International Day of Human Fraternity
By: Nitya Jadeja
Feb 04, 2022
February 4 is the UN International Day of Human Fraternity in support of religious tolerance. This week’s graph shows changes in freedom of religion in Asia from 2010 to 2020, using the V-Dem Online Tools.
Since 2010, freedom of religion has declined substantially in China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Philippines (the latter two partly obscured in graph by other country names). In 2020, for example, India enforced the Citizenship Amendment Act, making it possible to grant citizenship to illegal migrants unless they are Muslims. In China, the Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang province have been prosecuted by the government since 2014, under the pretext of combating growing extremism. Such discriminatory laws and practices undermine religious freedom, putting religious minorities at risk.
