ISLAMABAD
\nPakistan on Thursday rejected Washington\u2019s \u201carbitrary and selective assessment\u201d under a domestic legislation on religious freedom and its designation of Pakistan as a \u201ccountry of particular concern,\u201d the foreign office said.
\nUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said he was designating Russia, as well as China and eight other states, as countries of concern \u201cfor having engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.\u201d
\nThe other countries on the US list for \u201creligious freedom violations\u201d included Myanmar, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Algeria, Comoros, Cuba and Nicaragua were placed on a watch list.
\nIn its response, foreign office spokesman said the classification was against the ground realities.
\n\u201cThe designation of Pakistan as a \u2018country of particular concern\u2019 is completely against the realities on the ground and raises serious doubts about the credibility of this exercise,\u201d foreign office spokesman Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said during the weekly press briefing in Islamabad.
\nHe said Pakistan and the US had been constructively engaging on the subject at the bilateral level, a fact regrettably overlooked by the US. \u201cPakistani society is multi-religious and pluralistic with a rich tradition of inter-faith harmony,\u201d he said. \u201cReligious freedom and the protection of the rights of minorities are guaranteed by our constitution and ensured through a range of legislative, policy and administrative measures.\u201d
\nThe spokesman said such \u201csubjective designations\u201d did not contribute toward promoting the cause of religious freedom worldwide. Earlier in the first week on November, US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its annual report said that \u201cin 2020, religious freedom conditions in Pakistan continued to worsen.\u201d
\nIn one of its key findings in the report, the USCIRF said that influential groups [in Pakistan] actively promoted \u201chate speech and incitement to violence against religious minorities\u201d via digital platforms and public sermons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD Pakistan on Thursday rejected Washington\u2019s \u201carbitrary and selective assessment\u201d under a domestic legislation on religious freedom and its designation of Pakistan as a \u201ccountry of particular concern,\u201d the foreign office said. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said he was designating Russia, as well as China and eight other states, as countries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[252,20,254,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-228118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-top-news","7":"tag-freedom","8":"tag-pakistan","9":"tag-religious-freedom","10":"tag-washington"},"yoast_head":"\n