Pakistan on Tuesday attempted to troll India for being named in the US Commission of International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
Taking to Twitter, Shireen Mazari, who is part of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission tweeted, “Finally even US cannot ignore the reality of the racist Hindutva Supremacist creed of the Indian govt. India declared a Country of Particular Concern for the first time by the U.S. Commission of International Religious Freedom.”
However, Pakistan has been long-listed as a country of concern by the USCIRF. According to a report on the USCIRF website, “Successive governments have severely violated religious freedom in Pakistan. Discriminatory legislation has helped to create an atmosphere of religious intolerance and eroded the social and legal status of religious minorities. Government officials provide fewer protections from societal violence to non-Muslims than to members of the majority Sunni Muslim community. Perpetrators of attacks on minorities are seldom brought to justice. Belated efforts to curb extremism by reforming Pakistan's thousands of Islamic religious schools appear to have had little effect thus far. Many of these schools continue to provide ideological training and motivation to those who take part in violence targeting religious minorities in Pakistan and abroad.”
Naturally, Twitter from both Indi and Pakistan had a field day with Mazari’s claim.
Earlier, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on Tuesday night released its 2020 Annual Report, documenting significant developments during 2019, including remarkable progress in Sudan and a sharp downward turn in India, and making recommendations to enhance the U.S. government’s promotion of freedom of religion or belief abroad in 2020.
In the 2020 Annual Report, USCIRF recommends 14 countries to the State Department for designation as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) because their governments engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations.” These include nine that the State Department designated as CPCs in December 2019—Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan—as well as five others—India, Nigeria, Russia, Syria, and Vietnam.
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