The second annual International Religious Freedom Summit will be held from June 28-30 in Washington, D.C. Among the topics discussed is China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims, persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Burma, antisemitism in Europe, and the continual attacks on Christians in Nigeria.
U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain, former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom, an outspoken critic of Uyghur Muslim persecution, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Paivi Rasanen, a Finnish evangelical Christian and member of parliament et al will speak in the conference.
Nury Turkel, the newly appointed chair of the U.S. Committee on International Religious Freedom and an Uyghur Muslim, commented on the IRF Summit’s importance to the Washington Times and hoped that the summit will help others view religious liberty as a problem of national security. “The international community has been repeatedly making the mistake — specifically policymakers and liberal democracies — to wait until the religious persecution, and human rights abuses reach the level of a humanitarian crisis to act. I think that’s a wrong approach; it’s a very costly approach.”
Turkel continued, “I hope to use this platform in my official capacity to call on the policymakers to pay attention to some of the worst human rights abuses, religious persecution, namely in Nigeria and in India that should concern us and also the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, both [of which] have been ignored by European leaders.”
He also expressed concerns about the use of advanced technology by more than 80 countries worldwide for persecution against religious groups. “I think that the international community is dealing with a new type of religious persecution and genocide that has been quietly tested, developed and now is promoted by communist China, which is the use of technology for religious persecution, Today, more than 80 countries have either already adopted or are in the process of adopting Chinese surveillance technology techniques that are a threat to civil liberty, religious liberty, even democratic norms.”
USCIRF Commissioner Frank Wolf, a former member of Congress, stressed the importance of the IRF conference, saying “I think we’re in a worse situation than we’ve been for a long, long time. There is less activity, fewer and fewer people are interested in or concerned with religious freedom issues internationally.”