U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom

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Here is a solid news peg for the severely under-covered story of Christian persecution

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Here is a solid news peg for the severely under-covered story of Christian persecution

With all-important developments in the Middle East and Ukraine, it seems off-kilter to state that another major international story is being severely neglected, and has long been so. But such is The Guy’s opinion about mainstream media neglect of the waves of evidence for ongoing global persecution of Christians, on which we now have a Nov. 1 news peg.

A previous GetReligion Memo addressed the plight of Armenian Christians within Islamic Azerbaijan.  That’s just one of many tragedies detailed in the annual “Persecutors of the Year” report for 2023, just issued by International Christian Concern (ICC).

Yes, followers of other world religions also face inexcusable abuse in several nations. The parallel 2023 report produced last May by the federal government’s independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which is also important to check out, emphasizes the plight of both Christians and other minorities in Iran but “sounds the alarm regarding the deterioration of religious freedom conditions in a range of other countries.” Click here for that report (.pdf).

But the scale is distinctive if, as ICC reports, “there are an estimated 200 to 300 million Christians who suffer persecution worldwide.” There’s corroboration of such a vast problem in the latest edition of the “World Christian Encyclopedia.”

The overall global scenario warrants coverage, but many specific situations are newsworthy.

In ICC’s estimation, the world’s five worst individual persecutors today are Yogi Adityanath, the Hindu chief minister of India’s most populous state; Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s dictator; the better-known President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and atheistic Communist dictators Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

Here’s the ICC list of the most bloodthirsty non-governmental organizations: Allied Democratic Forces (Islamic State affiliate operating in Congo and Uganda), Al-Shabab (al-Qaida affiliate in Somalia), ethnic Fulani jihadists in Nigeria, the five terrorist groups jointly disrupting Africa’s Sahel region, the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s army) and the famous Taliban who again rule Afghanistan.

The ICC material from 50 researchers, half at Washington headquarters and half working overseas, shows that action against Christians is frequently linked with oppression of ethnic minorities and of political dissenters.


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Buried story of 2022? The persecution of Christians keeps surging around the world

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Buried story of 2022? The persecution of Christians keeps surging around the world

You want news?

The 2022 report from the Open Doors organization (CLICK HERE) says “persecution of Christians has reached the highest levels” since it began accumulating data for its annual “World Watch List” three decades ago. Hostile incidents have increased by 20% since just 2014, and some 360 million Christians, or 14% of the worldwide total, are said to have faced persecution, harassment, or discrimination.

Open Doors reports that it has documented the murders in one year’s time of 5,898 Christians for their faith (up 24% from the prior year); attacks on 5,110 local churches (up 14%); 3,829 abductions (a new high, up 124%); 6,175 victims held without trial; 24,678 subjected to beatings, death threats and other abuse; 6,449 with homes or businesses attacked; and 3,147 women targeted for rape or sexual harassment. 

Since that report was issued, the Nigeria-based civil rights group Intersociety reports that in just that one nation 4,020 additional killings and 2,315 abductions occurred from January through October, 2022.

The Memo therefore proclaims this international upsurge the Buried Story of the Year, a major, newsworthy global scourge widely featured by religious media — yet all but ignored by much of the “Mainstream Media.”

Journalists will have another peg for remedying this sin of omission when Open Doors issues its 2023 report early in the new year.

One noteworthy media exception, timed for Christmas a year ago, was a thorough New York Times survey of widespread harassment of Christians in India. Also, Reuters this month produced a massive investigation of 10,000 forced abortions conducted by the military in chaotic Nigeria, indicating rape is a widespread tactic used to terrorize Christian women.

On a broader time frame, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimates that 1 million Christian martyrs were killed in the first 10 years of the 21st Century.


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What's news? Attacks on Christians in Nigeria provide an important case study

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What's news? Attacks on Christians in Nigeria provide an important case study

As an undergrad, The Religion Guy took a valuable course titled “Evaluation and Display of News,” an elemental skill for journalists who cope with difficult choices.

Take the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trash-a-thon. Please. Just as car crashes produce rubbernecking, “human interest” justified vast voyeurism that fed the market and stole print space and air time from more substantive stories.

Editors’ tendentious coverage decisions continually erode public trust in the media. Liberal outlets give scant play to the assassination plot against Brett Kavanaugh, harassment of other Supreme Court justices and their families and related attacks on a couple dozen pro-life agencies. Meanwhile, conservatives downplay the near-miss danger to Vice President Mike Pence and other high officials amid the January 6 attempt to block the Constitution’s election process.

The Guy could list other examples from both sides, and so could you.

Let’s leap across the Atlantic to assess neglectful news judgment regarding the important plight facing Christians in Nigeria. Their continual conflict with Muslim jihadi factions has left an estimated 37,500 dead since 2011, says the latest annual report (.pdf here) from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (www.uscirf.gov; contact media@uscirf.gov or 202–523–3240).

The nondenominational watchdog group Open Doors USA says that in 2021“more Christians were murdered for their faith in Nigeria than in any other country,” making up nearly 80% of Christian deaths worldwide. Nigeria is the “most dangerous place to be a Christian” in the world, says the Intersociety for Civil Liberty and Rule of Law, a Nigerian human rights monitor. Christian observers speak openly of “genocide.”

In addition to the deaths, it’s all but impossible to count up the maimed victims who’ve survived, the kidnapped schoolchildren and clergy, forced child marriages and forced conversions or the widespread destruction of Christians' churches, homes, shops and even whole villages.

Sounds like compelling news from here.


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In search of news coverage of China's moral responsibility for coronavirus pandemic

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A slew of European and African nations, plus Australia and, of course, the United States are angrier at China than they’ve been in a very long time. To which I say, good.

The reason for all this, as you undoubtedly know, is Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which originated on its turf in the city of Wuhan.

Bottom line: It took a direct threat to the lives of other nations’ citizens for the international community to finally react to the heavy-handed and duplicitous manner that China deals with its own people and the world.

Just how widespread this opprobrium has become is detailed in this New York Times overview piece.

My question?

When this pandemic ultimately subsides — or at least becomes relatively manageable — will the international community’s attitude toward China revert to the previous just-look-the-other-way approach because there’s lots of money involved?

Or is there a chance that, at least some Western-style democracies will view China’s morally questionable political and economic values and actions in a different and more critical light?

The realist in me — or cynic, take your choice — thinks that the passage of time and humanity’s seemingly insatiable appetite for material comforts will again serve China’s imperial designs. And that China’s ruthless authoritarianism will again be overlooked. That accepting its police-state treatment of political dissidents and religious believers will again be viewed as the price global capitalism simply must pay to have access to China’s huge markets and it’s relatively cheap consumer products. Correct?

Journalists might want to start asking these questions now. And not only of the business and political leaders in their area. But of their religious leaders and thinkers — their community’s presumed moral compasses.

Also, don’t overlook the rank-and-file religious believers (and non-believers); they represent a community’s popular moral outlook.


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As European blasphemy laws endure, journalists should consider how words can get them in trouble

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As European blasphemy laws endure, journalists should consider how words can get them in trouble

Here’s an explosive combination: The democratic demand for freedom of speech and the equally emotionally laden demand that sincerely held religious beliefs not be subjected to indiscriminate insults and scorn.

Religiously speaking, we’re talking about blasphemy, an issue contemporary Westerners are apt to believe is more of a concern in Muslim communities and highly autocratic nations such as Russia — and which they would be correct to conclude.

Journalistically and artistically speaking, we’re talking about the magazine Charlie Hebdo and the novelist Salman Rushdie. Both were victims of blasphemy charges by Muslim. The former ended in horrific violence.

Now, Foreign Policy magazine — on the occasion of the Hebdo attacks fourth anniversary, and the 30th anniversary of the blasphemy fatwa issued against Rushdie by Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini — has published an intriguing analysis piece on this issue. It ran under this headline:

30 Years After the Rushdie Fatwa, Europe Is Moving Backward.

Blasphemy laws have been given new life on the continent.

Here’s a hefty chunk of the Foreign Policy essay.

But despite the unanimous rhetorical support for free speech after Charlie Hebdo, blasphemy bans have become more firmly anchored in some parts of the continent in recent years. In a recent case, the European Court of Human Rights even reaffirmed that European human rights law recognizes a right not to have one’s religious feelings hurt. The court based its decision on the deeply flawed assumption that religious peace and tolerance may require the policing rather than the protection of “gratuitously offensive” speech. Accordingly, it found that Austria had not violated freedom of expression by convicting a woman for having called the Prophet Mohammed a “pedophile.”

Some have argued that the court’s decision was a necessary defense of an embattled Muslim minority vulnerable to bigotry and religious hatred. But laws against religious insult and blasphemy are generally different from hate speech laws—which are problematic in themselves—that purportedly protect people rather than abstract religious ideas and dogmas.


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