Former Kansas political leaders Sam Brownback and Mike Pompeo share enthusiasm for President Donald Trump's commitment to international religious freedom and the campaign to pressure governments in China, Iran and elsewhere to allow personal faith to flourish.

U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo, who was the state's 4th District congressional representative until 2017, said the Trump administration was promoting religious freedom as a cornerstone of foreign policy.

"Given our own great freedoms, it’s a distinctly American responsibility to stand up for faith in every nation’s public square," Pompeo said. "In much of the world, governments and groups deny individuals that same unalienable right. People are persecuted, handcuffed, thrown in jail, even killed for their decision to believe or not to believe. For speaking about their beliefs in public. For gathering in private, as so many of us have done, to study the Bible, the Torah or the Quran."

Brownback, who became U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom after resigning as Kansas governor in 2018, said the State Department had jumped off the sidelines in the fight to stop persecution of people of all faiths.

"We will not stop until we see the iron curtain of religious persecution come down, until governments no longer detain and torture people for simply being of a particular faith or associated with it, until people are no longer charged and prosecuted on specious charges of blasphemy," he said.

Brownback and Pompeo joined forces recently for the State Department's publication of the 2018 religious freedom report card documenting global signs of progress and encroachment of repression. Both were critical of constraints on religious expression in Iran and China and pointed to signs of improvement in Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

Brownback said Iran exposed religious minorities, including Baha’is, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Sunni and Sufi Muslims, to discrimination, harassment and unjust imprisonment. An Iranian regime’s crackdown on Baha’is, Christians and others ought to "shock the conscience," Pompeo said.

"Their religious books are banned. They are denied access to education. Their cemeteries are desecrated. Blasphemy and proselytization of Muslims is punishable by death," Brownback said.

Pompeo, who recalled time spent as a Sunday school teacher, said he was disturbed by the China's hostility to Falun Gong practitioners, Christians and Tibetan Buddhists. The scope of abuse is significant enough the State Department added a special section to the report on China, he said.

In Brownback's view, China declared war on faith by detaining more than 1 million ethnic Muslims in camps designed to strip away culture, identity and faith. He said the report repeated assertions Chinese authorities subjected prisoners of conscience, including Falun Gong, Buddhists and Christians, to forcible organ harvesting.

"They’ve increased their repression of Christians, shutting down churches and arresting adherents for their peaceful religious practices," Brownback said.

Pompeo said Jehovah’s Witnesses were "absurdly and abhorrently branded as terrorists" by Russian authorities who confiscated their property. In Burma, he said, Rohingya Muslims faced violence at the hands of the military while hundreds of thousands fled to overcrowded refugee camps.

An Eritrean Orthodox Church patriarch under house arrest since 2006 should be freed, Brownback said. National police in Nicaragua assault priests in full daylight to emphasize contempt for religious figures, he said.

The State Department officials said improvement in Uzbekistan led to removing after 13 years the designation of it as a "country of particular concern." In that country, Pompeo said, 1,500 religious prisoners were freed and 16,000 blacklisted for religious affiliations were allowed to travel.