Will the Senate Quietly Kill the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom? - By Nina Shea - The Corner - National Review Online

This article appears at “National Review Online”. An excerpt follows:

• Religious persecution around the world threatens many minority groups — Egyptian Copts, Pakistani Ahmadiyas, Saudi Ismaili Shiites, Baha’is in Iran, and Chinese Sunni Uighurs, Catholics, and Tibetan Buddhists. Despite the presence of American troops, Iraq is in its seventh year of a “religious cleansing” against its native Christian, Yizidi, and Mandean populations, while its handful of remaining Jews are now desperately trying to flee after being identified by Wikileaks. Those who do not conform to prevailing religious orthodoxies are also targeted individually: For example, in Iran, apostasy charges threaten the life of a Christian pastor. This year, Pakistan’s minister of minorities and the governor of Punjab were separately gunned down for defending those imprisoned under a harsh blasphemy law.
• It is this moment that the U.S. Senate has chosen to quietly shut down the independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
• USCIRF’s mandate was to expire at the end of last month, but it was given a short reprieve through the continuing resolution on the budget. Meanwhile, on September 15, the House of Representatives, in a 391–21 vote, overwhelmingly passed H.R. 2867 to reauthorize USCIRF for two more years. In the Senate, H.R. 2867 was poised to pass under a unanimous consent agreement when a single senator anonymously called it back for undisclosed reasons. If that secret hold is not lifted by November 18, the Senate will not be able to act and USCIRF will go out of existence.

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Will the Senate Quietly Kill the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom? - By Nina Shea - The Corner - National Review Online