By Alessandro Amicarelli — For years, I have defended individuals and communities targeted by states that see danger where none exists. Still, the case of Konstantin Rudnev in Argentina stands out—even after all I have seen—as an extraordinary instance of prosecutorial imagination. Rudnev remains in jail today despite three separate judicial orders, each converting his detention into house arrest. Three times judges have ruled he shouldn’t be in prison; three times the orders were ignored.

We are pleased to receive and publish the report sent to us by the Italian Falun Dafa Association on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) transnational repression against Falun Gong. FOB has on several occasions addressed the dire situation faced by Falun Gong practitioners (and others) in China, who are victims of abuse, arbitrary detention, killings and forced organ harvesting. The issue had also come to the attention of the European Parliament, which, in a resolution dated 18 January 2024, took a stand against the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

By Hans Noot, HRWF — Across Europe, the relationship between the state and religion is changing. Studies show that government restrictions on religion have reached their highest levels in the last 20 years. New reports point to growing legal and social pressure on religious minorities. Instead of the older model that gave people wide freedom to live out their beliefs, we now see a kind of “managerial” secularism.

In the aftermath of the Orbán era, Hungary faces the long and difficult task of repairing the profound damage inflicted on its religious landscape. Over a period of 15 years, hundreds of minority religious communities were stripped of their legal status, de-registered, and pushed to the margins through a system that placed political discretion above basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. This pattern — where the government delegitimises minority faiths, centralises State control over religious recognition, and rewards only politically aligned groups— has been observed in several non‑democratic countries.