For the first time ever, Nigeria has been placed on the United States Religious Freedom blacklist amidst worsening insecurity seen as targeting Christian communities.
The other nations on the blacklist include Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as well as China and Iran. The others are Eritrea, Myanmar, North Korea, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” for religious freedom, in what is seen as a rare inclusion of a fellow democracy in the US effort to shame nations into action.
“These annual designations show that when religious freedom is attacked, we will act,” Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, wrote on Twitter.
US law requires designations for nations that either engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.”
Pompeo notably did not target India, an ally of the United States.
India voiced outrage earlier this year when the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which provides recommendations to the State Department, called for India’s blacklisting over what it said was a sharp downturn under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist.
Sudan exited the blacklist last year, and Pompeo on Monday lifted the country from a second-tier watchlist along with Uzbekistan.
Under US law, nations on the blacklist must make improvements or face sanctions including losses of US assistance, although the administration can waive measures.
The State Department did not immediately elaborate on why it designated Nigeria but, in its annual report earlier this year, took note of concerns both at the federal and state levels.
It pointed to the mass detention of members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, a Shiite Muslim group that was banned last year on terrorism allegations.
The Nigerian army killed some 350 Shiites, many of them gunned down or burned alive, in a 2015 confrontation, according to rights groups.
The State Department report also highlighted the arrests of Muslims for eating in public in Kano state during Ramadan, when Muslims are supposed to fast during daylight hours, and new regulations on preaching in Kaduna State.
But the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a letter to Pompeo, said that far more Nigerians were being killed in herder-farmer conflicts, in which Christians have borne the brunt as climate change worsens desertification.
Christian groups have also accused President Muhammadu Buhari of paying insufficient attention after jihadists abducted and killed a pastor, Lawan Andimi.
The International Committee on Nigeria, an advocacy group, has urged the United States to appoint a special envoy, calling the Buhari government’s response to the violence “weak” and voicing fear it will worsen.
