It’s one measure in a package of “race and religion bills” which a group of nationalist Buddhist monks (the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion–also known as Ma Ba Tha) have advanced, and it isn’t popular with the outside world. In fact, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) strongly condemns it.
Dyann Romeijn is a spokeswoman for Vision Beyond Borders. She explains, “For anybody to convert to another religion, they would have to get government approval so they’d have to go through a long process and apply to change religions and that it would be another means of discrimination against anyone who is non-Buddhist...”