USA: Algeria has been listed as a country that violates religious freedom.

On December 02, 2022, the Head of the U.S. Diplomacy, Antony Blinken made public the designation of governments and non-state actors that commit or tolerate harassment, threats, imprisonment and killings of people because of their religious beliefs.

This year again, and for the second time in a row, Algeria is on the list of states placed by the U.S. Department of State under “Special Surveillance” for having committed or tolerated serious violations of religious freedom.

Algeria has had little difficulty in continuing, if not magnifying, the extremely serious violations and abuses committed in order to suffocate the rights derived from religious freedom within the country.

The fact that Algeria is once again on this list indicates the lack of change in the bleak situation of religious freedom in the country, as presented by the U.S. Department of State in its Report on Religious Freedom in the World for the year 2021.

The report contains a long list of violations that have been condemned and highlighted by religious and civil society leaders. For example, Catholic leaders reported that, due to what they perceived to be growing intolerance of Christians, the archdiocese of Algiers was unable to find someone willing to carve a cross on the Algiers tombstone of Archbishop Henri Teissier, who died in Oran in December 2020; many Christian leaders also reported having no contact with the National Commission for Non-Muslim Worship, despite its legal mandate to work with them on registration.

In addition, religious and civil society leaders have reported informal, religion-based obstacles to public sector employment for the Jewish community, as well as administrative challenges when dealing with bureaucracy.

The impunity with which these abuses occur is increased by the Algerian government’s lack of dialogue on this subject with its population and international partners.

Persecution of religious minorities and violations of freedom of belief in general are a genuine constant of the Algerian dictatorship, which stands out for its recurrent failures to respect human rights, dragging the country farther down a catastrophic path.

The lack of religious freedom is merely one of many apparent aspects of Algeria’s poor human rights record.

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