Iraqi Christians attend Christmas Eve Mass at the Syriac Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in the predominantly Iraqi Christian town of Qaraqosh, in Nineveh province some 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from Mosul, on Dec. 24, 2019. The 2020 ‘World Watch List’ report found that 87% of Christians have left Iraq since 2003. (Zaid Al-Obeidi/AFP via Getty Images)
The 2020 ‘World Watch List’ on
the persecution of Christians highlights an unprecedented level of persecution
against Christians.
Ishtartv.com - ncregister.com
Solène Tadié, Jan. 29, 2020
ROME — The 2020 “World Watch
List,” published by international religious freedom advocate Open Doors,
confirms the unprecedented level of persecution against Christians around the
world — a persecution that appears even worse than what the Church experienced
in the first few centuries of its existence.
Presented by Open Doors’ Italian
bureau during a Jan. 15 news conference at the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, the
annual report focuses on the 50 countries where the Christians are most likely
to be persecuted. Referring to the period between Nov. 1, 2018, and Oct. 31,
2019, the research was conducted in about 100 countries that can be linked to
increased persecution.
The World Watch List (WWL)
concluded that 260 million Christians — from all denominations — were faced
with persecution last year (an increase of 15 million from the 2019 WWL, which
reported 245 million persecuted Christians). The 2020 WWL noted that one of
every eight Christians in the countries targeted by the study experiences a
high level of persecution because of his faith.
The report defines persecution as
any kind of violence, from murder to daily pressure to intimidations and
discrimination motivated by a hatred of the Christian faith.
Even though the number of
Christians killed decreased from 4,305 in 2018 to 2,983 in 2019, as the 2020
World Watch List latest figures reveal, anti-Christian violence has generally
intensified, especially in Asia and Africa. Furthermore, the number of churches
attacked or closed has dramatically increased, from 1,847 to 9,488 (with more
than 5,500 of these actions taking place in China).
“It is an absolute fact that the
dimension and intensity of the persecution has been increasing every year,
especially over the past decade,” Cristian Nani, director of Porte Aperte/Open
Doors Italy, told the Register, noting that six years ago, there was only
one country (North Korea) in which Christians experienced extreme persecution,
whereas there are 11 countries (North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya,
Pakistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, India and Syria) that fit this
description in the 2020 WWL.
Open Doors was founded in 1955 by
Brother
Andrew van der Bijl, a nondenominational Christian missionary, with the aim
of helping discriminated Christians in communist Eastern Europe — notably by
smuggling Bibles to local inhabitants — which thereby earned him the nickname
“God’s Smuggler.” Open Doors has through the years grown to become a worldwide
mission, giving support to Christians anywhere they suffer persecutions.
New Challenges
Open Doors enlarged and
diversified its scope of action in the 1980s, in the face of the rise of other
threats against Christians, such as the expansion of violence against
Christians in Muslim-majority countries. It also started launching initiatives
in China, such as night operations beginning in 1981, during which Open Doors
missionaries landed 1 million contraband Chinese Bibles under cover of darkness
on a beach in south China. From there, they were to be distributed to
Christians throughout the country.
“Persecution has taken different
forms and raged in different regions and territory over time,” Nani said,
noting that one of the 2020 report’s main highlights is the diffusion of
violence in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger,
Cameroun and Chad — all of which are still predominantly Christian zones.
Islamic groups in these regions have committed the violence in their efforts to
eliminate the region’s Christian presence.
Another important dynamic to
emerge from the 2020 WWL is the growing persecution in south and southeastern
regions of Asia. In particular, the bloody attack in Sri Lanka during Easter
celebrations in April 2019 is still very present in everyone’s mind.
“We estimate that one Christian
in two and a half suffers a form of persecution in Asia,” Nani said. “Another
thing that is interesting, alas, is the serious risk that persecution becomes
digital in countries like China or India, through state surveillance.”
The religious activities are
being monitored through such methods as biometry, artificial intelligence and
facial recognition. As Nani points out, some churches are forced to install
closed-circuit cameras, with which the government can monitor church members’
activities through facial recognition.
“There is no liberty in these
countries, and the use of technological measures by the state definitely makes
things worse,” Nani said.
Sexual Violence
While relatively underreported
due to lack of reliable data, mass sexual violence against women is a practice
to which more and more anti-Christian terrorists resort to undermine entire
communities. The WWL reports the alarming figure of 8,537 worldwide cases of
sexual assaults against Christians (23 per day), which doesn’t include forced
marriages, which numbered about 630.
However, the researchers consider
that these figures are conservative estimates, as most incidents of sexual
violence occur privately, behind the closed doors of a perpetrator’s household.
In this light, Open Doors has been developing more efficient tools of research
to better determine the number and kind of sexual violence incidents as a form of
persecution. The organization plans to publish an ad hoc report on these
findings by the end of February.
In Nani’s view, sexual violence
against Christians — which he notes is either unknown or underestimated in
academic circles — will be widely discussed in the coming years. “This growing
practice weakens a lot of churches, especially in Africa, but it is spreading
elsewhere, in Pakistan or India, for instance,” he said, mentioning jihadist
groups or other local groups like the Fula, a
predominantly Muslim nomadic people in northern Nigeria who use this
strategy as a weapon against Christians.
“It is a particularly efficient
weapon,” Nani told the Register, “as it leaves a deep and everlasting wound in
women’s souls, and it necessarily destabilizes their whole family; it is a real
tragedy for a community.”
The Disappearing Christians
Despite the defeat of the Islamic
State (ISIS) in Levant, the Christian exodus from the Middle East is continuing
in catastrophic proportions. Indeed, the report highlights that 87% of
Christians left Iraq since 2003, and Syria lost 66% of its Christian community
since the beginning of the civil war, in 2011.
Seen as a scourge in the region,
this disappearance of the Middle East’s pioneers of the Christian faith,
especially in Syria and Iraq, was addressed by pastor George Moushi during the
Jan. 15 news conference in Rome. An evangelical Christian from the northeastern
Syrian city of Qamishli, Moushi was kidnapped by the Kurds a few months ago for
having launched a project to build a new church in the city.
Moushi said that his ordeal,
during which he was held by his captives for a few hours before being released,
has not discouraged him. He said he refuses to leave his country and wants to
continue bearing witness every day in the birthplace of Christianity, trying to
serve and give support to his brothers and sisters in faith.
“Given the huge pressure, the
pain and extreme poverty, running away often seems the best option for us
Christians, and so many did leave in the past few years,” Moushi told the
Register. But, he added, it is inconceivable that “Christians, the salt of the
Middle East, have to leave the lands where they first sowed the seeds of
Christendom.”
“By making the choice to stay and
face all the risks involved,” Moushi also said, “I want to send Christians the
message that they should not be afraid to stay, and I also want to encourage
our brothers abroad to help us.”
Beside financial support and
prayer, Moushi said, the West should also seek to actively promote Christians’
religious freedom in the region by encouraging a shift in policies among the
governments in the Middle East.
Political Pressure
This strategy of applying such
political pressure to address Christian prosecution is gaining ground in some
Western countries. In Italy, for instance, after the publication of the 2019
WWL, an interparliamentary group was founded to protect the religious freedom
of Christians around the world.
The initiative was led by Andrea
Delmastro delle Vedove, a member of the Italian political party Brothers
of Italy. According to delle Vedove, who also spoke at the Jan. 15 news
conference in Rome, he was inspired to follow the path of Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán, who opened an ad hoc fund called “Hungary Helps” in 2016
dedicated to the same cause.
“There are very concrete ways to
motivate governments to protect their Christians minorities, but it requires
political courage,” delle Vedove told the Register, noting that two months ago,
the newly formed interparliamentary group opposed signing a bilateral
cooperation agreement on human rights with Qatar, as it could be interpreted as
condoning the religious-freedom policies of a nation that is among Open Doors’
50 worst countries for religious persecution.
In the same way, the Italian
deputy denounced China’s 2013 global development proposal, the “Belt
and Road Initiative,” which seeks to improve trade through
Chinese-controlled infrastructure programs between China and Christian-majority
Western countries.
“If we agree to this new Silk
Road,” delle Vedove said, “while pretending not to know that, in this past
year, 5,000 Christian churches were closed or destroyed in China, [it] means
that we subordinate some alleged — and not yet proved — economic advantages to
the most intimate and precious right: religious freedom.”
In delle Vedove’s view, one of
the first political measures to take in Europe would be to stop giving money to
the Italian humanitarian nongovernmental organization International
Cooperation, which operates in a number of countries that heavily persecute
Christians, unless the investments are subordinated to the promotion of the
religious rights of Christians in the world.
But the interparliamentary group
is also taking some positive steps of its own. Since its creation a year ago,
the group allocated a fund of 2 million euros to Syrian Christians for the
rebuilding of their cities destroyed by civil war. The fund will also be used
to help advocate for Christians who wish to return to their homes, to
repopulate Iraq’s Nineveh Plain or the Syrian city of Maaloula, where Aramaic
was still spoken until Christians fled after the arrival of ISIS in 2013.
Awareness Grows
Perhaps because the catastrophic
dimension of anti-Christian persecution in the world does not spare Europe, which has been the scene of an unprecedented wave
of attacks against Christian houses of worship in 2019, there has been growing
public attention and media coverage of such persecution. This new light on an
old problem has become a source of hope for the defenders of the Christian
cause.
According to Cristian Nani, a
significant change occurred in the media world over the past few years, and
sensitivity to this topic is developing.
“When I started reporting on the
persecution of Christians,” he said, “it was very difficult to mention this
simple word in the media, as they didn’t even agree on the definition.”
The fact that the 2020 WWL was
presented at the Chamber of Deputies, Nani said, shows that the West is growing
more aware of the situation of Christians in the different countries. In
addition, Nani is encouraged that Open Doors now has offices in more and more
decision-making places than it did in the past, including the European
Parliament. He added, however, that the organization is still trying to provide
a presence at the U.N.
“The situation of Christians,
especially in the Middle East, challenges the consciences of all Westerners, as
Christianity was born there, far before Muhammad’s first breath,” delle Vedove
said, adding that all of Western culture is based, practically and
symbolically, on the historic truth of Christ’s coming to earth and
establishing his Church for all people. “We cannot accept a world that is no
longer capable of defending our brothers in Christ, all the more since
countries in the Middle East need Christianity to be pacified.”
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