(ZENIT News / Washington , D.C., 10.01.2024).- The U.S. Department of State included Cuba in a list of countries where serious violations against religious freedom have been perpetrated or tolerated.
On Thursday, January 4, Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken issued a statement in which the U.S. State Department included a list of “countries that arouse special concern for having perpetrated or tolerated particularly serious violations of religious freedom. Cuba is on the list, as well as Burma, China, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
It’s usual in U.S. foreign policy to issue statements on the situation of other countries, for the information of American citizens or the decision-taking of their rulers, although some countries criticize this activity because it implies interference in their internal affairs. One of the points it reports on is freedom of religion or beliefs, according to the International Freedom of Religion Law promulgated in 1998.
Although the causes of the violations of countries on the list are not expressed, the U.S. Secretary of State argued that they are based on the commitment to “promote freedom of religion or creed.”
The U.S. State Department also pointed out groups that attack religious freedom, such as Al-Shabab, Boko Haram, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Houthis, ISIS-Sahel, ISIS-West Africa, Al Qaeda’s affiliate Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin and the Taliban.
Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Cuba’s Foreign Relations Minister said on social network X that the “U.S. Government’s reiterated inclusion of Cuba in unilateral reports on terrorism, Human Rights and religious freedom is not linked to the exemplary performance of our country,” and the United States’ decision “responds to the need to justify its inhuman measures of economic siege and war against the Cuban people.”
Chancellor Rodríguez Parrilla forgets the abundant proofs that the Cuban Government acts against the religious community in the Island. Suffice it to recall that, in a press release published in mid-January 2023, the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights denounced 1,030 actions of the Authorities against religious freedom in the country.
The U.S. State Department’s text urges the Governments of the above mentioned countries to put an end to the abuses and attacks against members of minority religious communities and their places of worship, to community violence and to prolonged imprisonment for individuals’ peaceful expression [of their faith], as well as transnational repression and calls to violence against religious communities, as forms of violations in too many places of the world.
