by Fang Yongrui — He traveled to Korea’s Jeju Island with friends. Nobody escaped. All returned. But it was enough to go to jail.

It begins, as so many Chinese legal dramas do, with a perfectly ordinary act. A pastor buys a plane ticket, passes through customs, and takes his friends to South Korea’s Jeju Island—a visafree paradise better known for honeymooners than dissidents. They return home, suntanned and unscathed. Months later, the pastor is in shackles, accused of “organizing others to cross the national border illegally.”

Washington D.C. — The U.S Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reiterates it’s call for the U.S. government to work with Pakistani officials to take measurable steps to amend or repeal its blasphemy law. Recently the Pakistani government banned the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP). The TLP has incited violent mobs to intimidate and attack religious minorities, even calling for the death penalty as punishment for violating blasphemy laws. This impacts members of the Christians, Ahmadiyya Muslims, and others.

LAHORE, PAKISTAN (1 December 2025) — At its annual meeting in Lahore, Minority Concern urged the Government of Pakistan to take concrete steps toward building a pluralistic and inclusive society by actively promoting Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s landmark address to the first Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947, delivered just three days before the creation of Pakistan.

Increasingly, countries have, or are legislating, instruments to ban the import of products made by forced labour. These include the US, Canada and Mexico. The EU Forced Labour Regulation, which bans the sale, import and export of goods made using forced labour, is the most recent piece of such statute. Given that the EU single market is currently the world’s largest consumer market, the Regulation has the potential to influence business practices globally, to prevent, end or mitigate forced labour, and to stop companies profiting from forced labour in their supply chains.