Aug 19, 2022
Sri Lanka is an ethnically and religiously diverse country but has had a history of intercommunal violence, most recently heightened in the decade following the end of a civil war in 2009. Conflict among the…
Aug 21, 2022
This op-ed was originally published by Fox News on August 21, 2022.
By USCIRF Commissioner Frank R. Wolf
I have been inside a Chinese prison, and it is grim to say the least. The imprisonment of 90-year-old…
Aug 25, 2022
August 25 marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the Burmese military’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya people. The violence resulted in thousands of Rohingya dead, hundreds of thousands internally…
Sep 2, 2022
In its 2022 Annual Report, USCIRF recommended the U.S. Department of State redesignate China as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious…
Sep 9, 2022
Since 2020, USCIRF has recommended that Nicaragua be included on the State Department’s Special Watch List for severe violations of religious freedom. In 2022, the Nicaraguan government has greatly intensified its…
Sep 16, 2022
In 2018, Kazakhstan arrested a group of men for participating in a WhatsApp group chat about Islam and sentenced them to multiple years in prison on fictitious terrorism and incitement-related charges. Last fall,…
Sep 23, 2022
Since 2014, the U.S. Department of State has designated Turkmenistan as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), for its systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations. After Turkmenistan’s…
Oct 11, 2022
On September 16th, Iran’s morality police arrested 22-year old Mahsa Amini for wearing improper hijab. The morality police reportedly beat Amini until she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and a stroke. Upon learning…
Oct 14, 2022
In April 2017, the Russian Federation banned Jehovah’s Witnesses as an “extremist” organization. In the five years since that designation, law enforcement authorities across Russia have made it a regular practice to raid, detain, and arrest…
Oct 21, 2022
Seven out of ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) nations have blasphemy laws currently enshrined in their legal codes. USCIRF’s recent issue update reviews these blasphemy laws and their enforcement within this…