May 12, 2025
Amnesty International, a human rights watchdog group, last month released its annual report on global executions. The report documented 1,518 executions in 2024 — a 32% increase compared to 2023 and the highest global numbers in a decade.
These numbers do not include an estimated thousands of executions conducted by China, a leading persecutor of religion, or those executed in North Korea and Vietnam. China has long persecuted independent religion within its borders, subjecting millions of Uyghur Muslims to concentration camps and murdering religious minorities, especially Falun Gong practitioners, to sell their organs on the black market.
The North Korean government is consistently ranked as one of the most repressive of religious freedom and has been designated by the U.S. as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) every year since 2001. There, owning a Bible or praying can lead to life in prison or even death.
Vietnam is designated as a Special Watchlist (SWL) country by the U.S. Department of State, indicating credible evidence that it has engaged in or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom.
Leading the list of documented executions were Iran and Saudi Arabia, both of which have been designated as CPCs for decades, given their consistent track records of particularly severe violations of religious freedom. Iran executed at least 972 people in 2024, while Saudi Arabia doubled its rate from 2023, with 345 executions in 2024.
While the Iranian government allows some degree of freedom for historically non-Muslim communities, converts from Islam to Christianity are viciously persecuted and are treated as a national security threat.
One of the world’s few theocracies, the Iranian system is built on extreme devotion to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. After the overthrow of the secular but authoritarian monarchy in 1979, Iran swung hard toward Islamist extremism and has continued on that path ever since, with a growing security apparatus designed to suppress religious and political dissent in every corner of society.
Iran’s constitution, finalized soon after the 1979 revolution, is a religious manifesto that quotes the Quran extensively and mandates the military to fulfill “the ideological mission of jihad in Allah’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of Allah’s law throughout the world.”
For religious minorities in Iran, there is no escape from the extremist policies of a government fueled by an extremist interpretation of Shia Islam that leaves no room even for Sunni Islam, much less religious minorities like Christianity.
The United States has designated Saudi Arabia as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) 13 times since first issuing the designation in 1999, including every year since 2016. The CPC designation is designed to pressure countries that engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.
Blasphemy and apostasy are both crimes under Saudi law, with punishment for these violations of Islamic morality including large fines, long terms in prison, floggings, and even death. According to the activist group Reprieve, Saudi Arabia has executed at least 212 people this year, surpassing the kingdom’s previous annual record of 196 people executed in 2022 and the 172 people executed in 2023.
The country’s blasphemy law, in essence, outlaws the expression of minority religious beliefs, while the ban on apostasy prevents Muslims from leaving Islam for another faith. Combined with the idea, taught in schools, that all infants are born Muslim, this leaves little room to identify with any faith other than Islam.
Public worship of any faith other than Islam is prohibited in Saudi Arabia, with the government enforcing this restriction carefully and only allowing private gatherings under the strictest of conditions.
As do many authoritarian regimes around the world, the Saudi government considers religious freedom to be a threat to its absolute grip on power. While it has managed to twist and manipulate Islam into a tool for the state, it does not allow even Muslims to practice their faith in freedom. It even maintains an enforcement agency to ensure that Muslims practice their faith in a way that does not interfere with the interests of the state.
Stay Awake. Keep Watch.
SOURCE: International Christian Concern