Activists and rights groups question whether China has released most of the Uighur and other Muslim minorities held in so-called reeducation camps in the Xinjiang region. Shohrat Zakir, the region’s Uighur governor, defended the centers Wednesday as a “pioneering” approach to counterterrorism. “Most of the graduates from the vocational training centers have been reintegrated into society,” he said.

The U.S. State Department on Thursday in Washington concluded its second annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom by announcing plans to create the International Religious Freedom Alliance. The three-day event featured nearly 900 religious leaders and activists from more than 100 countries and focused on joint efforts to end religious persecution. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the alliance will be the first international body to specifically combat religious persecution.

A recent tribunal report on organ harvesting reveals the devastating torture both Falun Gong practitioners and minority Uighurs face in detention inside China.

Chinese authorities on Tuesday released Jiang Rong, wife of Pastor Wang Yi, on bail six months after the widespread arrests of leaders and members of Early Rain Covenant Church. Authorities in Chengdu launched a crackdown on Early Rain on Dec. 9, 2018, swarming apartment complexes, ransacking homes, and forcing members to sign a document renouncing the church.

A sea of flickering candles on Tuesday night lit up Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, where an estimated 180,000 people gathered to remember the Tiananmen Square massacre 30 years ago. Attendees observed a moment of silence, listened to recollections of the horrific night, and sang “Bloodstained Glory,” the anthem of the 1989 pro-democracy protests.

Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy against Islam, has left the country for Canada, her lawyer said Wednesday. The Catholic mother spent eight years on death row for blasphemy after a 2009 incident with two Muslim women who worked on a farm with her and refused to drink water from the container she used. A Pakistani court sentenced her to death by hanging in 2010.

A series of bombings on Easter Sunday targeted churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka, killing at least 290 people and leaving more than 500 others injured. The first of nine explosions struck St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, the capital city. A few hours later, two additional blasts went off at the Protestant Zion Church in the eastern town of Batticaloa and at St. Sebastian Catholic Church in Negombo, a mostly Catholic town north of Colombo. Three smaller explosions detonated hours later at a guest house, an overpass, and a housing block as police officers tracked down the suspects.