to change the pattern of some of these repressive policies and practices that countries have. 

Mr. CLAWSON. I thank you. I think a lot of us have ancestors 

that were religious freedom migrants. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I can assure you that is true. 

Mr. CLAWSON. And so it means something to us and therefore it 

means something to folks in other countries that lose one of the 

most cherished rights of all. 

So we appreciate what you are doing. I am frustrated sometimes 

by our lack of economic will. But I certainly have nothing but respect and admiration for what you are doing, and I yield back. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I really appreciate that. As somebody 

who is part of a religious group that has known this kind of oppression time and again century after century. 

We know the price of what happens when good people stand idly 

by and this nation is committed not to repeat that mistake that has 

been made so many times before. 

29

So thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Clawson. Mark Meadows. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to say this as delicately as I possibly can, Mr. Ambassador. But listening to your testimony, reconciling it with reality or 

perceived reality is very difficult to do. 

You are saying we are doing extraordinary things. I think that 

was a quote—extraordinary things and making extraordinary 

progress. And yet, when you talk to people on the ground, when 

you talk to others they believe that the State Department doesn’t 

make this a priority. 

How would you respond to that criticism? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Yes. I truly don’t believe I said anything about extraordinary progress. These are daunting——

Mr. MEADOWS. To me—to Mr. Cicilline you did. But that is okay. 

I listen very carefully. But go ahead. I will let you retract. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. So if I said that then, Mr. Meadows, I 

do retract it. 

Human rights is a very daunting agenda today. Everywhere 

across the globe religious freedom is a daunting agenda today everywhere across the globe. It is very hard to get traction and to 

change long-ingrained practices and policies——

Mr. MEADOWS. So would you——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN [continuing]. That these countries have. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Would you say that——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. That we are doing extraordinary things 

here I am prepared to try and defend to you. I really believe that 

we are. 

A lot of this in countries, the countries that are worst countries, 

we can’t talk about openly in terms of the programmatic stuff. We 

are investing large amounts of resources to help strengthen those 

who share our views, those who are the victims of these injustices 

here and——

Mr. MEADOWS. So let me—let me interrupt you. I only have a 

limited amount of time. So let me maybe reclarify my question a 

little bit. 

You talked about the use of tools. I think the GAO report has 

cited in 2013 that this was not really a priority for the administration. Positions went unfilled. Special envoys were not put forth. 

We have heard testimony—I follow this very closely and so that 

is why I am saying trying to reconcile your testimony with the 

myriad of testimony that I have heard before which would suggest 

that it is not a priority. Are you saying that it is? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I am saying that it is. Whatever was 

true up until 2013, certainly from the time that I have come on, 

the administration has lived up to every commitment and promise 

that it made to me and that it has made to the office. 

It has strengthened our work, our ability to work across the full 

range of efforts of this administration and to have access at the 

highest levels with the Defense Department, the intelligence agencies, the full range of the State Department. It exceeds what I had 

hoped for. 

30

Mr. MEADOWS. That all sounds good but here is my question. 

Some would suggest that the position went unfilled for over a year 

so how could it be a priority? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I am not the one to ask about being 

held accountable to what happened before I came on. You would 

have to ask others. 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. So let me go a little bit further then because you were talking about TPP and as we have been involved 

in the negotiations with TPP, it seems like religious liberty and 

human rights is a sidebar, not anything that is a—and you would 

indicate that it is a priority with regards to our negotiation with 

the TPP deal. 

Is that—is that your testimony here today, that it is priority? 

You know, it is a central focus of our trade agreement with these 

other countries? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Certainly in terms of Vietnam. 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. So let me ask you this. 

What message does it send to the world when we change the rating of Malaysia without really anything significant happening as it 

relates to human trafficking? What message does that send? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Again, that is a question you would 

have to ask the people in the human trafficking office or that chain 

above them. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Is that not a human rights abuse? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Trafficking? 

Mr. MEADOWS. Yes. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I devoted a lot of my career to addressing that issue. It is a very important human rights abuse and the 

existence of the human trafficking office, the existence of the report 

itself, whatever flaws you may see in particular pieces that happened this year is itself testimony to the importance that——

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. Let us go back to the religious liberty 

aspect then out of the over 750 pages of the proposed TPP as we 

were reviewing it. 

What specific language in there gives you great comfort that we 

are going to address this as a priority as a Nation—specific language not——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I can’t answer that, not——

Mr. MEADOWS. Have you read the—have you——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. If I can get back to you. 

[The information referred to follows:]

WRITTEN RESPONSE RECEIVED FROM THE HONORABLE DAVID N. SAPERSTEIN TO

QUESTION ASKED DURING THE HEARING BY THE HONORABLE MARK MEADOWS

The U.S. Government is fully committed to promoting religious freedom. I have 

been working to build partnerships with other nations to advance religious freedom 

together, traveling to engage many governments and international groups to expand 

the fundamental freedom of religion for all. My office supports many programs that 

counter intolerance, train civil society and government officials on legal and policy 

protections for religious freedom, strengthen the capacity of religious leaders to promote interfaith cooperation, empower religious minorities to participate in political 

life, and help combat religiously motivated discrimination and violence. 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will set high standards and create opportunities for further progress on a range of human rights reforms. For example, TPP will 

promote transparency and encourage public participation in the rulemaking process, 

discourage corruption, and establish codes of conduct to promote high ethical standVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:18 Apr 13, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\_AGH\102715\97331 SHIRL
31

ards among public officials. Increased trade throughout the region will increase open 

exchanges of information on a range of issues. 

In addition, Chapter 19 on labor of TPP requires all TPP Parties to adopt and 

maintain in their laws and practices internationally recognized labor rights, including prohibiting discrimination in respect to employment and occupation on the basis 

of religion. The Brunei-U.S. Labor Consistency Plan, Section II (D) and the Malaysia-U.S. Labor Consistency Plan, Section II (A) further detail the commitments 

these governments have made to ensure their law and practice meet this obligation. 

These efforts will help advance human rights, including religious freedom.

Mr. MEADOWS. Have you read the TPP deal? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I have read the parts of it that deal 

with some of the issues we are talking about. So I only know what 

our face to face negotiations with the Vietnamese Government have 

been like, some of the commitments they have made that they have 

never made before, some of the treaties they are signing they have 

never signed before. 

Is it everything we would want? No. Does it feel like it is providing traction to make a difference that will help workers, that 

will help disabled people, that will help minorities there? I think 

it does. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So you mentioned Iran—and I will close with this 

because I don’t ever go anywhere without bringing it up—what is 

happening with Pastor Saeed Abedini? 

I mean, I don’t know that there is any more of a poster face of 

religious liberty and what it is and what it is not other than Pastor 

Saeed Abedini. And yet our whole political capital has been invested and nothing has happened. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. We can’t control, in the end, what 

countries that are bad actors are going to do in general or on any 

single thing. We can try and influence it. We can use every means 

at our end to try and affect the outcome of these. 

You have seen the release of prisoners of conscience over the last 

years in different countries that have been problematic actors, that 

have been named CPCs in this area. 

So it is not that we are not working on it day in and day out 

to try and get the release of these prisoners of conscience. The 

President has spoken publically about Saeed Abedini and met with 

the family. 

The Secretary has spoken publically about him, met with the 

family. We know there have been reports—it is not a secret—that 

on the sidelines in the negotiations on the Iran agreement, we were 

raising this almost every time that there was a meeting, every avenue that we have either directly ourselves or through intermediaries who have closer relations with Iran, we are using to help 

all of the political prisoners, the American citizens there and others 

who are the prisoners of conscience to have them released. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well, I will close with this one rhetorical question: If $140 billion in sanction relief can’t get one pastor out of 

Iran, how much will it take? 

I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Meadows. 

On the whole issue of double hatting of sanctions and indefinite 

waivers and USCIRF has recommended that you end the practices. 

32

I would add exclamation points to the recommendation to do 

that. With regard to Saeed Abedini, we have had hearings in this 

subcommittee, I have chaired them. 

We have heard from Naghmeh who was deeply disappointed with 

the State Department, not you, the State Department. Originally, 

she said they told her, ‘‘There is nothing we can do.’’ She was 

aghast at that, couldn’t believe it. 

Frank Wolf actually convened a Lantos Commission hearing. The 

first one we had, and Secretary Kerry did respond and we were all 

grateful for that, but I asked the Secretary again, sitting right 

where you are sitting, why was it integrated into the talks. 

On the sidelines means on the sidelines and that it has no real 

bearing on what I consider a catastrophic deal that was signed 

with Iran. 

If we are going to sign it, at least the Americans out and they 

got away with it and they are continuing to grossly mistreat them. 

I had a hearing here, Mr. Ambassador, on North Korea. We had 

Andrew Natsios testify. You remember Andrew. He used to be the 

head of USAID. He did disaster relief. 

Well, it was on North Korea and he said why didn’t we learn the 

lesson in North Korea that when we were talking even in the SixParty Talks about nuclear issues, which we failed at, we never 

brought up human rights. It was always way over on the fringes, 

if that. 

And he said that lesson should have been learned with regards 

to Saeed Abedini and the other Americans who are being held. It 

should have been right there front and center and it was not, and 

now our ability to obtain his and the others’ release has, regrettably, diminished. 

Trent Franks, who is chairman of the Religious Freedom Caucus 

for the House, has joined us. 

Chairman Franks. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be incredibly 

brief here. 

You know that whatever the chairman has said I agree with 

every syllable and so it saves me a lot of time. But I do want to 

just underscore how significant your presence here is today and, of 

course, the underlying cause being, in my judgment, critical to any 

kind of freedom if we are going to survive. 

If we don’t have religious freedom all other freedoms go with it. 

And there is a wonderful cadre of some of the heroes in my heart 

and life behind you. 

I just see so many good people there and so I am looking forward 

to their testimony. One of the things I guess I would hope that 

would be part of the discussion is that as we Americans are deeply 

committed to this cause of religious freedom, we want to make sure 

we export it to the world. 

It is just one of our greatest gifts that we can give them. We 

went to make sure that we don’t see it undermined and diminished 

in our own country and right now I think that that is a sincere concern. 

So I guess my question to you—is that appropriate, Mr. Chairman? My question to you is how do we make sure that we protect 

33

religious freedom in our own country and then, of course, how do 

we make sure that we export it appropriately? 

What do you think are the biggest threats to religious freedom 

domestically and what is the answer to it, what is the biggest way 

that we can then export that religious freedom to other countries? 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. As the chairman in introducing me 

noted, I spent 35 years as a sideline of my life teaching religion law 

and church state law at Georgetown Law School and spent much 

of my life dealing with religious freedom domestically. 

It is an issue of great personal concern for me. But as representing the United States Government, my sole portfolio is dealing with international religious freedom. 

I can think of many good people in the administration and the 

Justice Department who can answer those questions directly. It 

would not be appropriate for me—as much as I care about that 

issue it would not be appropriate. 

Mr. FRANKS. I understand perfectly and, Mr. Chairman, I am 

going to yield back. But I will just express to you that I think if 

we can protect religious freedom all other freedoms will ultimately 

be extended. If we fail——

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. I could not agree more. 

Mr. FRANKS. If we fail religious freedom, I think all other freedoms die with it. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Again, on that—on that basis, Mr. 

Franks, first, thank you for your leadership on this issue. It has 

been extraordinary. 

But on that basis, I assure you, the administration feels as 

strongly as you do that our fundamental rights as depicted in the 

Constitution, begin with freedom of religion. It is a foundation 

stone on which other rights depend and it is one of the reasons I 

have devoted my life to this cause. 

Mr. FRANKS. I thank you for that devotion. God bless you and 

thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Chairman Franks. 

Ambassador Saperstein, thank you very much. We do appreciate 

your testimony and look forward to working with you going forward. 

Ambassador SAPERSTEIN. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. I would like to now welcome to the witness table Dr. 

Robert George, Robbie George, who is chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. 

He is the McCormick professor of jurisprudence and director of 

the James Madison Program in American ideals and institutions at 

Princeton University. He has served on the President’s Council on 

Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States 

Commission on Civil Rights. 

A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School, Professor George also earned a Master’s degree in theology from Harvard and a doctorate in philosophy of law from Oxford University. 

I would note that I appreciate your staff being here as well as 

Katrina Lantos Swett, who has served as chair of the commission 

herself and remains on the commission, Annette Lantos and, of 

course, we are always joined in this committee by the great presVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:18 Apr 13, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\_AGH\102715\97331 SHIRL
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ence of Tom Lantos’ wonderful portrait, who served as chairman of 

the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 

Dr. George. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT P. GEORGE, PH.D., CHAIRMAN, U.S. 

COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 

Mr. GEORGE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

It is a great honor to be here and I want to thank you and the 

distinguished members of this subcommittee for holding the hearing. The topic could not be more important or timely. 

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for everything you have done for 

human rights and in particular for religious liberty in your public 

life. You have been a great inspiration to me personally. 

I know I speak for other members of my commission in saying 

that all of us are happy for the opportunity to be partnering with 

you and with your colleagues to advance this great cause. 

I want to say that I miss Congressman Frank Wolf. So often in 

the past when I have been here to testify he has been here and 

what a towering figure in the cause of human rights and especially 

religious freedom, Frank Wolf continues to be. Although he is no 

longer a Member of Congress of course he is still out there literally 

doing the Lord’s work on behalf of religious freedom. 

I was down at Baylor recently where, of course, he has been installed in a new endowed chair down there. He continues, as you 

know, to take great personal risks, going to the worst places in the 

world to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable, the 

powerful, the oppressors. 

I feel his spirit in this room. I also can’t help but feel the spirit 

of Tom Lantos and Henry Hyde, the two great champions of human 

rights who are appropriately memorialized here in this room. 

I also want to say that it is a great honor to be speaking just 

after Rabbi Ambassador Saperstein. David is not only a dear friend 

but he too is a great champion of the cause. 

I strongly supported his confirmation as Ambassador-at-Large 

and when he was confirmed I will admit to giving a cheer because 

I knew we would have in the administration, in that crucial role, 

someone who would be working night and day, literally tirelessly 

for our cause. 

Now, I am a realist. I have been around. I know that in a bureaucracy, in an administration there are difficulties, there are 

challenges. There are competing considerations. 

The voice for religious liberty has to compete with voices for 

many, many other things—many legitimate things. 

But I knew that I would be able to sleep peacefully at night 

knowing that there was someone there who would be doing everything I would be doing if I were there. There is no—there is not 

a man whom I would prefer in that position to David Saperstein. 

So I am just delighted that he is there and it is an honor to follow 

him at this microphone. 

I thank you for recognizing my colleague and predecessor as 

chairman, Katrina Lantos Swett, another great champion of religious liberty. 

35

I want to mention that we are here, Chairman Smith, with our 

wonderful executive director, Jacklyn Woolcott, and several members of our staff. 

I would boast that we have the finest staff in the United States 

Government. It is a small team but what consummate professionals 

and dedicated people, people who are genuinely dedicated to the 

cause of religious freedom. 

And I just find it a privilege every day to be working with them, 

and I am delighted to be here on International Religious Freedom 

Day. This is a day to celebrate. 

I know we are all, as Congressman Franks rightly mentioned, I 

think Congressman Meadows mentioned, others have mentioned, 

we are all at a certain level just depressed about the state of religious freedom in the world. 

I am going to go into that in a minute just how bad the situation 

is. But we do have something to celebrate and that is that this Nation in the International Religious Freedom Act, in which you were 

so instrumental, which Frank Wolf was so instrumental, many of 

you were so instrumental in getting us, this Nation has committed 

itself not only to religious freedom at home but also abroad. What 

we believe to be a universal value is something that every human 

being on the face of the earth is entitled to because as Henry Hyde 

taught us, every human being is the bearer of a profound, inherent, 

and equal dignity. 

That is the foundation of our rights. There is no right more central than the right to religious freedom. So we should take a moment, even as we recharge the battery to redouble our efforts in 

the face of so many adversities on the religious freedom front, we 

should take a moment to celebrate today and to thank people like 

the chairman who are so instrumental in getting the act passed. 

Now, of course, one of the reasons we are here today is that religious freedom remains under serious and sustained assault across 

the globe, whether we are talking about North Korea or China or 

Vietnam across to Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, obviously, Syria 

and Iraq over to Egypt, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Cuba, 

problems in Russia. Almost every where we look we see severe assaults on religious freedom. 

So we have to be the people who are standing up for it and while 

I am under strictures very similar to those under which Rabbi 

Saperstein is operating, I will say, Congressman Franks, that I 

think we should all agree that the very best way we can promote 

religious freedom abroad is to honor it vigilantly at home. I think 

we should all be on the page for that one. 

Now, the most recent Pew study reports that approximately 

three-quarters of the world’s people live in countries in which religion is either significantly restricted, the free exercise of religion is 

significantly restricted, or people are subjected to brutality by nongovernmental actors, mobs, thugs, terrorists, where people are living insecurely in respect to their basic human right to religious 

freedom and that is quite an indictment of our current circumstances. 

We are also here today because religious freedom matters so 

much, a pivotal human right central to our own history and affirmed, of course, in international treaties and other instruments. 

36

It is also crucial to our security and to the security of the world. 

Religious freedom issues and religious freedom violations are central to the narratives of countries that top the U.S. foreign policy 

and security agendas. 

Effectively promoting religious freedom can help the U.S. achieve 

crucial goals by fostering respect for human rights while promoting 

stability and ultimately national security. 

So what I am saying to you is we have a moral principal at stake 

here which we should vie for with all our might and that is the 

basic fundamental human right to religious liberty rooted in the 

dignity of the human person. 

We also have an additional motive, though, which is that the security and stability that we want for ourselves and therefore need 

in the world is at risk when religious freedom is undermined 

abroad. 

If we want peace and stability in the world and at home we are 

going to need to promote religious freedom abroad. So today I want 

to focus on the following. 

First, how the International Religious Freedom Act has been 

used and should be used; second, what the CPC process is, the 

Countries of Particular Concern process is; and third, recommendations that our commission has for promoting international religious 

freedom. 

Now, the IRFA law seeks to make religious freedom an important part of U.S. policy by among other measures creating governmental institutions to monitor and report on religious freedom violations in the countries of the world. 

Within the State Department, we have got an Ambassador-atLarge position, of course, the position that is currently held with 

great distinction by our friend, Rabbi Ambassador Saperstein, and 

the Office of International Religious Freedom, and outside the executive branch the independent nonpartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom mandated to review religious violations and make recommendations to the President, the 

Secretary of State and the Congress. 

The law gave teeth to this effort by requiring the U.S. Government, to designate Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs), thereby 

naming, perhaps shaming, the worst foreign government violators, 

those that engage in or tolerate systematic ongoing and egregious 

violations. That is the statutory standard. 

That is the language, systematic ongoing and egregious violations, and take appropriate actions in response to create incentives 

for improvement in religious freedom and disincentives for inaction 

or failures on the religious front or further failures. 

Now, unfortunately, neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have fully, have adequately, utilized this mechanism, with 

designations being too often infrequent and the CPC list largely remaining the same when changes would, one would think, indicate 

some changes in CPC designations. 

Moreover, administrations generally have not levied new Presidential actions but relied on preexisting sanctions which such socalled double-hatting—the chairman introduced the concept in his 

opening remarks—providing little incentive for governments to reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:18 Apr 13, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\_AGH\102715\97331 SHIRL
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duce or halt egregious violations or waived any consequences of the 

designations. 

Designating CPC countries without additional consequences—

just making the designation, with no additional consequences—obviously limits the value of doing the designations and the CPC 

process as a result loses credibility, especially when the designations are erratic. 

The other thing we need to avoid is having a designation never 

reviewed so that, to quote my dear colleague, Dr. Lantos Swett, the 

designation becomes part of the wallpaper. Nobody notices it is 

there anymore. Just life goes on. 

So we need these designations in a timely manner. I would like 

to see them made annually in connection with the report. 

And I know David is working on that and I appreciate that, 

David, very much the work that David is doing to make sure that 

the administration and future administrations, Republican or Democrat, as the chairman says, this is not a partisan deal—this administration and future administrations will make those designations in a timely manner and a regular manner. 

The designation process and the possibility of punitive actions 

can breathe new life into diplomatic efforts that should both precede and follow a designation and stimulate political will in foreign 

capitals. 

One of USCIRF’s chief responsibilities is to recommend the CPC 

designations to the State Department. We have recommended that 

the following eight countries be redesignated—Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and 

Uzbekistan. 

USCIRF also recommended that eight others also be designated—Central African Republic, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, 

Syria, Tajikistan, and Vietnam. 

While my written testimony, which I will submit, Mr. Chairman, 

deals with three countries—Vietnam, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, and 

my oral statement will focus on Vietnam in a moment—it is important to note that Pakistan, a democratic nation, Pakistan has the 

worst situation in the world for religious freedom for countries not 

currently designated as CPCs. 

I also want to say that not designating Tajikistan underscores 

the Religious Freedom Act’s inconsistent implementation, I just 

learned from our excellent expert, Cathy Cosman, on Central Asia 

that the situation in Tajikistan, horrific already, is deteriorating 

still further. 

More abuses, tortures, people being hauled away. These are exactly the kinds of atrocities that the act is supposed to empower 

us to fight against. 

All right, now, Vietnam. USCIRF’s August 2015 visit reinforces 

our view that Vietnam falls short of meeting international religious 

freedom standards. 

The Vietnamese Government controls nearly all religious activities, restricts independent religious practice, and represses individuals and groups challenging its authority. 

Rabbi Saperstein filled you in on some of the additional details 

and the nuances that one finds there today. 

38

Vietnam provides us with a case study of the impact that a CPC 

designation can have in encouraging improvements and reinforces 

how such a designation does not disrupt progress in other areas. 

So I am going to actually repeat some, and maybe add a little more 

color and detail, to a story that the chairman recounted in his 

opening remarks. 

In 2006, so we are going back to the Bush administration—Bush 

43—the United States removed Vietnam’s CPC designation due to 

the country’s progress, progress toward fulfilling a bilateral agreement to release prisoners and expand legal protection for religious 

groups. 

Many attributed, I think rightly, looking back on it, this progress 

to the CPC designation, at least in part, and to the priority placed 

on religious freedom concerns in the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral relations. 

In other words, it worked. USCIRF’s view that lifting the designation was premature has been reinforced and confirmed by the 

Vietnamese Government’s actions since then and USCIRF thus recommended in 2015, as it has since 2001, that Vietnam be designated a CPC. 

I am going to move now to my recommendations. Again, more details are in the written submission, Mr. Chairman. 

Congress has an essential role to play in promoting religious 

freedom. That was part of the premise of the IRFA and it is absolutely true. 

USCIRF urges Members of Congress to undertake activities that 

reflect religious freedom’s vital importance to our foreign policy including by the following means: One, legislatively requiring the 

State Department to make annual CPC designations. 

I think that is something that would be very helpful. Let us just 

mandate the annual designations, then it is the law, get it done, 

move forward. I don’t see any reason not to do that. Number two, 

annually hold IRFA implementation oversight hearings. A very 

good thing to do for obvious reasons. 

Three, expand the CPC classification, as the chairman already 

mentioned and I believe Rabbi Saperstein mentioned, to allow for 

the designation of non-state actors in countries where particularly 

severe violations of religious freedom are occurring. 

But what if a government does not exist or is not strong enough 

or doesn’t control its territory? If we look out in the world, we see 

sometimes the big offenders are states that are run by thugs and 

criminals who are hell-bent on violating other people’s religious 

freedom, persecuting minorities, oppressing the people. 

Sometimes there is nothing a government can do about it because there is no government there. You have got a failed state or 

the government is so weak that it can’t actually do anything even 

if it wanted to. 

And then expand the CPC classification—again, the chairman 

mentioned this—to allow the naming of non-state actors who perpetrate particularly severe violations of religious freedom. That 

may assist in a variety of ways including in respective international financial transactions. 

I also urge Congress to hold hearings in support of civil society 

and prisoners of conscience abroad and I want all Members of ConVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:18 Apr 13, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\_AGH\102715\97331 SHIRL
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gress—I think those who are here with us today are already doing 

it, so bravo, but I would like to see all Members of Congress participate in our Defending Freedoms Project, our collaborative effort 

with the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and Amnesty 

International and USCIRF whereby Members of Congress work in 

support of prisoners of conscience. 

I think you shouldn’t underestimate what the identification of a 

particular prisoner of conscience, whether in North Korea, Iran, 

Saudi Arabia, wherever it is, don’t underestimate what the identification with a particular congressman who makes it part of his or 

her task, mission, vocation to make sure that that person is not forgotten, make sure that somebody is paying attention, perhaps in 

the media, perhaps in diaspora communities. 

It also is a kind of moral support not only for that individual and 

for that individual’s family, which is very important, but again, 

often for the supporters, for the diaspora groups, for the members 

of that faith. 

We can and will see constructive change by improving our use 

of the existing tools and creating the new tools I have mentioned 

for a rapidly changing environment for religious freedom and related rights. 

If we renew our resolve, and that’s what we need to do, renew 

our resolve to integrate this fundamental freedom more fully into 

the foreign policy of our Nation, we can bring protection and support to many, many more people beyond our shores who yearn for 

the freedom that we have and must preserve. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. George follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Dr. George. 

We have about a minute left on this vote and there are four 

votes. Can I enquire what your time looks like? Can we come back? 

Mr. GEORGE. Would you like me to wait until you come back? I 

would be happy to do that, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. I would probably ask one question to start it off. 

Mr. GEORGE. Absolutely. 

Mr. SMITH. And then we will reconvene. You know, in talking 

about Vietnam, I remember meeting with Ambassador-at-Large 

John Hanford several times and he often talked about the 

deliverables, whether it be Saudi Arabia, which was making a 

great deal of suggestive noise that somehow they would clean up 

their textbooks and much of their support that we found very objectionable, particular the Wahabbis would be reined in on but especially on the textbook issue. 

With Vietnam, the deliverables were quite extensive and I went 

over to Vietnam, met with a number of pastors. There was a great 

deal of optimism and hope and, again, as I said, if you want me 

to go to Rabbi Saperstein, almost a day after there was a snap-back 

retaliatory repression against the faith believers. 

The Vietnamese are doing now exactly what the Chinese learned 

long ago to do and they are just parroting that and signing the 

U.N. conventions and treaties or at least suggesting that they will, 

which are not enforceable. 

They exhort, they have no means of enforcement so it only looks 

good. I lost track of the number of times that a Chinese leader 

came here, and he would say now we are going to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But they didn’t do 

it. 

Then they didn’t do it and then a year would go by, somebody 

else would come in. They would talk about signing another. 

My question is, how do you make this durable? CPC just means 

we designate. What the administration does in follow-up is part 

two and ought to be done based on a calibrated response to deeds, 

not words. And I am very concerned that we ought to just get it 

right on CPC. 

And one word about TPP. I went in a secret room and read the 

agreement. I was appalled at the unenforceability of the human 

rights section, so called, especially as it relates to labor rights, 

which you would have thought with labor heavily weighing in on 

the administration to do the right thing and to follow true ILO 

standards in an enforceable fashion, it is just not there. 

It is left up to the country itself to deem what needs to be done 

in any situation. It puts at risk our ability on CPC, on trafficking, 

and other human rights issues to enforce it. I am wondering now 

whether or not we can actually enforce some of our current laws 

when it comes to human rights with regard to the TPP signatory 

countries. So it could be a massive setback, not an advancement. 

This idea of designation of CPC ought to be a no-brainer based 

on the facts on the ground and then let the administration decide 

what to do from a simple demarche to a whole bunch of other 

things that could be done. 

Mr. GEORGE. Well, Congressman Smith, I am hoping to learn 

more soon about why some of these offending nations will sign on 

57

to treaties, especially human rights conventions, that they have no 

intention of abiding by or sometimes decline to sign and it is hard 

to know why they sometimes decline to sign, sometimes sign but 

ignore. 

But as it happens, my daughter, Rachel George, who is doing her 

Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in international relations 

is writing her dissertation on exactly this question. 

So I hope to learn something and I will share it with you when 

Rachel produces the goods. But it is a——

Mr. SMITH. We are at zero and could you just hold that? 

Mr. GEORGE. Yes, absolutely. 

Mr. SMITH. Quick recess, and then we will come back and I 

thank you for your patience. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. SMITH. The subcommittee will resume its sitting and I apologize for that rather lengthy delay. 

So Dr. George, you were in the middle of an answer, I know, so 

you were done or no? 

Mr. GEORGE. Yes, Mr. Chairman, you had asked about some nations that sign on to human rights treaties and conventions but 

then just flout them because there obviously is no international 

human rights law enforcement mechanism. 

My day job is as a legal philosopher and one of the great questions in my field of philosophy of law is whether international law 

is really law, since we don’t have so many cases, at least, formal 

enforcement mechanisms, international police forces. We do have 

international courts but, of course, they are limited in their jurisdiction. 

So what do we do? Well, we incentivize good behavior and 

disincentivize bad behavior in the construction and execution of our 

foreign and diplomatic policy. That is what we do. 

We can’t act for the world but we can act for ourselves. The 

United States really matters. It is very important. We have a big 

impact on other countries. How we treat them matters to them, especially when it comes to trade or geostrategic and military concerns. 

And that is why, Mr. Chairman, we cannot—and this was the 

spirit behind IRFA, as you know, since you were so significant in 

it—the spirit behind IRFA is the spirit that says trade considerations, geostrategic and military considerations, those are important, those do matter; it is important that there be powerful lobbies 

for those interests and there will be. The question is will there be 

an equally or similarly powerful lobby for human rights and especially for religious freedom and what the IRF law helps to do 

through the ambassadorship, through the U.S. Commission on 

International Religious Freedom is to ensure that there is a voice 

for religious freedom, a lobby for religious freedom at the table 

speaking on behalf of the persecuted and the marginalized and the 

victims of discrimination and oppression. 

So all these mechanisms we have been talking about, Mr. Chairman, the CPC designations, avoiding the double-hatting, making 

sure that waivers aren’t institutionalized permanently in such a 

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anisms for doing exactly what I said, incentivizing good behavior 

and improvements, disincentivizing the bad behavior. 

Mr. SMITH. You pointed out that Pakistan has a very serious 

negative record when it comes to religious freedom and I wonder 

if you might want to expand upon that. Without your full statement will be made a part of the record. 

When the Prime Minister was in town just a few days ago I 

raised the issue, a number of them, including Ms. Bibi, who is a 

Christian mother, who got a stay of execution by the Supreme 

Court in July. 

But, as we know, that can change and, you know, there is an appeal going on and I did ask the Prime Minister to use his good offices to intervene on her behalf. 

I impressed upon him how all of us are deeply concerned about 

the blasphemy laws, the Taliban having a tremendous amount of 

ability to do terrible things with very little pressure to stop and I 

wonder if you might want to expand upon Pakistan, if you could 

speak to that? 

Mr. GEORGE. Yes, I will, Mr. Chairman. 

As I mentioned in my testimony, Pakistan, in the view of our 

commission represents the worst situation in the world for religious 

freedom for countries that are not currently designated a CPC by 

the U.S. Government. 

We have several recommendations for CPCs, for countries that 

are not currently CPCs, but at the very top of the list is Pakistan 

because of the scope and depth of the religious freedom abuses 

there. 

Since 2002, USCIRF has recommended CPC designation for 

Pakistan. That is a lot of years and that is due to the government’s 

systematic ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom 

and violations by the Taliban and by other non-state actors. 

So if you just read the statute, apply the law, ask the question 

does Pakistan meet that standard, systematic egregious and ongoing, the answer is it does. 

So in our view it really belongs on the CPC list. Now, of course, 

the State Department has never designated Pakistan as a CPC despite its own IRFA reports, despite our annual report at USCIRF, 

and despite the lobbying and the support, the reports, of nongovernmental organizations, all of which document the severe religious freedom violations, the persecutions against a wide variety of 

groups, Mr. Chairman, including Sunni, Shi’a, and Ahmadi Muslims. 

I want to especially highlight the mistreatment of Ahmadis in 

Pakistan where the very constitutional law of the government systematically discriminates against them and violates their rights. 

They are forbidden to call themselves Muslims even though in 

conscience they believe themselves to be Muslims. They can lose 

their right to vote. They are not allowed to greet each other or others with the traditional Muslim greeting of peace. 

And there are other groups, of course, that are victims including 

Christians and Hindus. In March of this year, we sent a commissioner-level delegation to Pakistan and what they found is, of 

course, all Pakistanis are deprived of fundamental and universal 

rights including the right to freedom of religion and belief. 

59

And on the last day that our delegation was there two churches 

in Lahore were attacked, leaving 15 people dead as well as dozens 

of others injured. 

And, of course, you mentioned the blasphemy laws. Pakistan detains the greatest number of individuals for blasphemy of any 

country in the world. 

We are aware of 38 blasphemy prisoners as of our 2015 report. 

The world, of course, has come to know Asia Bibi, a Christian 

woman in jail since 2010, who faces the death penalty for blasphemy. But she is probably just the most well known of what are 

in fact many. 

And it is for all those reasons, Mr. Chairman, that we believe 

great pressure needs to be brought to bear on Pakistan to improve 

its record on religious freedom and until reforms are made, Pakistan deserves to be on the CPC list. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask you, if you are concerned as I am, 

about conforming human rights designations to accommodate other 

political considerations. 

As I mentioned earlier to Rabbi Saperstein, on the child abduction law I was incredulous that Japan, even though it has more 

than 50 cases, according to the Center for Missing and Exploited 

Children, of abduction cases, was given a complete pass. 

If you even have one that goes past the Hague Convention time 

of 6 weeks, one can get such a designation. But when you have 

five, ten, 50 it is a no-brainer. And yet, the State Department Office of Children’s Issues that takes the lead on this gave Japan a 

pass. 

And Tier 3, I mentioned Malaysia, Vietnam, and Cuba, and now 

on CPC, Vietnam and that seems to be driven in part by the TPP. 

The commission’s view on just getting it right in the report and 

then reasonable men and women can disagree on what the sanction 

ought to be, although I think double hatting it diminishes it greatly. But could you speak to that? Because, you know, this is a serious problem, and then we get these glib statements that somehow 

the TPP has human rights language in it. 

Let me just disabuse anybody who thinks that. Just read it. It 

is feckless. It is ineffective. It is not going to effectuate any kind 

of change because there is little or no enforcement contained in it. 

I went and I read it and I would hope more people would and 

maybe it is not public yet. It ought to be. But this idea that the 

different reports keep getting it wrong when the country in question has some other strategic or geopolitical issue going for it. 

Mr. GEORGE. Well, that is it, of course. You put your finger on 

the problem. I think it is very important to get the rules and standards right. 

That is why I, at the time, so strongly supported the International Religious Freedom Act and why I continue to support it 

and why I support the efforts by you and others to update the act 

and reform the act, correct what needs to be corrected, bring it up 

to date with our contemporary challenges, for example, in the area 

of non-state actors and so forth. 

But getting the laws and the rules right is only half the battle. 

Now, it is a necessary half because getting the job done will require 

60

getting the laws and the rules and the standards right as a necessary condition. 

What is the other half? It is political will, Mr. Chairman. It is 

having the will the stand up for religious freedom when, precisely 

when, there are competing considerations, when there are competing trade, economic considerations, military and geostrategic 

considerations. 

And I want to stress that none of us are belittling or denigrating 

those considerations. They are very important. We want prosperity 

for ourselves and for others. We want functioning markets. 

We want trade with all the nations in the world. We certainly 

want to be in a strong position as far as our national security is 

concerned. 

We want a strong military that is operating in relation to other 

countries properly throughout the world to ensure the security of 

the United States and the world to the extent that we have any 

responsibility for it or can affect it. 

But that should never be permitted to be an excuse for inaction, 

for the lack of political will to stand up for religious freedom and 

for other basic human rights. 

So we have got to muster the political will to do it and where 

somebody points to language and a law or statute or points to a 

standard when we have asked for action I think you are right to 

say that is not enough. 

The pretty language doesn’t get the job done for persecuted people and prisoners of conscience. You need the political will to act. 

But I will just conclude on this point, Mr. Chairman, by saying 

that the beauty of democracy is that the people get to influence 

these sorts of things. 

And so I do hope that we as a people, not just our political leaders but that we as a people will give the kind of priority that religious freedom deserves for the persecuted people of the world and 

if we get that there are going to be a lot of people sent up here 

and into other offices that will have the political will to get the job 

done. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask you with regards to the U.N. system 

and whether or not the commission interfaces with the Human 

Rights Council, Prince Zeid, or the U.N. Special Rapporteur on 

freedom of religion or belief, Professor Bielefeldt, does the commission have contact with them? How do you find their work to be? 

Can you give any sense of its quality? 

Mr. GEORGE. I am not sure I heard the question. I don’t want 

to make——

Mr. SMITH. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion 

or belief, is there any kind of interface with the commission and 

his office and him? 

Mr. GEORGE. It is the U.N. Special Rapporteur——

Mr. SMITH. Yes. 

Mr. GEORGE [continuing]. That you are asking about? Yes, okay. 

So our commission does interact not only with the U.N. rapporteur 

and other U.N. offices that are concerned with religious freedom 

but also with our peer institutions in other countries, for example, 

in Canada and in some of the European countries. 

61

We also recently participated in and helped to organize an international parliamentarians panel and we are grateful to you, Mr. 

Chairman, for providing a wonderful letter of greeting to the parliamentarians from all over the world who visited us in New York 

to talk about how legislative bodies in the democratic countries 

around the world could unite in the cause of religious freedom. 

So we have very good relations and our staff has really been terrific about building relationships with others who are committed to 

the same cause because it is, after all, international religious freedom and while the United States can do an awful lot by way of our 

foreign and diplomatic policy, we are going to be able to do a lot 

more if we are coordinating with other nations, especially other influential powerful wealthy nations, but really with all nations, anybody who is willing to join us in the fight for international human 

rights. 

The bottom line there is that we are doing everything we can to 

work with anybody who is willing to work with us to advance this 

cause. 

Mr. SMITH. I have one final question and then I will yield to 

Chairman Rohrabacher, and I will have to leave. I am opening up 

a session on autism. 

Sesame Street today is introducing a character who is an autistic 

child to try to raise the profile among young people. But let me 

just—the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act—do you 

support it? 

Mr. GEORGE. Absolutely. Now, I guess I better speak for myself 

here and not for the whole commission because we haven’t had a 

vote of our commissioners. So let me step out of my official role as 

chairman and support it. 

I will note that the act includes many provisions that are almost 

identical to recommendations that we have, as a commission, made. 

So, like our recommendations, these provisions would better equip 

our Government to support international religious freedom. 

For example, it amends IRFA to locate the Office of International 

Religious Freedom in the office of the Secretary of State. 

USCIRF believes that, given the importance of the issue and the 

customary placement of an Ambassador-at-Large that the IRF office ought to be given really more prominence in the State Department hierarchy. 

I suspect we are on the same page here, Mr. Chairman, wanting 

David Saperstein to have as much influence as he possibly can. But 

we would want any Ambassador whose job is to promote religious 

freedom to have the maximum amounts of influence and access. 

It specifies additional foreign government actions violating religious freedom for the annual International Religious Freedom Report including a special watch list of countries of violent non-state 

actors that have engaged in or tolerated such violations but don’t 

yet quite meet the criteria for designation as Countries of Particular Concern. 

That really corresponds, roughly but closely, to what we call our 

Tier 2 countries—countries like Russia, for example. 

It amends the Foreign Service Act of 1980 to direct the Secretary 

to develop a curriculum for and the director of the George B. 

62

Schultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center to begin mandatory training on religious freedom for all Foreign Service Officers. 

That is a very good idea. The officers who are the diplomatic 

corps really need to be educated on the importance of religious freedom as an essential human right and as a key to stability and security. 

I mean, one of the problems we have had—I am not blaming anybody for this. If there is anybody to blame it is those of us who are 

in the academic field. 

Those of us in the academic field cooked up a theory called secularization theory or the secularization thesis and this was the widely believed thesis for which there was some evidence. 

Turned out to be false but we had some—there was some evidence for the theory that as modernity proceeded with industrialization and mass media and global economy, as modernization proceeded religion would recede, basically, to the private sphere and 

be less and less a matter of public interest so why did people who 

were training for careers in international affairs or diplomacy need 

to care much about religion. It would be just a private matter. 

Well, that turned out to be spectacularly false. We now know 

that religion is increasing in its public significance, for good and for 

ill, which means that now that we know that that thesis is false 

we also know that people who are going to be acting on our behalf 

in the international sphere, whether they are themselves devout or 

believers or not, need to have an appreciation and understanding 

of what religion is and how it works and of the importance of religious freedom both as a right that we as a country are deeply committed to on our very founding principles but also as part of the 

solution to instability and insecurity. 

We talked about the waivers in double-hatting and I think your 

bill would be a big help in strengthening the IRFA tools there to 

make sure that they are not undercut by double-hatting and by 

waivers that are given indefinitely and without conditions. 

Your bill also states that it should be U.S. policy that violent 

non-state actors should be eligible for designation as Countries of 

Particular Concern and that specified Presidential actions should 

apply to them or individual members of such groups. 

We at USCIRF strongly support that. I can speak for everybody 

on that one. The world has changed. The world is not what it was 

in 1998. It wasn’t a mistake in 1998. It is just that things have 

changed and now the act needs to be updated to just deal with the 

reality in the world, a reality in which we are facing the Islamic 

State, we are facing Boko Haram, non-state actors in those and 

other places that are just really wreaking devastation. 

I could go on, Mr. Chairman, I know you have to go, and my 

written submission will go into more detail about these matters. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you so very much. 

Dr. George, thank you for your exemplary leadership on these 

issues both as head of USCIRF but also in all of the other work 

that you do. 

I have watched it and admired it for decades. So I want to thank 

you. I would like to yield to Chairman Rohrabacher, who will take 

over the hearing, and I thank you. 

Mr. GEORGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

63

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, what five nations would you 

consider to be the worst abusers of religious freedom? 

Mr. GEORGE. Well, there are so many good candidates, I am 

afraid, Congressman Rohrabacher, that it is hard to narrow it 

down to five but let me give it a first stab on some reflection. I 

might alter it a bit at the edges. But North Korea is a terrible violator. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. 

Mr. GEORGE. China, such a large country and so many people 

from so many different religious groups, so brutally repressed—the 

Buddhists in Tibet and elsewhere, the Catholics, the house church 

Protestants, the Falun Gong members, the Uyghur Muslims. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. 

Mr. GEORGE. The regime in Tehran, I have to say, is a worldclass religious freedom abuser. So Iran has to be considered among 

the worst. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So there are not Christian churches in Iran 

and they can’t function or people——

Mr. GEORGE. Well, there are Christians in Iran but, of course, 

they are subject to the same persecution that any religious minority group is subject to in Iran. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Would Pakistan be on the list? 

Mr. GEORGE. Pakistan is the worst offending nation of those not 

currently designated as CPCs, which means that they would be in 

the top ten. Whether they would be in the top five I would want 

to give that a little bit of reflection. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would suggest that if Pakistan is not on the 

list, it demonstrates that for whatever reason Pakistan has been 

protected for some other motives by our Government over these 

last 25, 30 years. During the Cold War——

Mr. GEORGE. And we would note that whatever those reasons are 

and perhaps they are good reasons—since they haven’t been shared 

with me I can’t evaluate their strength—but I would note that it 

is not partisan because——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Oh, yes. Sure. 

Mr. GEORGE [continuing]. We have been recommending CPC designation going back into the early years of the Bush administration. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, during the Cold War the Pakistani 

Government was involved with the Cold War. 

Mr. GEORGE. Yes. That is right. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. They were our allies and India was basically 

an ally of Russia during the Cold War. The Cold War has been over 

a long time now and the monstrous repression of the people of 

Pakistan who have differing religious views from the ruling clique 

that whoever rules there is very demonstrable. And now, don’t the 

Ahmadis—is that——

Mr. GEORGE. Yes. Let me say a word about that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. Not just Christians but there is 

Ahmadis, there are other Muslims that are being murdered 

and——

Mr. GEORGE. Yes. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. This is horrendous. It is horrendous that that is going on and yet we still provide weapons to PakiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:18 Apr 13, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\_AGH\102715\97331 SHIRL
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stan, not to mention, of course, they thumb their nose at us by putting Dr. Afridi, the man who identified Osama bin Laden for us, 

he is in a dungeon right now even as we give F-16 fighters to Pakistan and, of course, the same group that threw Dr. Afridi in jail 

are the same people who gave Osama bin Laden safe haven—the 

man who slaughtered 3,000 Americans. 

There is something really wrong there and I hope that people—

if they won’t pay attention to the strategic things like their support 

of someone who was involved in the 9/11 attacks maybe they would 

have some heart for other people—just ordinary people who are 

being murdered and slaughtered because they just want to pray to 

God in a different way. 

Mr. GEORGE. Chairman Smith mentioned Bhatti earlier. There 

have been some great heroes who have tried to stand up against 

the persecution there at the cost of their very lives or their liberty. 

And it is not just the regime when it comes to Pakistan which 

is, after all, a democratic nation. If you look at the persecution of 

the Ahmadis and of other minorities including Christians we have 

a cultural problem there as well. 

It is similar to, I think, what you yourself pointed to in Burma 

or one of the congressmen pointed to in Burma earlier where the 

cultural prejudice against minorities, and particularly in this case 

the Ahmadis, is very powerful. 

It is not just the government. The anti-Ahmadi provisions of the 

very constitution of the nation are there because of public attitudes, really, and sometimes when, you know, we are in touch with 

officials and we are trying to bring pressure to bear on officials 

they will say to us, well, you don’t know what you are asking because we have got a civil society to deal with here and we can’t just 

put into place policies that would be easier on our minorities because the people won’t tolerate it. We hear this from the Saudis, 

by the way. We talk about the need——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Oh, sure. Of course. 

Mr. GEORGE [continuing]. You know, for respect for—there are a 

lot of Christian guest workers, Filipinos and others, in Saudi Arabia who would like to be able to carry their Bibles or have a 

church. On the whole Saudi Arabian peninsula there is no 

church—there is no Christian church, right. Why can’t they? 

Well, we confront Saudi officials and they say well, you—maybe 

we would like to make some reforms here and make it a little easier for these people to practice their faith but, you know, our civil 

society wouldn’t permit it. 

I mean, it just—it just couldn’t fly, given the sociology of our people here. And I think we just can’t accept that. We cannot accept 

that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Correct. 

Mr. GEORGE. These regimes are responsible for making the reforms that protect the human rights, including the fundamental 

right of religious freedom of all the people within their jurisdictions 

including their minority citizens and guests. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I remember during the Cold War having to 

sit down with people who were representing Communist governments who always had these excuses and——

Mr. GEORGE. Yes. 

65

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. And were never willing to admit 

just how oppressive they really were. I think it is time that we insisted that they face this reality of what Marxism/Leninism is all 

about. 

I think it is time that—there are many millions of Muslims 

around the world, many if not most who could be friends and be 

open to these kind of ideas of accepting people and not oppressing 

somebody simply because they worship God in a different way. 

We need to call to task the Saudis and the Pakistanis and these 

other people who have supposedly been on our side and quit trying 

to treat them with kid gloves because it ain’t going to work. 

These regimes are basically gangster regimes in terms of the way 

they treat their people and it shouldn’t be tolerated and the United 

States has done that. Shame on us. 

Thank God for you and Chris Smith and other people who have 

committed their lives to exposing those people who are stepping on 

the religious freedom of other human beings. 

Thank you very much for being with us today, and I think I am 

supposed to gavel this down. 

This hearing is now adjourned. 

Mr. GEORGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[Whereupon, the committee adjourned at 3:09 p.m.] 

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