Human Rights Advocates Urge Biden Administration To Blacklist Nigeria
By Susan Crabtree, Juicy Ecumenism.
More than two dozen leading human rights, religious freedom, and Christian advocacy groups are pressing Congress to take more action to persuade the Biden administration to reverse course and re-designate Nigeria to its blacklist of worst offenders when it comes to allowing citizens to practice their faith of choice.
The move is taking place as the State Department is expected to release its annual list of “Countries of Particular Concern,” those nations where religious freedom is severely limited or religious groups face persecution, in the coming days.
Based on the number of Christian deaths at the hands of terrorists and militant groups alone, the decision should be clear-cut, the advocates argue. More than 5,000 Nigerian Christians are reported to have been killed for their faith in 2022, according to a report by Open Doors, a religious freedom watchdog group.
Leaders of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, a government-created independent body that monitors religious persecution around the world, met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this week in a meeting in which the organization’s commissioners pressed Blinken to place Nigeria back on the official U.S. blacklist.
Blinken removed Nigeria from the list in 2021, reversing a decision by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in December 2020 to designate the West African nation as a CPC.
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