Washington, 3 June 2022 (MIA) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented on Thursday the State Department’s 2021 International Religious Freedom (IRF) Report. The section about North Macedonia says the country’s Constitution prohibits religious discrimination and provides for freedom of religion and religious expression. The IRF Report 2021 on North Macedonia notes that the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and other government ministries discussed amendments to the 2007 law governing religion that would enable larger religious communities to acquire the status of “legal entities,” but the MOJ again postponed consultations with religious groups on the amendments. On February 18, the Islamic Religious Community in North Macedonia (IRC) publicly condemned the government’s official registration of the Islamic Salafi community in December 2020, saying it would be detrimental to Muslim unity. IRC leaders said relations with the government improved following a meeting in January between IRC leader Reis Shaqir Fetahu and President Stevo Pendarovski, but that some government ministries and the judiciary continued to treat the organization unfavorably. The Skopje Appellate Court upheld a lower court’s rejection of the registration application of the Orthodox Archbishopric of Ohrid (OAO) because the application had not been submitted by the deadline, reads the report. It adds that the IRC said the government continued to show favoritism toward the Macedonian Orthodox Church-Ohrid Archbishopric (MOC-OA), and smaller religious groups continued to report unequal government treatment compared with the five constitutionally named groups. OAO officials continued to say their clergy and their family members were often targets of insults in media and victims of physical attacks by individuals considered close to the MOC-OA, says the report. In addition, it notes that the Bektashi (Tetovo) Community continued to dispute the IRC’s claims to full ownership of, and plans to renovate, the Harabati Baba Teqe, a complex the Bektashi (Tetovo) Community used as its headquarters. Media reported one incident of vandalism against a monastery located in a majority-Muslim area and 18 incidents of theft from churches during the year. The MOC-OA did not attribute the thefts and vandalism to religious motives. According to the State Department’s Report, in Fiscal Year 2021, 11,411 refugees were resettled permanently in the United States and given a path to U.S. citizenship through USRAP. This included refugees who had experienced past persecution or had a well-founded fear of persecution on account of religion. Many of them are from Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Russia and Iran. The report adds Russia to the list of countries designated as “countries of particular concern” in terms of violations of religious freedom, which includes Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.