Religious Freedom in 2023: India Joins List of Concerns for Freedom Advocates

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) warned in its annual report that religious freedom deteriorated around the world in 2023, a net loss driven by increasingly vicious crackdowns from theocracies like Iran and authoritarian regimes like China and Cuba.

USCIRF wants to add India as a “country of particular concern,” a politically difficult move because India is such an important strategic ally.

The Commission made a strong case for listing India as a nation where religious freedom has become imperiled, due to its “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief.”

“Recent efforts by the Indian government to silence activists, journalists, and lawyers abroad pose a serious threat to religious freedom,” USCIRF said in December when petitioning the Biden administration to designate India as a country of particular concern. The Commission has made a similar recommendation for India every year since 2020.

This year, USCIRF said its recommendation was made more urgent by the assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and the attempted assassination of another Sikh activist in New York City. 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of arranging Nijjar’s murder, touching off a massive diplomatic feud between the two countries that had not entirely settled down as the end of 2023 approached.

U.S. prosecutors said the would-be assassin in New York, Nikhil Gupta, worked with an Indian government official on the foiled murder plot. The intended victim, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, said the attempt on his life was a “blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism.”

USCIRF Commissioner David Curry pointed to Nijjar’s killing and the Pannun assassination plot as “especially dangerous” actions that “cannot be ignored.” The Commission’s annual report also criticized India for enforcing “religiously discriminatory policies, including laws targeting religious conversion, interfaith relationships, the wearing of hijabs, and cow slaughter,” and suppressing religious minorities through “surveillance, harassment, demolition of property, and detention.”

USCIRF said India was quick to invoke its Sedition Act against religious minorities while indulging oppressive and even violent behavior from the Hindu majority. For example, 12 of India’s states ban interfaith marriage and vigilante mobs have stepped in to enforce those prohibitions when the state did not.

The report curiously did not mention the civil war in Manipur province, which had a heavy religious dimension as Christian hill tribes battled lowland Hindus. The Indian government, dominated by Modi’s BJP Hindu nationalist party, was accused of favoritism toward the Hindus in Manipur. The report did criticize the Indian government more generally for allowing “vigilantes and Hindu nationalists” to “act with impunity” against tribal residents.

USCIRF was rather testy with the Biden State Department for repeatedly ignoring its recommendations to add India to the list of Countries of Particular Concern — a designation that would authorize, but not require, punitive sanctions. The Commission also criticized the State Department for failing to include Nigeria on the list for its “egregious religious freedom violations,” perpetrated by “both state and non-state actors.”

Nigeria enforced Islamic blasphemy laws with prison and death sentences in 2023, and mobs stepped in to mete out brutal penalties when the state did not follow the rulings of sharia courts. Members of these mobs had a remarkable tendency to avoid arrest or punishment, even for murder.

The Islamic State is still attacking Christian communities in Nigeria, while both churches and mosques were targeted in the more “complex violent crises,” including an assortment of tribal feuds. USCIRF gave the Nigerian federal government some credit for stepping up its “efforts to address violence impacting religious freedom” and fighting harder against Islamist militants but noted, “the effectiveness of these efforts remained in question.”

The usual religious freedom horror shows headlined the 2023 report, including Iran, China, and North Korea. 

USCIRF said the most repressive regimes grew worse, as in the case of Iran’s brutal and occasionally deadly enforcement of its Islamic headscarf laws, which touched off massive nationwide protests following the death of a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini in September 2022. USCIRF kicked off its 2023 report by denouncing the “campaign of violent repression” waged by Iran against the Amini uprising throughout 2023, a hideous crackdown that included raping some of the female protesters.

The repression of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan also figured prominently in the report, as USCIRF recommended upgrading Afghanistan to a Country of Particular Concern. The Commission also wanted the most grievous of designations applied to Syria, where both the regime of dictator Bashar Assad and the remaining Islamist rebels committed “egregious human rights abuses,” and Vietnam, which would return to the list for the first time since 2005 if the recommendation is followed. 

The Communist government of Vietnam is severely oppressive toward “unregistered and independent communities” and practitioners of religions the state does not officially recognize. Vietnam has a nasty habit of changing the standards for state recognition to make it harder for religions it dislikes, especially Protestant members of the Montagnard and Hmong minorities. The state also harasses Catholics and Buddhist groups it does not control.

USCIRF criticized Nigeria for its persecution of Catholics, which fits into a worldwide pattern of authoritarian regimes targeting religious groups with allegations of sedition. 2023 was an especially bad year for religious freedom on the airwaves in Nicaragua, as Catholic radio stations were forcibly shut down and replaced with regime propaganda broadcasts.

The report was compiled a little too late to catch the rising tide of naked antisemitism from Hamas supporters in the Western world after Israel’s response to the October 7 atrocities. The report concluded with optimistic notes about progress in combating antisemitism that are a little harder to hear after the events of the past two months.

From a global perspective, USCIRF was particularly worried about the spread of “transnational repression,” especially from China, which “harassed and intimidated victims by threatening their family members in China,” and by “sending or recruiting undercover agents to conduct transnational repression activities.”

Iran and Saudi Arabia were also highlighted as governments that have become increasingly aggressive about repressing religious dissidents living overseas. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government, has overseen violence against religious minorities in Turkey and Europe.