Mr. Chair, I would respond by focusing on what we're seeing in the countries that we're engaged in. In many cases most of the countries we're looking at don't have rule of law. They don't have a broad respect for human rights. That obviously exacerbates violations of religious freedom, and in many cases they do not have the institutions that can ensure protection for these groups. Every country often has religious freedom issues that come to the fore, but when we're speaking of liberal democracies, you have institutions in place: the courts, parliaments, legislatures, the actions of citizens themselves to uphold religious freedom. The countries that we're focused on are where people are being tortured, imprisoned, killed for their faith. In focusing on those, we need to have an understanding of what is leading to this increased persecution.
I think the rise of different forms of militancy, of fundamentalism....We see this in certain countries. We see shifting geopolitical realities. We see countries in transition where you have weak institutions that aren't able to ensure protection for certain communities. I think there are a number of different factors.
The rise in governmental restrictions can be as a result of a number of different things, but I think a lot of the increase we're seeing is as a result of social hostilities. Getting back to China, one of the reasons why the numbers in the Pew Forum's research is so high is because China is one of those countries that has high government restrictions. Those restrictions have really not changed a great deal from my knowledge of them—and I don't have an in-depth knowledge of them—but there hasn't been much change there. I think when we see increasing violations of religious freedom, a lot of it is on that social hostility side of the spectrum.
Again, I think we can point to a number of factors that include countries in transition, the increase in militancy, the exporting of different types of militancy, particularly Wahhabi and Salafist Islam, which is a real concern, including within the Islamic world.