Global religious freedom harmed by government-fostered lies, USCIRF reports

 By Diana Chandler - Posted at Baptist Press:

WASHINGTON (BP) – When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the invasion was to “denazify” Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, is a Nazi hellbent on committing genocide against Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Putin said.

In Iran, the government regularly disseminates misinformation on state-linked media channels about religious minorities, including statements that Christian converts from Islam are part of a “Zionist” network that poses a national security risk.

China uses several tactics to “manipulate global opinion about its ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity targeting predominately Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in the Xinjiang region,” including favorable fake grassroots campaigns on social media and fabricated positive news stories, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Such government-fostered misinformation and disinformation are hindering religious liberty in several places globally, USCIRF said in an August factsheet, and spreading societal religious persecution including violence.

USCIRF defined misinformation as a claim that is false or inaccurate, and disinformation as a false or inaccurate claim that the government deliberately disseminates.

“Increasingly, governments are promoting both misinformation and disinformation through campaigns targeting religious communities and by denying the existence of official policies targeting such groups,” USCIRF said Aug. 8 in releasing the report, “Misinformation and Disinformation: Implications for Freedom of Religion or Belief.”

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