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US Still Mulling Consequences for Saudi Religious Persecution
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
May 19, 2005

(CNSNews.com) -- Eight months after the U.S. government designated Saudi Arabia a "country of concern" (CPC) for violating religious freedom, the State Department has yet to announce what steps it will take against Riyadh.

A deadline for announcing the consequences that would flow from the CPC designation passed on March 15, but the State Department at the time asked Congress for an extension.

Spokesman Richard Boucher said on Wednesday the department was still "working on it."

Under 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), the administration makes an annual assessment of the global situation, and it now says that "religious freedom does not exist" in Saudi Arabia.

For several years, however, the State Department resisted appeals from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom - an independent watchdog set up under the IRFA - to add Saudi Arabia to a list of CPCs.

Last September, the State Department finally designated Saudi Arabia as a CPC, along with two other newcomers to the list, Vietnam and Eritrea.

Others already on the list are Burma, China, Iran, North Korea and Sudan.

The law provides for a range of possible measures against governments that engage in or tolerate violations, ranging from diplomatic protests to trade sanctions and the withdrawal of ambassadors.

It also allows the administration to waive actions on certain conditions, or to negotiate a binding agreement with the CPC government to cease violations.

Such an agreement was recently reached, for the first time under the IRFA, with the Communist government of Vietnam.

Boucher said discussions were underway with the Saudis. Also, "we have our own internal deliberations and we're working on it."

Whether it would be possible to reach an agreement with Saudi Arabia like the one with Vietnam, he said, "I can't say at this point."

According to the commission, Saudi Arabia bans "all forms of public religious expression other than that of the government's own interpretation of one school of Sunni Islam."

In recent weeks, at least two separate groups of foreign Christians were reported to have been arrested in the kingdom.

The religious police, or muttawa, arrested 40 Pakistani Christians after raiding a home in Riyadh where the group was celebrating mass on April 23.

The bishop of the Pakistani diocese of Lahore, Lawrence Saldanha, issued a statement Wednesday urging President Pervez Musharraf's government to act immediately on behalf of its citizens.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan earlier also wrote to the government, urging immediate action and saying it understood the group included women and children.

A week after the Pakistani were arrested, the mutawwa raided a private prayer meeting in the capital attended by some 60 Ethiopians and Eritreans and arrested five elders, according to Compass Direct, a news service that focuses on religious persecution.

International Christian Concern reported recently that an Indian Christian, Samkutty Varghese, had been arrested on the streets of Riyadh last March after members of the religious police found a Hindi-language Bible in his bag.

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