(U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pours water over a statue of Buddha at the Shwedegon Pagoda in Yangon December 1, 2011. REUTERS/Saul Loeb/Pool )
Religious freedom in Egypt appears to be “quite tenuous” and its government has failed to aggressively prosecute perpetrators of sectarian violence, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.
Clinton made the comment as the State Department released a report that found a marked deterioration in religious freedom in China, where official interference with Tibetan Buddhist monasteries may have contributed to a dozen self-immolations.
In its annual International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, the State Department also said it discerned a rise in global anti-Semitism as well as the increased use of anti-blasphemy laws to restrict the rights of religious minorities.
The report gave particular attention to countries where last year’s “Arab Spring” of popular protests unseated authoritarian rulers such as former Egyptian president and long-time U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak.
