Man 4: Alright, one more question. I know that on government territories like Somalia would be an issue for you because they cannot implement policy, but what about areas like for example Palestine which is semi-autonomous and where there is an actual state like Israel that actually you can implement policy suggestions for, how do you look at that? Be considering the fact that the Palestinian Christians are [IB] being evacuated or being executed and being oppressed in many mass numbers, do you put pressure on the Palestinians or do you put pressure on Israel, which way do you do that?
Knox Thames: We actually for the first time did list Somalia as a country on our watch list due to Al-Shabaab and the growth of Islamic radicalism there in the extremist groups and we had recommendations to the US on how to engage the transitional federal federation government that Somalia is in any case. On the Israel-Palestine issue, that country, that’s the situation that we haven’t made spoken to ever, and the reason that has mainly been that while religion is a factor, there are many other much larger issues that play there that the commissioners have decided that religious freedom had a core issue there, so it doesn’t follow within our bailiwick. I personally haven’t heard of many instances of Palestinian Christians being executed and that would be…
Man 4: I apologize for that…
Knox Thames: Okay. But I mean if there is information like that we surely want to know because that would be very troubling and unheard of but my colleague who covers Middle East starts to keep an eye on what’s going on there but our general position has been religious freedom which is our mandate those issue, the issues that are played there.
Man 5: Hi. My name is Amin. Just a question, could you give an example of a country that has made the journey and what that journey looks like from intolerance coming more into a balance point?
Knox Thames: Yeah. Sadly, I don’t have a whole lot of examples I can give. Vietnam I mentioned earlier is one where they took us a variety of steps to get off the State Department’s CPC list. We think they needed to do more but that’s the only…countries that have gotten off the CPC list that have been designated by the State Department, there’s Vietnam, there’s Iraq and Afghanistan, and those too happened both after we invaded, so…not a lot of good examples there. An interesting developing situation is in Qatar on the Arabian Peninsula. The Wahhabi religion is the state religion and shares that with Saudi Arabia but over the past decade or so, they’ve really started to move towards a greater respect for religious freedom. They’re not all the way there but in 2008 they allowed the construction of and the opening of a catholic cathedral in the capital of Qatar. There are, I think, six other churches under construction. A naturally remarkable considering that’s the Arabian peninsula in a Wahhabi country. Now, Bahrain is another interesting example. In all they have, there are issues there with the Shia majority not being in franchised as fully as the Sunni minority, which controls most of the levers of power. They do allow the free-practice of religion for people not of the book so there’s a Hindu in seat places of worship and that’s really remarkable considering part of the world that’s in. So we have sort of small examples, but part of our goal is to see more of these countries move totally through but I don’t – Joe may have some other thoughts on countries that have ….