Religious liberty, under assault across much of the globe, must be defended, U.S. Rep. French Hill told the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington on Thursday morning.
During his speech, the Little Rock Republican highlighted recent acts of violence committed against Christians in Nigeria and Egypt as well as the arrest in May of 90-year-old Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen by Chinese officials in Hong Kong.
In Nigeria, Africa's largest nation, "the rot of religious intolerance there is deep and well known for years," Hill said. "Despite that, Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not designate Nigeria as a 'country of particular concern' in the [State Department's] most recent international religious freedom report."
Due to a wave of increasingly brutal attacks on Christians there, the Trump administration had added Nigeria to the list of countries that engage in or tolerate particularly severe "systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom."
The Biden administration struck Nigeria from the list last fall, shortly before Blinken traveled there to sign a foreign aid agreement and to meet with its president, Muhammadu Buhari.
The move was opposed by an independent, bipartisan government agency, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and drew criticism Thursday from Hill.
'DETERIORATING SITUATION'
"This is a deteriorating situation and, in my view, the United States' Department of State's decision to remove Nigeria from the list of countries of particular concern is a mistake," the congressman said, drawing applause from audience members.
They clapped again when he accused the Biden administration of "giving carrots to bad actors while receiving little or no assurance that bad behaviors are changing."
Critics of the move say persecution of Christians has not waned in Nigeria since Joe Biden became president in January 2021. If anything, it has intensified, they say.
Fred Davie, a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and an ordained Presbyterian minister, recently visited Nigeria and returned with grave concerns about its direction.
In Nigeria, "there's an intense sense of impending genocide, particularly for Christians, but [also] for other people who don't worship the way some of the more extremists folks think they should, including Muslims for example, the Shias or humanists, people who don't believe at all or atheists," he said in an interview Wednesday.
"I don't think our government is quite there [yet] when it comes to seeing this as genocide, but there's certainly a perception of large numbers of people that something is really wrong and it's going to be catastrophic if it isn't addressed soon," he said.
On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton and four other U.S. senators wrote to Blinken urging him to redesignate Nigeria as a "country of particular concern," citing a string of recent attacks, including an attack Pentecost Sunday on a Catholic church in Nigeria's Ondo state that reportedly killed at least 50 worshippers.
In its 2021 report on international religious freedom, released in June this year, the State Department acknowledged numerous acts of violence targeting faith communities in Nigeria.
The victims were Muslim as well as Christian, the report alleged, portraying the perpetrators as members of both faiths.
The State Department pointed to the murder in August of 27 Muslims on a bus in Plateau state, purportedly at the hands of Christian youths, while also acknowledging a September attack in which at least 49 people were killed and 27 were abducted. In the later instance, most of the victims were Christians, the report stated.
The report suggested that some of the attacks reflect ethnic hostilities as well as battles for scarce resources that pitted farmers against herders.
Ultimately, "the Secretary of State determined that Nigeria did not meet the criteria to be designated as a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in or tolerating particularly severe violations of religious freedom or as a Special Watch List country for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 when such designations were announced on November 15, 2021," the report noted.
FOCUS THEIR ATTENTION
Jim Carr of Searcy, a former member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said Thursday it's important for leaders to focus attention on the situation in Nigeria.
Prior to leaving the commission earlier this year, "we got reports, regularly, of Christians being killed," Carr said.
Since then, the bloodshed has continued, he said.
"It's a real tragedy right there right now," he said.
Hill, who has represented Central Arkansas since 2015, was one of the summit's honorary congressional co-chairmen. This week's event drew leaders from around the globe.
A lifelong Catholic, Hill has made religious liberty one of his priorities since taking office, highlighting attacks not only against Christians but also other persecuted religious minorities, including Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that has been targeted by Chinese authorities.
During his speech, Hill criticized not only acts of violence persecuted against religious minorities in far-off lands but also government mandates during the covid pandemic that targeted churches, synagogues and mosques.
Some states classified religious gatherings as "non-essential," a decision Hill portrayed Thursday as unconstitutional and nonsensical.
"In America, during the pandemic, people of faith could not gather and worship, yet every Walmart or liquor store was open every day. Fortunately, these unreasonable limits on our personal freedoms were declared unconstitutional by our Supreme Court," he added.
In an interview Wednesday, Hill said people of faith are being martyred in the 21st century and decried the shedding of innocent blood.
'MOST PERSECUTED'
"The most persecuted religious group in the world right now are Christians, but America stands for protection and ... tolerance for people's religious beliefs or non-belief around the world," he said.
As a congressman, Hill has repeatedly singled out China for its persecution of religious minorities, pointing to reports that the Communist government there is even working to rewrite Christian scriptures.
He also has highlighted barbaric attacks on Christians in Egypt, urging its government to protect them better.
Thursday he spoke of the dozens of Egyptian Christians "murdered by bombings during [a] Palm Sunday procession, and pilgrims gunned down on multiple occasions by Islamic extremists."
He described visiting St. Peter and St. Paul Church in Cairo in 2017, two months after an Advent Suicide bombing killed 27 worshippers.
"There is a patch on the wall of that church that was never cleaned and is now permanently encased in glass where you can still see the blood of the women and children murdered that day by a coward as they prayed," he said.
While praising the Egyptian government for taking steps to address the problem, Hill is portraying the worldwide situation as worrisome.
"We are in a period of trouble on religious liberty at this time," Hill said. "I think it's being made worse by the economic conditions, and I think it will continue to be made worse by the pandemic and by the negative consequences associated with Russia's invasion [of Ukraine]."