This past November, an Egyptian atheist blogger was arrested by authorities and was allegedly charged with insulting Islam.

Hesham Fouad Ahmed or Hesham El Masry joined a debate hosted by Bassem Sam against an Imam, Ahmed Karima. The discussion was broadcasted live on Youtube on October 30, 2022.

Iranian parliament pushed judges to sentence protesters to the death penalty. According to the lawmakers, the judiciary should issue death sentences to individuals arrested during the riots.

227 members of the 290-seat Parliament of Iran have called on the Judiciary to issue death sentences for people arrested during the ongoing anti-government protests.https://t.co/iFQsRNZDUj pic.twitter.com/xau922a6ay

Religious organizations in the US defended a loophole allowing clergy not to report child abuse cases. In 2020, the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City heavily opposed House Bill 90 (HB90) in Utah.

The Catholic church argued that the “bill would violate the confidentiality of the confessional seal.” In February, the Catholic church gathered 9,000 signed letters from its parishioners and sent them to Rep. Angela Romero, the bill’s author.

Protesters in Cologne, Germany, were met with aggressive heckling by a group of young Muslims. A video posted by Maryam Namazie, a London-based Iranian writer and activist, showed the counter-protesters shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

On August 31, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released its “Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China.”

In 2017, the UN started receiving allegations of abuse from non-governmental organizations, think tanks, and media outlets, prompting the investigation. Since then, numerous research reports have been published alleging arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence and forced sterilizations, forced labor, and other ill-treatment of up to a million people.