Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meets with Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in Islamabad on October 24, 2017. (Photo: U.S. Embassy Islamabad)

(Correction: The lawyer shot dead in 2014, Rashid Rehman Khan, was a Sunni Muslim, not an Ahmadi as originally reported. Ahmadis are, however, frequently targeted for their faith.)

(CNSNews.com) – With a deadline approaching for the administration to notify Congress which countries will be blacklisted for religious freedom violations, a small bipartisan group of senators is urging it to break a 15-year-old pattern and designate Pakistan.

The second most-populous Muslim-majority country enforces arguably the world’s most controversial blasphemy laws. But Pakistan is also professedly a U.S. counter-terrorism ally, and both the Bush and Obama administrations repeatedly overruled recommendations to name it as a religious freedom “country of particular concern” (CPC) under U.S. law.

As the Trump administration’s first annual CPC designation notification draws closer, the six senators are calling on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – who visited Islamabad just last week – to change that.

“The government of Pakistan continues to perpetrate and tolerate systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations,” they wrote, noting that at least 40 people are currently on death row or serving life sentences in Pakistan for blasphemy.

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Todd Young (Ind.) and James Lankford (Okla.) and Democratic Sens. Chris Coons (Dela.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Bob Menendez (N.J.) urged Tillerson to “use all the tools at [his] disposal to help ensure freedom of religion and belief is central in U.S. foreign policy.”

Just a fortnight ago, a court in Punjab province handed down the death penalty to three Ahmadis convicted of blasphemy.

The three men, adherents of a Muslim sect which Pakistan’s mainstream Sunnis view as apostate, were accused of insulting Islam’s prophet Mohammed. Their offense: to try to take down posters containing anti-Ahmadi slogans and inciting the community to boycott them.

The sentencing drew strong criticism from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent statutory watchdog that advises the executive and legislative branches.

“Pakistan must repeal its blasphemy laws and immediately release all those imprisoned under those provisions,” USCIRF chairman Daniel Mark said at the time. “Blasphemy laws and the horrific acts they unleash are an assault on human rights and dignity.”

The 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), which created the USCIRF, calls for CPC designation for governments which violate their citizens’ religious freedom or allow others to do so. Designated CPCs may be subjected to U.S. sanctions or other measures aimed at prodding the governments to improve.

Every year since 2002 the USCIRF has recommended that Pakistan be listed as a CPC; every year the State Department has chosen not to do so, even as its own annual international religious freedom (IRF) reports have been highly critical of Islamabad’s record.

Citing the USCIRF’s repeated recommendation, the six senators wrote that “[d]iscriminatory constitutional provisions and laws, including the country’s blasphemy and anti-Ahmadiyya measures, continue to result in the unjust prosecution and imprisonment of individuals due to their faith.”

Successive Pakistani governments have resisted calls for repeal or amend the blasphemy laws, which are popular with the country’s largest Muslim faction, Barelvis, who hold extreme views regarding shari’a and blasphemy towards Mohammed.

The laws carry the death penalty for insulting Mohammed, life imprisonment for defiling the Qur’an, and shorter prison terms for anyone convicted of remarks defiling Mohammed’s wives, relatives or “companions.”

The laws are frequently used to target Ahmadis, Christians and other minorities. Beyond legal consequences, accusations of blasphemy have also provoked mob or vigilante attacks.

In 2014 a Sunni Muslim lawyer was shot dead after agreeing to represent a university lecturer facing blasphemy charges. That same year a Christian couple was burned alive in a brick kiln after a mob accused them of blasphemy.

‘Oust’ Ahmadis

Beyond the blasphemy laws, Ahmadis – whose movement claims to reject all forms of violence – face additional persecution.

Pakistan in 1974 amended its constitution to declare that an Ahmadi “is not a Muslim for the purposes of the constitution or law.” Its penal code criminalizes Ahmadi worship.

The constitutional change came months after the influential Saudi-based Muslim World League issued a fatwa instructing Muslim bodies everywhere to boycott Ahmadis socially, economically and culturally, and “oust” them from the fold of Islam.

The executive branch is required by law to notify Congress of its CPC designation decision no later than 90 days after releasing the annual IRF report.

Tillerson issued the report on August 15 and therefore has until Nov. 13 to list the CPCs. He then has a further 90 days – until Feb. 11 next year – to inform Congress about the actions the government has taken in response to the designations, and how effective those steps have been.

Beyond Pakistan, the six senators asked Tillerson to take into account USCIRF’s recommendations when deciding which countries to designate.

In its own annual report, earlier this year, USCIRF identified 16 countries as meeting the standard for CPC designation – compared to ten countries that are actually on the CPC list.

The 10 now listed by the U.S. government are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The six additional countries recommended for listing by USCIRF this year are Central African Republic, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Syria and Vietnam.