The United States on Friday knowingly ignored India but added Latin American adversaries Cuba and Nicaragua as well as Russia's Wagner Group to a blacklist on international religious freedom, opening the path to potential sanctions.

As expected, Secretary of State Antony Blinken took no action against India, seen by the United States as a key emerging ally.

The decision ignores a recommendation by the autonomous US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which said that treatment of minorities was "significantly" worsening under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government.

The Commission said in a statement it was "outraged" that Blinken did not list India, saying the State Department's own reporting showed "severe religious freedom violations" in that country.

India had already voiced anger over the State Department's annual report, which documented incendiary comments by Indian officials and accounts of discrimination against Muslims and Christians.

Key India findings by US Commission

• Designate India as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom , as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA); 

• Impose targeted sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ or entities’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States; and 

• Advance human rights of all religious communities in India and promote religious freedom, dignity, and interfaith dialogue through bilateral and multilateral forums and agreements, such as the ministerial of the Quadrilateral. 

The US Congress should: 

• Raise religious freedom issues in the U.S.-India bilateral relationship and highlight concerns through hearings, briefings, letters, and congressional delegations. I n 2021, religious freedom conditions in India significantly worsened. During the year, the Indian government escalated its promotion and enforcement of policies—including those promoting a Hindu-nationalist agenda—that negatively affect Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and other religious minorities. The government continued to systemize its ideological vision of a Hindu state at both the national and state levels through the use of both existing and new laws and structural changes hostile to the country’s religious minorities. In 2021, the Indian government repressed critical voices— especially religious minorities and those reporting on and advocating for them—through harassment, investigation, detention, and prosecution under laws such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Sedition Law.

The UAPA and Sedition Law have been invoked to create an increasing climate of intimidation and fear in an effort to silence anyone speaking out against the government. Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest and longtime human rights defender of Adivasis, Dalits, and other marginalized communities, was arrested on dubious UAPA charges in October 2020 and never tried. He died in custody in July 2021 despite repeated concerns raised about his health. The government arrested, filed complaints against, and launched criminal investigations into journalists and human rights advocates documenting religious persecution and violence, including Khurram Parvez, a prominent Muslim human rights advocate who has reported on abuses in Jammu and Kashmir. The government also broadly targeted individuals documenting or sharing information about violence against Muslims, Christians, and other religious minorities; as one example, UAPA complaints were filed against individuals for tweeting about attacks on mosques in Tripura. In September, the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the “[o]ngoing use of the [UAPA] throughout India is worrying, with [the Muslim-majority state of] Jammu and Kashmir having among the highest number of cases in the country.”

The government erected hurdles against the licensure and receipt of international funding by religious and charitable nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), significantly impacting religious communities. Numerous groups that document religious freedom violations or aid marginalized religious communities have been forced to shut down operations in the country given the restrictions under FCRA that regulate access to and reporting on foreign funds and prohibit their receipt for any activities purportedly “detrimental to the national interest.” At the close of 2021, the licenses of nearly 6,000 organizations, including religious and humanitarian organizations such as Missionaries of Charity and Oxfam India, were not renewed under the FCRA (after an outcry, Missionaries of Charity’s license was renewed in January 2022). Government action, including the continued enforcement of anti-conversion laws against non-Hindus, has created a culture of impunity for nationwide campaigns of threats and violence by mobs and vigilante groups, including against Muslims and Christians accused of conversion activities. Anti-conversion laws have increasingly focused on interfaith relationships. Existing laws in approximately one-third of India’s 28 states limit or prohibit religious conversion.

Since 2018 (and continuing in 2021), multiple states have introduced and enacted laws or revised existing anti-conversion laws to target and/or criminalize interfaith marriages. Public notice requirements for interfaith marriages have at times facilitated violent reprisals against couples. Authorities also assisted, if not encouraged, the targeting by nonstate actors of interfaith couples, converts, their families, and their religious communities in an effort to prevent interfaith marriages. National, state, and local governments demonized and attacked the conversion of Hindus to Christianity or Islam. In October 2021, Karnataka’s government ordered a survey of churches and priests in the state and authorized police to conduct a door-to-door inspection to find Hindus who have converted to Christianity. In June 2021, Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, warned that he would invoke the National Security Act, which allows for the detention of anyone acting in any manner that threatens the security of state, and that he would also deploy a team of over 500 officials to counter those (including, by his account, children) who were carrying out conversion ativities.

Russia’s Wagner Group

The United States on Friday added Latin American adversaries Cuba and Nicaragua as well as Russia's Wagner Group to a blacklist on international religious freedom, opening the path to potential sanctions.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Wagner Group was being designated due to involvement in abuses in the Central African Republic, where nearly a decade of bloodshed has had religious overtones. "The United States will not stand by in the face of these abuses," Blinken said in a statement.

Cuba and Nicaragua were both newly designated as "Countries of Particular Concern" under the annual determinations, meaning that the two leftist-led states -- already under US sanctions -- could face further measures.

Blinken kept on the blacklist all Countries of Particular Concern from 2021 -- China, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Nicaragua's increasingly authoritarian president, Daniel Ortega, has clamped down on the Catholic Church since accusing it of supporting 2018 anti-government protests, which were crushed at the cost of hundreds of lives.

A bishop critical of the government, Rolando Alvarez, was put under house arrest in August with other priests and seminarians arrested on unspecified charges.

The designation of Cuba is the latest sign of pressure on the island by the administration of President Joe Biden, which has largely shunned previous Democratic president Barack Obama's Vatican-blessed effort to seek an opening with the long-time US nemesis.

In its latest annual report on religious freedom issued in June, the State Department pointed to violence and arrests of Cuban religious figures over purported roles in rare public protests as well as restrictions on non-recognized Protestant churches.

"These actions represented a shift to engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing egregious violations of religious freedom, which is the basis for the designation," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez rejected the US blacklisting, calling it "arbitrary" and "dishonest."

"It is known that in Cuba there is religious freedom," Rodriguez tweeted.

- No action on India, warning to Vietnam -

As expected, Blinken took no action against India, seen by the United States as a key emerging ally.

The decision ignores a recommendation by the autonomous US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which said that treatment of minorities was "significantly" worsening under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government.

The Commission said in a statement it was "outraged" that Blinken did not list India or Nigeria, saying the State Department's own reporting showed "severe religious freedom violations" in both countries.

India had already voiced anger over the State Department's annual report, which documented incendiary comments by Indian officials and accounts of discrimination against Muslims and Christians.

The report had separately pointed to abuses of Russia's Wagner Group in the Central African Republic, citing Amnesty International in linking the mercenaries to killings and sexual violence against Muslims.

The designation comes as US senators introduced legislation to slap a terrorism designation on the Wagner Group, which has also been involved in Mali and been accused of rights violations in Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

The Central African Republic, one of the world's poorest countries, was plunged into civil war in 2013 when a Muslim-dominated rebellion overthrew the president, sparking reprisals from predominantly Christian and animist militias.

Blinken added the Central African Republic to a watchlist, meaning that it will be designated among Countries of Particular Concern without progress.

Also newly put on the watchlist was Vietnam. The State Department report said the communist authorities have harassed non-recognized religious groups, including Christian house churches, independent Buddhists and members of the century-old Cao Dai movement.

Rights activists have long pushed the United States to designate Vietnam but successive administrations have been building ties with the former US adversary.

Algeria and Comoros remained on the watchlist from 2021.