Oppression or persecution of Christians by state and non-state actors were found in 75 percent of the 24 countries surveyed, according to the latest report by the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
The ACN report “Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report On Christians Oppressed For Their Faith 2020-22″ includes information from the Catholic charity’s global contacts and other local sources, as well as providing first-hand testimony and compiling incidents for countries of key concern.
The report highlighted Asia, Africa and the Middle East as regions where the persecution of Christians is most grave.
It reports “human rights violations” in 24 nations where Christian persecution is “of particular concern” and that the condition for Christians have gotten “worse” or “slightly worse” in 18 of them within the past two years, compared to 2017 through 2019.
The report shows “religious nationalism and authoritarianism” as the main reason against Christians in countries such as China, Afghanistan, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Mali, Nigeria, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Pakistan, Myanmar, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, India and Qatar.
“Indicators strongly suggested that, over the period under review, the persecution of Christians continued to worsen in core countries of concern,” the report said.
“‘Persecuted and Forgotten’ provides first-hand testimony and case studies proving that in many countries Christians are experiencing persecution – let us do all that we can do to show that they are not forgotten,” said report author John Pontifex.
Africa
Africa saw a sharp rise in terrorist violence from non-state militants such as the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram – with more than 7,600 Nigerian Christians reportedly killed between January 2021 and June 2022.
According to the report, conditions have worsened for Christians in every country it listed in Africa.
Asia
In Asia, state authoritarianism led to worsening oppression, according to the Persecuted and Forgotten report.
North Korea continues to be at the top, where religious beliefs and practices are routinely and systematically repressed.
According to the report, in North Korea, “extreme Christian persecution is judged to have reached the threshold for genocide, with reports of murder, forced abortions and infanticide, and slavery.”
Christians also face oppression from China and Vietnam state authorities, who arrest or force church closures with sweeping legislation.
“China continues to harass and attempt to control Christians and members of other religious groups that will not accept the official Communist Party line – making it unsurprising that in the Pew Forum’s analysis authorities’ restrictions on religion it achieved the highest score of any nation-state,” the report said.
There is also the rise of religious nationalism in Asia, which has triggered increasing violence against Christians, with Hindu and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist groups active in India and Sri Lanka, respectively, and where authorities have arrested believers and stopped church services.
India saw 710 incidents of anti-Christian violence between January 2021 and the start of June 2022, often driven by Hindu nationalists.
Middle East
In the Middle East, the migration crisis due to various reasons, ranging from Islamic fundamentalism to discrimination, wars and economic woes, has threatened the survival of some of the world’s oldest Christian communities, the report said.
In Syria, the number of Christians plummeted from 10 percent of the population to less than 2 percent – falling from 1.5 million just before the war began to around 300,000 today.
The ongoing civil war between Bashar al-Assad’s regime and insurgents has forced Christians to leave the country and is discouraging many from returning to their homes, according to the ACN report.
In Iraq, the Christian community — numbering around 300,000 before the 2014 invasion by the so-called Islamic State — has halved.
On the eve of the second Gulf War, Christians in Iraq were estimated to be between 1 and 1.4 million, approximately 6 percent of the population. Christianity has been in Iraq from its earliest times, as the Acts of the Apostles testify. Its origins go back to the preaching of St Thomas the Apostle and his disciples Addai and Mari in the first century A.D.
The Iraqi Christian community is composed today of Chaldeans, Assyrians, Armenians, Latins, Melkites, Orthodox and Protestants.
There is also the number of Christians in the Palestinian territories declining from 18 per cent to under 1% of the population due to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian tensions and economic difficulties.
The Persecuted and Forgotten report also found that in countries such as Egypt and Pakistan, Christian girls are routinely kidnapped and raped and forcibly married and converted to Islam.
- First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.