A Florida man decided to fix the book-banning spree in his state by calling for the banning of the Bible. In a letter dated April 19, 2022, Chaz Stevens, an artist, and Florida's resident political stunt activist, requested the Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) and Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) ban the Bible.
Stevens, an atheist, decided to join the Republicans in their relentless, anti-science, anti-woke book-banning crusade.
India's first openly-gay royalty vowed to fight conversion therapy. After surviving the horrors of conversion therapy, Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil said he would work on making conversion therapy illegal in India.
Equaldex, a collaborative knowledge base for the LGBT movement, puts India in the 51st rank in their World Equality Index, including scores for legal rights and freedoms for LGBTQ+ people. Although Equaldex listed conversation therapy as banned in India, this is only valid for one state.
Eight men, including a journalist and a prominent theater artist in Madhya Pradesh, were arrested, stripped, and photographed by local police. One of the victims also said they were beaten and abused before being stripped.
On March 24, after a successful petition campaign, Canada's Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship confirmed that atheists and other non-religious are eligible for Less Complex Claims (LCC).
The LCC is an expedited refugee application process run by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. The process is handled by the Refugee Protection Division and allows for "short-hearing and file-review processes."
Atheist Republic’s Twitter account, the largest atheist account on the platform, has been suspended yet again. Susanna McIntyre, the CEO of Atheist Republic, reports that she was met with an “Account Suspended” notification when she tried logging in to Atheist Republic’s Twitter on Friday, April 1st, 2022.
On April 2, Mubarak Bala pleaded guilty to blasphemy charges for posting social media posts that caused a public disturbance “due to their blasphemous content.” He was sentenced to 24 years in prison for his alleged crime.
On March 30, a Bangladesh court sentenced four men to death for the brutal killing of a secular blogger in 2015. Judge Nurul Amin Biplob of the Sylhet Anti-Terrorism Tribunal gave the death penalty to four out of the five suspects in the murder of Ananta Bijoy Das.
Amnesty International published a report on March 23, 2022, shedding light on Libya’s dreadful persecution of young Libyans upholding their right to freedom of expression. The report also criticized the Libyan government for the alleged forced-confession videos.
Jewish activists dress up as Muslims to circumvent the prayer ban in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Sunni Islam's third holiest site. Swapping their Jewish clothes for a thobe, also called a dishdasha or jalabiya, these activists defy the delicate agreement between Israel and Jordan.
The same site where the mosque sits is considered the holiest site in Judaism.
On Thursday, March 17, jubilant passengers landed in RAF Brize Norton, the United Kingdom, after years of detention in Iran. British-Iranian nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were finally reunited with their families. Both were released on March 16, 2022.
