U.S. Adds Azerbaijan To Religious Freedom Watchlist

The United States on Thursday added Azerbaijan to its Special Watchlist of countries that engage in or tolerate severe violations of religious freedom and require close monitoring, a classification that potentially opens the countries to sanctions from the U.S. government, TURAN’s Washington DC correspondent reports.

Releasing his annual index of designations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken kept all 12 countries that had been on the previous year's blacklist: Burma, China, Cuba, the DPRK, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

"In addition, I have designated Algeria, Azerbaijan, the Central African Republic, Comoros, and Vietnam as countries for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom," he said in a statement.

Blinken also designated al-Shabab, Boko Haram, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Houthis, ISIS-Sahel, ISIS-West Africa, al-Qa'ida affiliate Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin, and the Taliban as Entities of Particular Concern.

"Governments must end abuses such as attacks on members of religious minority communities and their places of worship, communal violence and lengthy imprisonment for peaceful expression, transnational repression, and calls to violence against religious communities, among other violations that occur in too many places around the world," Blinken nored. 

He went on to add, The challenges to religious freedom across the globe are structural, systemic, and deeply entrenched.  But with thoughtful, sustained commitment from those who are unwilling to accept hatred, intolerance, and persecution as the status quo we will one day see a world where all people live with dignity and equality."

The U.S. religious freedom body USCIRF in a statement 'welcomed' the decision to put Azerbaijan on watchlist. Last month, USCIRF released a new report that provides an update on religious freedom conditions in Azerbaijan, saying that although the country has in recent years ceased some problematic practices regarding state interference in its people’s practice of their religion or beliefs, the government has "shown little interest in reforming laws and policies that violate Azerbaijan’s international human rights commitments."

Within the last three years, the government has twice amended its religion law to introduce new restrictions on a variety of religious activities, the USCIRF claims.

The report also described the legislative framework that facilitates the official regulation of religious practice, concerns for religious sites in Nagorno-Karabakh, the ongoing repression of Shi’a Muslim religious activists, and the impact of the government’s refusal to allow conscientious objection.

"Authorities continued to routinely surveil, fine, detain, and arrest Shi’a Muslims throughout the year," read the report.