Persecution scores have almost doubled over the last 30 years, the latest 'World Watch List' from Open Doors reveals.
2023 marks the 30th year that the gruesome chart has been compiled. To mark the occasion, Evangelicals Now obtained exclusive interviews with Jim Shannon MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Freedom of Religion or Belief (APPG FoRB), and Timothy Cho, Open Doors UK spokesperson for North Korea.
The 2023 'World Watch List' reveals that the persecution of Christians has reached a new level of intensity around the world, with persecution scores for the nations almost doubling in those 30 years.
Other standout findings were that China is forging a network of nations seeking to redefine human rights – away from universal standards and religious freedoms. Dissenting Christian voices face persecution as ‘troublemakers’ or even ‘terrorists’. China itself has clamped down further on Christians, introducing sweeping new rules on churches’ use of the internet. Violence against Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa has reached alarming new levels, as Islamic militants destabilise the region using extreme violence. And North Korea has returned to number one on the list, with its highest levels of persecution ever, having lost top spot to Afghanistan in 2022. The rise follows a new wave of violence against Christians under its new ‘Anti-reactionary Thought’ law.
Timothy Cho revealed that literally hundreds of thousands of North Korean slave labourers (many of whom are Christians) have been shipped to Russia to work in, for example, the timber industry around Vladivostok. This is only one of the many ways North Korea currently supports the Russian war effort in Ukraine. Last year however, ten of those labourers escaped and eventually made it to freedom in South Korea. And even in that desperate situation there are Christian mission groups working with those escapees.
North Korean Christians are prime targets of a new ‘Anti-reactionary Thought’ law, which is so ill-defined that almost anything may be deemed illegal and any subsequent punishment considered acceptable by the government. Under this law even teenagers have been executed publicly. As Cho says ‘Christians have always been in the front line of attack for the North Korean regime. Their aim is to wipe out every Christian in the country. There can only be one god in North Korea, and that is Kim Jong-un and his family.’
Jim Shannon says the APPG, which seeks to be a ‘voice for the voiceless’, is keen to bring the plight of persecuted Christians around the world to the attention of the UK Government and international bodies such as the United Nations. He pointed out that the UK hosted the 2022 international ministerial conference on FoRB. He believes there is now more awareness of the issue among ministers and civil servants working in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, for example, but says the latest World Watch List ‘shows the need to do more’, for example by training civil servants about FoRB.
Asked if he thought trade deals should be tied to progress on FoRB, he was clear that the government response could be better than it is. Any nation wishing to sell its goods to us should only be able to do so if its record on human rights and FoRB is acceptable.
Cho believes that the government could and should be doing more to sanction brutal persecuting regimes such as North Korea, for example through more effective sanctions on its officers involved in atrocities, perhaps via the Security Council. Both Cho and Shannon consider this an underused resource. Cho says it could be used to make demands on the North Korean representative at the UN – and he believes the British Embassy in Pyongyang could also apply more pressure to the government.
Another important global trend is that persecution is becoming more gender specific, women and girls suffering worse than men and women. Again Shannon believes that the UK Government could do more, for example by helping educate disadvantaged Christians and others, and seeking to tackle forced marriage. But this is an area where Kim Jong-un is, perhaps, starting to take note. Cho believes that his decision to bring his daughter to recent nuclear-missile launches might be a response to international criticism of the low status of women in that ultra-conservative society.
But the 2023 List reveals some grounds for optimism. Open Doors says the number of Christians killed for their faith decreased by nearly 5%, from 5,898 recorded cases in the World Watch List 2022, to 5,621 this year. And despite the severity of the persecution in so many places, the church of Christ is growing strongly around the world. This highlights the need to pray for those suffering members of it. As Cho says ‘nothing can diminish the significance of prayer for the persecuted church’.
