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.

On a Sunday morning in the fall of 2017, I arrived at Jiangxin Building in downtown Chengdu, walked past rows of parked scooters, and waited for a rickety elevator to take me up to the 23rd floor. As the elevator doors opened, Early Rain Covenant Church was abuzz with activity.

In North Korea, the sin of a single family member can condemn the next three generations to fearful suffering. Many transgressions can lead to arrest and imprisonment in the regime’s political prison camps, but perhaps the cardinal sin is attempting to escape to China or South Korea.

Kim Hye Sook learned this in February of 1975, when authorities dragged her family off to a political prison camp in Bukchang-gun. She was 13. Her family, previously members of the elite in North Korea’s capital of Pyongyang, did not know what they had done wrong.

The thousands of videos posted on Kazakh human rights group Atajurt’s YouTube page follow a similar pattern: A distressed mother, brother, husband, or child holding up photos of a family member detained in re-education camps, reciting his or her ID number and recalling when and where the relative disappeared. The photos include chubby toddlers, grandfathers, young wives, and middle-aged men. 

Last weekend, Chinese Communist authorities formally shut down Shouwang Church. The influential house church in Beijing made international headlines in 2011 when officials kicked the Christian believers out of their building and arrested them as they worshipped outdoors.

March 10 marked the 60th anniversary of the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule that forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India. Around the world, Tibetan supporters held rallies on Sunday with calls to “free Tibet.” Supporters also gathered in Dharmsala, India, home to the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile.

“Tibet belongs to Tibetans,” exiled Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay said to the gathering. “Sixty years of the occupation of Tibet and the repression of Tibetans is too long.”

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers and a coalition of religious rights groups pushed the U.S. government Monday to take action against Chinese officials responsible for religious persecution, particularly against China’s minority Uighur population.