Jihadists and nationalists are driving increased persecution of Christians around the world, according to a new report.
Aid to the Church in Need (ACN)’s Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their Faith 2020-22 found that in 75% of the 24 countries surveyed, oppression or persecution of Christians has increased.
Africa has seen a sharp rise in terrorist violence from non-state militants – with more than 7,600 Nigerian Christians reportedly murdered between January 2021 and June 2022.
In Asia, state authoritarianism led to worsening oppression, which Persecuted and Forgotten? found was at its peak in North Korea, where religious belief and practice are routinely and systematically repressed. Religious nationalism has triggered increasing violence against Christians across the continent, with Hindutva and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist groups active in India and Sri Lanka respectively. 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, driven in part by political extremism.
The report also found that in the Middle East a migration crisis threatened the survival of some of the world’s oldest Christian communities. In Syria, the number of Christians plummeted from 10% of the population to less than 2% – falling from 1.5 million just before the war began to around 300,000 today. And in countries as diverse as Egypt and Pakistan, Christian girls are routinely subject to kidnapping and rape.
Bishop Jude Arogundade of Ondo, whose diocese in Nigeria was targeted by gunmen who killed more than 40 people at a packed Sunday service in June, said: ‘no-one seems to pay attention to this genocide. The world is silent as attacks on churches, their personnel and institutions have become routine. How many corpses are required to get the world’s attention?’
In a separate development, a new evangelical research centre for persecuted Christians has been launched. The Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution focuses particularly on Christian minorities in the Islamic world.
