The law created an office within the State Department for international religious freedom. Additionally, it created the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom as "an independent, bipartisan federal body to monitor religious freedom abuses abroad and provide policy recommendations to the president, secretary of state, and Congress."
"The rights to exercise one's freedom of thought, conscience, and religion are fundamental human rights and bedrock American principles," John Kirby, Assistant Secretary of State, said on Thursday. "We believe everyone deserves these freedoms."
However, "nearly two decades later, standing for religious freedom worldwide is as important as ever," Fr. Reese and Mark insisted, noting that billions of people worldwide "live under governments that perpetrate or tolerate serious abuses against freedom of religion or belief."
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) defines a "prisoner of conscience" as someone "whom governments hold for reasons including those related to religion."
Common instances of this type of imprisonment include governments jailing dissident clerics and members of non-state sanctioned faiths, and convictions on "blasphemy laws," which in some cases don't carry a punishment for false accusations, and which are often used to persecute religious minorities.
USCIRF's 2016 annual report noted that "the incarceration of prisoners of conscience" still "remains astonishingly widespread, occurring in country after country" like China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan.
For instance, 80 year-old Abdul Shakoor, an Ahmadi Muslim living in Pakistan, was "falsely accused of selling to an undercover police officer an Ahmadiyya commentary on the Qur'an and other publications," which is against the law in the country, Fr. Reese and Mark noted, adding that Shakoor received "concurrent sentences of five years and three years in prison" in January.