Human rights organization reports on imprisonment of religious believers
January 03, 2014
A European human rights organization has issued a report on the imprisonment of religious believers in 24 nations.
“The present list comprises hundreds of prisoners that were behind bars in 2013 on the ground of laws forbidding or restricting their basic rights to freedom of religion or belief,” Human Rights Without Frontiers International said in its report. The nations cited include Armenia, Azerbaijan, China, Eritrea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Libya, Morocco, Nagorno-Karabakh (a region of Azerbaijan), North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea (over its imprisonment of some Jehovah’s Witnesses), Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
According to the report, eight nations imprison people “on the basis of laws against blasphemy, defamation of religion or the Prophet and similar issues.” The eight are Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Turkey.
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