Freedom of worship is tenuous world wide. The Pew Analysis Heart’s newest annual record discovered “high” or “very high” ranges of presidency constraints on faith in 59 of the 198 international locations and territories it analyzed – a brand new document. When Pew started freeing reviews at the factor in 2007, simply 40 international locations’ restrictions on faith have been labeled that method.
As a journalism professor, I’ve studied global press practices and hindrances to honest, balanced, moral and unbiased reporting for greater than twenty years. A lot of my paintings is set press rights in “repressitarian” international locations, which means repressive in human rights practices and authoritarian in governance. I see overlaps amongst a variety of human rights abuses – of freedom of expression, of faith, of political association – and the way the absence of press freedom shields the ones abuses from public scrutiny.
Taboo matter
The 5 international locations of Central Asia – Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan – pursue harsh insurance policies and practices that ceaselessly curtail freedom of religion. That is very true for minority religions and sects, however even for practitioners of Islam, the area’s major religion. All are rated “Not Free” within the 2024 annual record on world political rights and civil liberties issued via Freedom Space, a democracy advocacy workforce based totally in Washington.
Executive ways come with censorship and seizure of spiritual fabrics, trumped-up fees and jail phrases for believers, prohibiting schoolchildren from dressed in hijabs or attending worship services and products, and imprisoning Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse obligatory army carrier. One contemporary legislation in Kyrgyzstan, which took impact Feb. 1, 2025, prohibits religion communities with fewer than 500 grownup participants and bans unregistered spiritual actions or puts of worship.
International reporters in finding it tricky, occasionally not possible, to record on spiritual problems from within authoritarian international locations.
Ethnic Russian Kyrgyz electorate look forward to a Sunday carrier on the Church of Archistrategos of God Mikhail – Archangel Michael of God Orthodox Church – in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, in 2010.
AP Photograph/Alexander Zemlianichenko
Darkhan Umirbekov, an editor at Radio Rate Europe/Radio Liberty, advised me that during Kazakhstan – the place maximum media are owned, managed or financially dependent at the regime and its allies – maximum such protection is “in the context of extremism,” as when “security forces detain members of a religious sect or group.”
Protective resources
We selected to review Discussion board 18 as a result of its reporting follows conventional journalistic values similar to equity and stability, in quest of feedback and knowledge from executive and nongovernmental resources. Some of the outlet’s key underlying motives, alternatively, is advocacy in give a boost to of spiritual freedom.
Even supposing based via a bunch of Christians, its protection spans a large spectrum of faiths. Fresh subjects integrated police raids on Jehovah’s Witnesses conferences in Kyrgyzstan, threats to punish a Muslim actor in Kazakhstan for quoting from the Quran in a video about Islam posted on Instagram, and the demolition of a mosque and Baptist church in Uzbekistan.
Our research, which we introduced at a 2024 convention of the Affiliation for Schooling in Journalism and Mass Verbal exchange, discovered that virtually two-thirds of Central Asian tales in 2023 enthusiastic about vast subjects similar to fines, executive insurance policies and prison phrases for believers. The rest enthusiastic about one-off occasions similar to specific arrests, raids or seizures of spiritual books.
In gentle of the intense possibility of retaliation, it’s unsurprising that such a lot of resources require anonymity. Whilst their identities are recognized to journalists and editors, their names aren’t disclosed to audiences for cover from threats, assaults and intimidation. Once in a while those resources are described generically, similar to “one Protestant” or “independent religious expert” or “local resident.”
Discussion board 18 editor and co-founder Felix Corley advised me in an interview: “What we’re concerned about is people that we talk to, that we don’t land them in trouble, so we have to be very careful to do everything we can to avoid endangering anyone by clumsy behavior on our part.”
As well as, the web site’s tales element names and titles of officers answerable for anti-faith insurance policies and practices – amongst them prosecutors, judges and company heads, maximum of whom refuse to remark and even reply to media inquiries.
Astana Grand Mosque in Kazakhstan, the most important mosque in Central Asia.
Aytac Unal/Anadolu by way of Getty Photographs
Small however important
For instance, a 2019 U.S. State Division human rights record on Uzbekistan makes references to a Discussion board 18 tale at the torture of a “prisoner of conscience” incarcerated for assembly with fellow Muslims and taking part in spiritual actions with out executive permission.
Spiritual freedom advocates hope such protection can tell and affect global opinion. Reporting in another country can highlight otherwise-unaccountable officers, particularly when censorship, self-censorship and threats of prosecution preclude home media from reporting.
Realistically, we acknowledge that exterior media protection is not going to urged significant protections of spiritual freedom in authoritarian international locations.
Even so, such journalism is also observed as a step – albeit a small, symbolic one – towards maintaining folks, governments, social teams and different enablers in command of violations of a elementary human proper.
