A new report outlines the growth of religious persecution across the globe with millions of people suffering persecution or violence because of their faiths or religious beliefs.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has released the ‘Global Overview of Refugees Fleeing Religious Persecution’ report revealing  the places where large populations have been displaced due to persecution or violence based on religion or belief.

These include in Afghanistan, Burma, the Central African Republic (CAR), China, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

The report also critiques US policy related to these refugee populations, highlighting the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) as a critical pathway for refugees seeking safety in the United States and the U.S. government’s treatment of asylum seekers in expedited removal.

Among the highlights of the report’s finding were:

Afghanistan. The Taliban continues to persecute religious minorities and punish residents in areas under its control in accordance with its extreme interpretation of Islamic law or Shari’a.

Afghans who do not adhere to the Taliban’s harsh and strict interpretation of Sunni Islam and adherents of other faiths or beliefs are at risk of grave danger. Masses fear persecution at the hands of the Taliban and separately at the hands of ISIS-K, continue to flee to neighbouring countries

Burma. More than1.2 million refugees have fled Burma. Most of these refugees are Rohingya, who are predominately Muslims, and have fled decades of systematic discrimination, statelessness, and targeted violence.

In 2017, the Burmese military, perpetrated mass killings and rapes against the Rohingya community in Rakhine State, forcing more than 800,000 to flee to Bangladesh within days.

Each year since 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya continued to flee due to ongoing violence, resulting in around a million registered refugees who fled violence in Rakhine State residing in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh at the end of 2021.

Rohingya in refugee camps in Bangladesh remain vulnerable and face extremely challenging conditions, including escalating violence and the recent closure of schools.

Central African Republic (CAR): Violence based on religion was a feature of the CAR’s civil conflict that erupted in 2013. Christian and Muslim affiliated militias attacked civilian communities and houses of worship in a vicious cycle of retaliatory violence, fuelling an intractable conflict that destroyed most of the country’s mosques and displaced a quarter of the population.

More than 600,000 people have fled to neighbouring Cameroon, Chad, and other countries. Muslims, who are a religious minority in CAR, reportedly represent a disproportionate number of those displaced.

China: Under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping’s rule, members of religious communities have fled China in recent years due to increased persecution. The Chinese government subjects many of these religious minorities seeking refuge in host countries to transnational repression.

Freedom House has called it the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign of such repression in the world. The government has used its economic and geopolitical influence to pressure governments of foreign countries to forcibly repatriate refugees to China.

Also, through its Sky Net and Fox Hunt operations, the Chinese government has used methods of “involuntary returns” to force its victims to return to China where they face severe persecution, including threats against their family members in China and harassment by undercover Chinese agents sent abroad to intimidate, coerce, “persuade,” and in some cases kidnap victims.

The CCP also has used similar tactics to silence religious freedom and human rights activists and their activities abroad.

Eritrea: Since Eritrea’s independence in 1994, many Eritreans have fled a human rights crisis in the country, including to escape severe religious persecution and forced military inscription that applies even to conscientious objectors.

The Eritrean government deems unregistered religious groups to be illegal and punishes them for practicing their faiths publicly. At least a thousand individuals are believed to be imprisoned due to their religious activity or religious freedom advocacy, including 20 Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused military service based on their religious beliefs, some of whom have been imprisoned for more than 20 years.

Iran: Scores of members of religious minority communities, including Baha’is, Christians, Jews, Sabean-Mandeans, and Zoroastrians, have fled Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, a trend that continues today amid increased targeting by Iran’s government.

Many religious minorities who leave the country continue to be pursued by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Individuals from several religious communities from Iran, including Christian and members of spiritualist movements, have sought refuge in Turkey, where authorities sometimes deny them adequate protection from Iran’s extraterritorial persecution.

The Iranian government also continues to target members of the Gonbadi Sufi community who reside outside Iran in Europe and South Asia. In 2019, the leader of the Erfan e-Halgheh

Iraq: When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged in 2014 and controlled a large swath of territories in Iraq, the terrorist group forcibly displaced more than six million Iraqis.

ISIS indiscriminately targeted both Muslims and non-Muslims, committing genocide against Yazidis, Syriac-Assyrian-Chaldean Christians, Shi’a Muslims, and war crimes and crimes against humanity against other religious and ethnic groups.

Nigeria: For more than ten years militant Islamist groups in northeast Nigeria have used violence to pursue their aims of supplanting government authority and establishing a caliphate based on a particular interpretation of Islamic law. Groups like Boko Haram, Islamic State in West Africa.

They have attacked, abducted, and executed those they consider “apostates” for disagreeing with their leaders’ religious beliefs. They have also used violence and intimidation to gain territorial control and raise funds through illegal taxation.

These tactics yielded massive displacement in northeast Nigeria and throughout the Lake Chad Basin. Today, an estimated 300,000 are refugees, most in neighbouring Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. A further 2 million are internally displaced.

Syria: Since 2011, Syria’s ongoing political conflict and attendant humanitarian crisis have significantly affected the county’s religious and ethnic demography, with refugees and IDPs from both the Sunni Muslim majority and ethnoreligious minorities fleeing their homes.

By 2021, more than half of the country’s pre-war population of just over 21 million had suffered displacement either internally or across national borders, cementing the Syrian crisis as one of the globe’s largest refugee and displacement disaster in recent times with 6.9 million internally displaced people and 6.6 refugees overseas.

Within Syria, militant Islamist organizations including Turkish-backed Syrian groups (TSOs), al-Qaeda offshoot Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and remnants of ISIS have targeted minorities such as Yazidis and Syriac and Assyrian Christians, subjecting these communities to ethnic cleansing.

Ukraine/Russia: Since the start of Russia’s brutal invasion into Ukraine in February 2022, over six million refugees have fled the country, largely finding refuge in neighbouring countries such as Poland, Romania, and Hungary.

Russian forces have committed war crimes and other atrocities. The conflict poses a risk to religious communities across Ukraine, with the potential to drive even more displacement.

In the areas of Ukraine already occupied by Russia since 2014, the Russian government uses baseless charges of religious extremism and terrorism to silence dissent, justify endless raids and mass arrests, and close religious institutions that do not conform to its narrow interpretation of “traditional” religion.

Indigenous Crimean Tatar Muslims are routinely charged with terrorism based on their ethno-religious identity rather than any substantive evidence, receiving prison sentences of up to 20 years

Vietnam: Due to government persecution, religious minorities from Vietnam have escaped to and sought refuge in Thailand and Cambodia where they face precarious situations.

There are about 1500 Vietnamese refugees in Thailand, split more or less evenly between those who have been granted refugee status by the UNHCR and those who do not have such status, including refugees whose applications have been rejected.

The majority of Vietnamese refugees in Thailand are members of independent Hmong and Montagnard Christian communities, who are persecuted for refusing to renounce their faith and join state-controlled religious organisations.

Other religious groups whose members have been displaced include independent Hoa Hao and Cao Dai communities, as well as independent Buddhists, including Khmer-Krom Buddhists.

Read the full report here: Global Overview of Refugees Fleeing Religious Persecution