Uganda among Countries with Religious Discrimination During COVID-19: Recent Report

Members of the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda include representatives from the Catholic Church, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Church of the Province of Uganda and the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council.

Others are the Uganda Orthodox Church, the Born Again Faith and the National Alliance of Pentecostal and Evangelical Churches of Uganda.

In the report dubbed “Commentary on the Current State of International Freedom of Religion” that was launched Monday, March 1, there are countless other examples of religious and belief minority communities globally being discriminated against following the outbreak of COVID-19.

The commentary looked at the impact of COVID-19 on religious minorities as well as concerns at the intersection between freedom of religion and gender in several countries.

It specifically explored the increased vulnerability of minority religious and belief communities due to economic pressures occasioned by the pandemic, the state crackdowns on marginalized religious and belief communities as well as violence that was inspired by religious beliefs.

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Other African countries highlighted in the APPGFoRB report include Burundi, Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Libya and Zimbabwe.

Non-African countries in the commentary include Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Israel, India, among others.

The report highlights an incident in South Korea where members of the Shincheonji church of Jesus have been demonized and blamed for the spread of COVID-19 by government officials, leading to over 4,000 documented cases of discrimination against its members including being fired from jobs due to membership of the church.

In other countries, the report notes, members of minority religious groups have been accused of being responsible for the spread of the virus and physically assaulted in public.

APPGFoRB is a group of over 130 cross-party parliamentary members who champion the right to Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB), as outlined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among their fellow parliamentarians, policy-makers, the media and the general public and pursue effective implementation of policy recommendations relating to this right.

Established in 2012, the group benefits from the expertise of 20 human rights and faith-based stakeholder organizations.

While launching the 66-page report, APPGFoRB emphasizes the impact that the global pandemic has had on FoRB, stressing that many countries in the world have experienced “a tsunami of hate and xenophobia.”

“Religion and belief communities have been blamed for the virus; made scapegoat for the outbreaks; castigated as irresponsible ‘super-spreaders’; accused of being resistant to implement public health measures, of peddling ‘phoney’ remedies, of opposing vaccinations etc, etc,” the report states.

It adds, “Whilst freedom of conscience must of course be respected, many of these attacks, which have made some religion or belief groups the target of conspiracy theories and of hate speech, have amounted to little more than self-serving attempts to deflect attention from the failure of the authorities in relation to these matters.”

According to the report, many countries have seen increases in levels of violent conflict during the pandemic.

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This, the report says, is because of how, in some cases, the pandemic has negatively interacted with the root causes of conflict such as youth unemployment, social and economic inequalities, and stigmatization of minority groups.

There have also been increasing reports of armed groups utilizing the chaos and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, the report notes.

The report makes reference to the US Institute for Peace on Nigeria which says, in part, “Boko Haram has stepped up its attacks as the number of cases in Borno State grows. These attacks combined with other battles involving farmers and herders and increasing banditry in the northwest have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.”

Agnes Aineah is a Kenyan journalist with a background in digital and newspaper reporting. She holds a Master of Arts in Digital Journalism from the Aga Khan University, Graduate School of Media and Communications and a Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics, Media and Communications from Kenya's Moi University. Agnes currently serves as a journalist for ACI Africa.