Iraq a top violator of religious freedom, report says

[ck4829]

For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein, ongoing sectarian violence has earned Iraq a place among the world’s worst violators of religious freedoms, a government report released Wednesday said.

Iraq was included with seven other countries including Afghanistan on a Watch List published in the 2007 annual report of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan body created in 1998. The list names countries that “require close monitoring” because their governments commit or tolerate religious persecution.

“Despite ongoing efforts to stabilize the country… successive Iraqi governments have not curbed the growing scope and severity of human rights abuses,” the report read.

Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, violence between the country’s Sunni and Shiite Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims has become a daily occurrence. The Shiite -dominated government has recently been accused of collaboration with death squads targeting Sunnis.

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/news.aspx?id=35765