WASHINGTON — (VOAnews.com, May 27) Western governments are demanding that U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet receive full access to sites and individuals in China’s western Xinjiang region following this week’s release of highly detailed reports of rights violations in the region. “This new reporting further adds to an already damning body of evidence of [China’s] atrocities in …

April 12, 2022 Ken Camp, Baptiststandard.com A Cuban Protestant pastor who has been detained since participating in peaceful protests last July has been sentenced to eight years in prison. Pastor Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo’s sentence was acknowledged in a document the Permanent Mission of Cuba in Geneva sent to the United Nations. It was submitted in response to a request from the …

Ken Camp / Managing Editor / Baptiststandard.com Advocates for international religious freedom praised the U.S. House of Representatives for passing legislation to hold accountable the Myanmar military for human rights violations and to authorize humanitarian assistance to the Burmese people. The House passed the Burma Unified through Rigorous Military Accountability Act of 2021 with broad bipartisan support on April 6. …

WASHINGTON, March 20 (Reuters) – Biden administration has formally determined that violence committed against the Rohingya minority by Myanmar’s military amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity, U.S. officials told Reuters, a move that advocates say should bolster efforts to hold the junta that now runs Myanmar accountable. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the decision on Monday at the …

By Abigail Mittendorf and Katelyn Aluise The Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences recently launched a project mapping disparities in religious freedom worldwide in collaboration with two non-governmental organizations. Officials at the Loeb Institute teamed up with 21Wilberforce and Genocide Watch to create and publish the Religious Freedom Data Spectrum that uses qualitative data to locate places of religious oppression and identify early warning …

Opinion by Nadia Murad. August 2021, reprinted from edition.CNN.com (CNN)Thoughts and prayers. Promises of “never again.” They are not enough. Seven years after ISIS committed genocide against the Yazidi community, my ethno-religious minority, in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of people remain internally displaced and more than 2,800 women and children remain missing. Shelter, clean water, health care and education are …

Why they wouldn’t bow to Boko Haram. JOE PARKINSON AND DREW HINSHAW|JUNE 21, 2021   Reprinted from Christianitytoday.com   They were the world’s most famous hostages, yet no one seemed to know what it had taken to bring them home or how they had survived. Members of the class of 2014 at Nigeria’s Chibok Government Secondary School for Girls had been …

Latest IRF scorecard grades each member of US Congress, as State Department releases annual report on 200 countries and territories. JAYSON CASPER|MAY 13, 2021  Reprinted from Christianitytoday.com   Secretary of State Antony Blinken called out Saudi Arabia. The Gulf kingdom “remains the only country in the world without a Christian church, though there are more than a million Christians living …

By 21Wilberforce Associate Emma Hodges Violent attacks, arbitrary detentions, and a growing culture of impunity for crimes committed against the Coptic community in Egypt should raise international consternation—yet the persecution continues with few consequences. Recognizing an unbroken succession of Patriarchs since Saint Mark himself, the Coptic Church has remained a vibrant presence in Egypt since its founding. In the third …