Press Release<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 28, 2011 (Press Release): The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) strongly criticized the listing of India, the world’s largest secular democracy, with the likes of Russia, Afghanistan, and Cuba, on a U.S. State Department advisory group’s “watch list” of violators of religious freedom. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) announced its censure of India for the third consecutive year at a news conference held at the National Press Club earlier today. <\/p>\n
India’s inclusion came despite spirited testimony by HAF in support of India’s track record on religious freedom. The USCIRF decision, however, was not unanimous.<\/p>\n
HAF was the only organization invited to testify by USCIRF that demanded India’s removal from the watch list, and its arguments were echoed by two commissioners in their public dissent. Prof. Ramesh Rao, the author of HAF’s annual Hindu human rights report, and Suhag Shukla, Esq., HAF’s Managing Director and Legal Counsel, testified before the USCIRF Commissioners in Washington, D.C. last month.<\/p>\n
“USCIRF’s decision to club India in with a dozen or so of the worst violators of religious freedom in the world, while overlooking others, again raises questions of bias and flawed methodology there,” said Rao hours after the announcement. “The Commission’s censure of India in 2011, despite that country’s celebrated pluralism and absence of any significant recent religious discord –despite provocative terror attacks– seems based more on a disagreement over some states’ efforts to monitor coercive and forced conversions.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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