E/CN.4/1987/35 page 14 41. In some cases, the precepts peculiar to a given religion or sect are the source of conflict between the religious duties of the followers and their civic obligations. Thus, in several countries, the members of one sect are persecuted because of their refusal, based on religious belief, to salute the national flag or to sing the national anthem. 42. Economic factors can also lend to or aggravate a lack of understanding or religious intolerance. Thus, the tense intercommunity relations prevailing at present in several countries, which sometimes cause serious disturbances, are frequently due not only to purely religious schisms and dissensions but also to economic causes. Sometimes the members of a religious minority occupy a previleged economic position in society, incurring resentment on the part of the majority. Such resentment is then reflected in strong hostility towards the followers of the minority religion and, therefore, towards the religion itself. 43. Sometimes, economic and cultural factors come together to create a lack of understanding of particular religious values. Thus, in several countries where there are still indigenous populations that have preserved their ancestral religious traditions, considerations of an economic nature have sometimes prevailed over respect for those traditions. For example, there is the example of the appropriation by the State, with the stated aim of assuring the economic development of certain "backward" areas, of land regarded as sacred for the religious requirements of certain tribes. Further, there is the establishment of tourist sites, dams or other utilitarian structures regarded by indigenous populations as profaning the inviolable character of places which they regard as sanctuaries. Similarly, the requirements of some ceremonies, such as a special use of flora and fauna in some religions where nature as a whole is regarded as sacred, frequently meets with cultural incomprehension and rejection by the authorities. 4. Intolerance towards other religions and beliefs 44. While the attitude of Governments and various legal, political, economic and cultural factors can, to a large extent, hamper the implementation of the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, it would however seem that the sectarian and intransigent attitude of the followers of a particular religion or belief is sometimes the root cause of situations and incidents incompatible with the provisions of the Declaration. A large number of incidents which have come to the attention of the Special Rapporteur, either through the media or in documents transmitted to him, involve clashes, sometimes violent, between members of various religious communities. For example, in a number of multiconfessional countries, the various religions do not always co-exist without incidents. For example, one country is afflicted by recurrent and serious riots stemming from incidents involving the followers of various faiths, such as throwing stones at religious processions, attacks against holy places or persons belonging to a rival community. Interconfessional violence in this country generally results in the loss of many lives. In another multiconfessional country, where civil war has been raging for over 10 years, reciprocal lack of understanding and religious hatred are added to other grounds for tension, thereby perpetuating a situation of conflict and unceasing violence. Other examples attest to the persistence, in the modern era, of age-old religious hatred.