Knox Thames:    Sure.  We do have a section in our report that discusses the situation of the Alevi.  We documented some of the protest that have happened to in the past year and the whole issue, the European court case that came out in favor of the Alevi side that said that the education curricula in Turkey needed to reflect the Alevi faith as in its uniqueness and not part of Sunni Islam or just ignoring it completely.  So I think the Alevi situation is unfolding, there’s issue of the gym houses be, receive government subsidies like mosques do and also would prayer leaders be a part of the [IB] structure or separate and do they want to be or not.  I think in the Alevi community in Turkey you see, they have a difference of opinion on what should be the right approach.  So we documented that to some extent but it is a community, I mean, it’s the largest minority religious community in Turkey and so it’s something that we do spend time on and we do have recommendations about making sure that their concerns are on part of the discussion between the United States and Turkey…

Man2:    Hi, David Blum.  Quick question, two questions actually.  One, how do you view intentional maliciousness by the government or intended non-action by governments: for example, we’ll just have to put my perception of Iraq [IB] chooses not to act.  There is that case.  And second question, how do you represent western governments when they may not be on the list or they may not actually doing actions but how did you, when they make mistakes like for example you talk about Turkey on their headscarf ban, will you talk about France and their headscarf ban and their limitation of religious freedom.

Knox Thames:    Again, this is where the International Religious Freedom Act is our standard our guide and for countries to be a designated country of particular concern it can be for government action or inaction, so Iraq is a country that we have recommended, be designated a CPC, although it’s a split vote amongst commissioners and it was for the inaction of the central government to protect religious minorities and to quell the intra-Muslim religious violence but also because of the activities of the Kurdistan regional government to suppress the religious freedom of minorities so there is a dual issue.  But I think Nigeria is an example I spoke about earlier where the inactivity, we believe, rose to the level that it deserve to be on our CPC list.  But in most of our countries its government actions, government persecution, harassment, discrimination, that is the element there that we’re focused on.  Concerning other countries, France is one that I know before I arrived at the commission.  We were engaged on when the headscarf ban law was being discussed although it does affect other religious communities but it’s commonly understood towards Muslim girls and French public schools.  I was working at the Helsinki Commission at that time and I took it upon myself to go to Paris to raise these issues directly with the French and they are worst places to go to do human rights work but I had some very interesting conversations with individuals in the ministry of education.  We were just talking past each other because their view of religious freedom is freedom from religion, ours is freedom of religion, so they think the public space should just be clear of it and the concept of [IB] and that is, led to some very interesting theoretical discussions that resulted in no change in government policy but I think they were aware of US concerns and in practice from what I heard what I was told was the number of girls that dropped out of school was much lower than was feared.  And the argument we were making was UN inculcate these students with the values of the French Republic and that the girl you want to reach the most are those who most value their headscarf and their faith.  So you’re actually working against the goals of this legislation that argument fell on deaf ears but we do engage other countries like for example Azerbaijan, it’s not on our watch list but they’re considering new legislation that would limit religious freedom so we issue to public statement on that expressing concern.  So we can engage on countries that don’t, they don’t come in to our report but still are having problem, still considering or have an active problematic policies.