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America lists religious freedom violators

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice named eight countries this week as the world`s worst violators of religious liberty, and denied that there has been any wavering in the U.S. commitment to global human rights despite disclosures of secret prisons run by the CIA in Eastern Europe.

"The United States of America has stood for the values of human decency, of a government that respects the religious freedoms of its people, that respects the individual rights of its people, for its entire history," Secretary Rice said. "And let me just be very clear. We hold those values today as strongly as we ever have."

The State Department`s seventh annual report on religious freedom listed the same eight countries that it did last year as the most egregious violators, or "countries of particular concern." They are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Vietnam.