Religious persecution ‘exacerbates’ Refugee Crisis

New Report: Religious persecution ‘exacerbates’ Refugee Crisis

By Michael Ireland, Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service (www.assistnews.net)

LONDON, UK (ANS, January 17, 2017) -- Religious persecution is a major factor for the increase in numbers of refugees from countries where identifying as a Christian has become extremely dangerous.

In the latest annual survey of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to live as a Christian, the charity Open Doors UK & Ireland noted that more than half of the world’s 65.3m refugee population come from Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria.

World Watch Monitor (www.worldwatchmonitor.org) said the 2017 World Watch List was launched last week at a reception for Members of Parliament (MPs) and peers (members of the upper House of Lords) in the UK Houses of Parliament.

Open Doors said in its supplementary report, “The Persecution of Christians and Global Displacement,” that religious persecution was a “dangerously underestimated” factor behind some people’s decision to flee their homes. The charity said, however, it was impossible to estimate how many of the world’s refugees are Christian.

The charity estimated that around half of Syria’s 1.7m Christians have left their country due to conflict and religious persecution, and said around 2.1m Nigerians have fled their homes because of various factors, including the attacks on Christians by Boko Haram jihadists.

In Asia and Mexico, it added that a less visible “village-level displacement” could be observed as Christians were driven from their villages for practicing a faith that differed from that practiced by the majority.

'FoRB (Freedom of Religion or Belief) a necessary pre-cursor for other human rights'

At last week’s UK launch, Pastor Aminu Sule from Yobe State in northern Nigeria said his congregation had shrunk from 400 to 20 as Christians fled from violent attacks by Boko Haram. “I can't count the number of people I have buried,” he said.

Sule said that once displaced, Christians are often denied access to aid distributed by the local government. “They are dying of hunger and I cannot help them,” he added.

Daniel, a church leader in Erbil, Iraq, spoke via video, describing how he fled from Baghdad after receiving a death threat from Al-Qaeda on his sixteenth birthday.

Daniel’s church has helped look after some of the 120,000 Christians who were chased out of the Nineveh Plains by Islamic State (IS) in 2014, but he added that many had since chosen to be resettled in “countries that would respect their human rights.”

The 28-page supplementary report found that some migrants were attacked after they had left their countries, and cited a Nigerian Christian in Libya who said he decided to board a boat to Europe after being abducted and repeatedly assaulted in the coastal city of Zuwara by a gang who had seen a Bible in his pocket.

The charity urged the British government to support the right to freedom of religion and belief and to “target” nations where there is violent persecution or the persistent refusal to protect religious minorities.

It noted that, last year, UK Home Office country guidance (used to assess asylum seekers’ claims) stated that Pakistani Christians were not at “real risk of persecution,” and urged officials to “continue revising” its guidelines to more accurately reflect the vulnerabilities of Pakistan’s non-Muslims.

The Open Doors report also called on the UK Home Office to “increase the religious literacy of its staff” so that employees who processed asylum applications could recognize instances of religious persecution. “We would urge the Home Office not to restrict visas for clergy and other religious leaders invited to the UK to share about the suffering in their own countries,” it added.

The UK Home Office faced criticism last month after it emerged that it had denied three archbishops from Iraq and Syria visas to attend the consecration of a Syriac Orthodox cathedral in west London, on the grounds that they lacked sufficient funds to support themselves and they might not leave the UK.

Open Doors UK & Ireland urged the British Foreign Office to prioritize freedom of religion or belief in diplomatic interactions and recognize championing that right as a way to combat terrorism and poverty, arguing that unchecked political oppression of a minority community “creates a breeding ground for violent and radical groups.” In India, it said, since the landslide election of Hindu nationalist President Narendra Modi in May 2014, there has been “a deterioration in freedom in all aspects of Indian society, and Hindu radicals have virtual impunity from the Government.”

Read the full Open Doors speech by Lisa Pearce here: http://tinyurl.com/h2yjusm

Photo captions: 1) Refugees from Syria often escape with what they can carry and the clothes on their back. According to Open Doors, more than half of the world’s 65.3m refugee population come from Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria, all countries in which identifying with the Christian faith is, or has become, extremely dangerous. 2) Lisa Pearce, CEO of Open Doors UK & Ireland was one of the speakers at the UK launch of the 2017 Open Doors World Watch List. 3) Michael Ireland

About the Writer: Michael Ireland is a volunteer internet journalist serving as Senior Correspondent for the ASSIST News Service, as well as an Ordained Minister who has served with ASSIST Ministries and written for ANS since its beginning in 1989. He has reported for ANS from Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Israel, Jordan, China, and Russia. Please consider helping Michael cover his expenses in bringing news of the Persecuted Church, by logging-on to: https://actintl.givingfuel.com/ireland-michael

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