All religious faiths are victims of persecution somewhere. Over the last year "a horrified world has watched the results of what some have aptly called violence masquerading as religious devotion" in several nations, observed the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in its latest annual report.
However, the fact that everyone is persecuted does not mean that everyone persecutes equally, or at all. Worst are authoritarian regimes and majority Muslim nations, which almost uniformly persecute.
The commission highlighted 27 countries for particularly vicious treatment of religious minorities. Nine states make the first tier, "Countries of Particular Concern," in State Department parlance: Burma (also known as Myanmar), China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
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