On 8 August, Nepal’s Parliament passed a Bill restricting religious conversion and criminalising ‘hurting religious sentiment.’
The new legislation means anyone convicted of encouraging someone to convert could be sentenced to up to five years imprisonment.
Under a clause introduced into Nepal’s constitution in 2015, actions to ‘convert another person from one religion to another’ are already illegal and have resulted in Christians facing prosecution. However, the new laws could in effect be used to make all evangelism illegal.
The second part of the legislation, which criminalises ‘hurting religious sentiment,’ has been likened to ‘blasphemy’ laws in Pakistan. The vaguely-worded clause states: ‘Nobody should hurt the religious sentiment of any caste, ethnic community or class by writing, through voice/talk or by a shape or symbol or in any other such manner.’
