ISLAMABAD: Pakistan was designated as a “country of particular concern” in the US State Department’s annual religious freedom listing, a move that drew harsh criticism from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) on Monday.
Declaring that the designation was based on a “biased and arbitrary assessment” that was not representative of the real reality on the ground, the Pakistani government rejected the listing.
Pakistan, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan were among the countries the US State Department named last week as “countries of particular concern for having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
Pakistan expressed worry over the designation, prompting the foreign ministry to issue an official statement.
The foreign ministry of Pakistan declared in a statement that Pakistan is a diversified nation with a long history of religious peace.
It highlighted the steps Pakistan has done to uphold the rights of minority communities inside its boundaries and to advance religious freedom.
The Central African Republic, Vietnam, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Comoros, and the US State Department were all listed as nations on a special watch list for “engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom.”
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Furthermore, certain groups were identified as entities of particular concern, including al-Shabab, Boko Haram, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Houthis, ISIS-Sahel, ISIS-West Africa, Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin, an associate of al-Qaeda, and the Taliban.
Significantly, India was left off the list despite suggestions from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and worries expressed by international human rights organizations regarding India’s treatment of religious minorities. Pakistan’s foreign ministry expressed grave concern over what it considered to be the exclusion of a major violator of religious freedom, and the statement it released stressed the futility of such designations, characterizing them as “discriminatory, unilateral, and subjective exercises” that undercut the common goal of advancing religious freedom worldwide.
