Government "laws, policies and actions of officials" that hinder or hurt religious beliefs and practices have reached an all-time high, reports Pew Research Center, which has been monitoring the trends since 2007.
The year-to-year increase for the most recent period for which information was available, 2017-2018, was modest.
"But it contributed to a substantial rise in government restrictions on religion over more than a decade," the organization said this week.
"The increase in government restrictions reflects a wide variety of events around the world, including a rise from 2017 to 2018 in the number of governments using force – such as detentions and physical abuse – to coerce religious groups," the report said.
There were 56 nations, or 26% of the 198 countries and territories surveyed, that have "high" or "very high" levels of government restriction, a jump of four in just a year.
"Most of the 56 countries with high or very high levels of government restrictions on religion are in the Asia-Pacific region (25 countries, or half of all countries in that region) or the Middle East-North Africa region (18 countries, or 90% of all countries in the region)," the report said.
In the Middle East and North Africa, governments use "property damage, detention, displacement, abuse and killings" against people of faith, the report said.
"In total, 31 out of 50 countries (62%) in Asia and the Pacific experienced government use of force related to religion, up from 26 countries (52%) in 2017. The increase was concentrated in the category of 'low levels' of government use of force (between one and nine incidents during the year). In 2018, 10 Asia-Pacific countries fell into this category, up from five the previous year," the report said.
China "continued to have the highest score on the Government Restrictions Index (GRI) out of all 198 countries and territories in the study. China has been near the top of the list of most restrictive governments in each year since the inception of the study, and in 2018 it reached a new peak in its score (9.3 out of 10)."
The communist regime bans entire religious groups, including the Falun Gong movement an numerous Christian groups. It does so by "raiding places of worship and detaining and torturing individuals," the report said.
It also runs a "detention campaign."
In the Middle East and North Africa, the problems were due to "governments using force against religious groups. All but one country in the region had reports of government use of force related to religion in 2018," the report said.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 40 of 48 countries "experienced some form of government harassment of religious groups, and 14 countries (29%) had reports of governments using physical coercion against religious minorities."
Authoritarian governments had the highest levels of actions against the religious populations they have.
"The five countries categorized as full democracies with high levels of social hostilities are all in Europe – Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – and all had reports of anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic incidents."
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