Office of International Religious Freedom
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| Long title | An act to establish an Office of Religious Persecution Monitoring, to provide for the imposition of sanctions against countries engaged in a pattern of religious persecution, and for other purposes. |
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| Enacted by | the 105th United States Congress |
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| Public law | 105–292 |
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The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (Public Law 105–292, as amended by Public Law 106–55, Public Law 106–113, Public Law 107–228, Public Law 108–332, and Public Law 108–458) was passed to promote religious freedom as a foreign policy of the United States, and to advocate on the behalf of the individuals viewed as persecuted in foreign countries on the account of religion. The Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 27, 1998. Three cooperative entities have been maintained by this act to monitor religious persecution.
While the original bill imposed mandatory sanctions on the countries supporting religious persecution, the amended act offers the president a waiver provision if he feels that it would further the goal of the bill or promote the interests of U.S. national security not to impose measures on a designated country.
This Act was a response to the growing concern about religious persecution throughout the world. There had been instances of toleration on the part of the governments when the religious rights of their citizens and others had been violated. There are governments around the world which openly sponsor and tolerate restrictions on their citizens' right to practice, observe, study, or associate with other members of their religious faith.
The former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, John Shattuck, cited specific countries that fail to recognize the fundamental right of religious freedom. There is a civil war ensuing in Sudan because of the ruling party's intolerance of opposing religions. The Chinese Catholics and Chinese Protestant groups battle government repression, and the Chinese government tightly regulates religious practices in the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. Members of the Rohingya Muslim minority are forced to take refuge in the neighboring Bangladesh. There are suspect cases of minority oppression in Europe as well. Russia's new religion law seeks to make restraints and inhibit new religious communities' ability to own property, publish literature or operate schools. This Act tries to recognize such kind of blatant forms of religious discrimination and oppression. It finds that over one-half of the population of the world lives under regimes that have strict policies against basic religious freedoms. Title VII of the Act has noted that some regimes engage in persecution that includes subjection of those people who engage in practice of religious faiths that are not state sponsored, to detention, torture, beatings, forced marriage, rape, imprisonment, enslavement, mass resettlement and death. Senator Don Nickles (R-OK) in his speech to the Congress on October 2, 1998 stated:
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