1 in 12 Christians live where Christianity is illegal, forbidden or punished

Religious persecution is on the rise worldwide and Christians are the most persecuted group globally.

Over 215 million Christians are considered persecuted, meaning that 1 in 12 Christians live where Christianity is “illegal, forbidden, or punished,” the NGO Open Doors denounced in their annual report.

Three major trends have shaped persecution against Christians in 2018: Authoritarian states that are clamping down and using legal regulations to control religion and ultra-nationalists, which are depicting Christians as ‘alien’ or ‘western’ and try to drive them out. The most worrying trend is again the Radical Islam that moved from the Middle East into sub-Saharan Africa.

Despite the high number of casualties among Christians in recent weeks, Media Research Centre said news reports had not been picked up by mainstream news outlets. Mass massacre of Christians are going unnoticed by international community. In March 2019, a media silence surrounded the massacre of 120 Christians who were slaughtered in Nigeria. “This is in line with many other cases such as the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach in 2015: US media such as CBS, NBC and ABC devoted about six times as much air time to covering the death of Harambe, the gorilla, as they did with the Christians murdered by ISIS”, the Centre said.

Go to the section: Country profiles of Afghanistan, Nigeria, Maldives and Egypt

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