Religion

USCIRF recommends that the State Department redesignate the following 10 countries as “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

USCIRF thinks six additional countries should be cited as CPCs: Central African Republic, Nigeria, Russia, Syria, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The commission adds that it has given 12 other nations its Tier 2 designation for the next most serious level of religious freedom violations: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia and Turkey.

In addition, the commission is calling on the State Department to list five nonstate actors, or organizations outside a government’s control, as “entities of particular concern”: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS; the Taliban in Afghanistan; al-Shabab in Somalia; Houthis in Yemen; and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, in Syria.