Below is an article published by Deseret News:

Religious minorities throughout the world continue to suffer severe restrictions of their rights to religious liberty, according to a new U.S. State Department report, which also gave guarded praise to countries where conditions have slightly improved.

News accounts of Monday's [30 July 2012] release of the International Religious Freedom Report for 2011 highlighted nations where rulers were overthrown in the so-called Arab Spring, giving rise to hopes of democratic rule and religious freedom.

“Members of faith communities that have long been under pressure report that the pressure is rising,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Washington. “Even some countries that are making progress on expanding political freedom are frozen in place when it comes to religious freedom. So when it comes to this human right, this key feature of stable, secure, peaceful societies, the world is sliding backwards.”

Reuters reported that Clinton got a first-hand taste of the bitterness of many Egyptian Christians at this year's election of Islamist Mohammed Mursi as president of the country, with protests by angry Coptic Christians, among others, outside her Cairo hotel. Unknown protesters also pelted her motorcade with tomatoes, shoes and water bottles in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

"I am concerned that respect for religious freedom is ... quite tenuous" in Egypt, Clinton said in response to a question after she gave a speech at a Washington think tank, saying sectarian violence had increased since Mubarak's downfall but the authorities had been inconsistent in prosecuting it.

"That then sends a message to the minority community in particular, but to the larger community, that there's not going to be any consequences," she said.

The annual State Department report said there had been "a marked deterioration during 2011 in the government's respect for and protection of religious freedom" in China, and that there was "severe" repression of religious freedom in Tibetan areas and the far western region of Xinjiang, home to a significant number of Muslims.

Tibetan areas of China have seen a surge in self-immolations since 2011, and the report said that tightened restrictions on Buddhist worship contributed to at least 12 of them last year.

The Associated Press reported the Chinese response came in a commentary published by the official Xinhua News Agency, which said the State Department report was "continuing a notorious practice of blatantly interfering in the internal affairs of other countries."