Putting the International Religious Freedom Report into Action

August 16, 2016
By Zahava Moerdler

The State Department published its International Religious Freedom Report on Wednesday August 10, analyzing the status of religious freedom around the world in 2015 and providing details on discrimination against religious minorities. It also highlights the need for a working definition for the many forms of religious discrimination.

We took a close look into the sections on France, Germany, Greece, and Hungary.

On Germany, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor assessed the prevalence of hate speech and crime, the rise of PEGIDA, and vandalism of synagogues. One incident sticks out: on February 5, 2015, a local court in Wuppertal finally sentenced three Palestinian men who had thrown Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Wuppertal in 2014. Because the building was empty at the time, two of the men received 18-month suspended sentences for aggravated arson and the third, an 18-year-old, was placed on juvenile probation.

The defendants argued that their actions were not antisemitic, but rather an attempt to protest the violence in Gaza. The judge agreed and ruled that the attack did not constitute one of discrimination or antisemitism.

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/putting-international-religious-freedom-report-action