Christianity and its persecution reminiscent of a worldwide ethnic cleansing was heard at a 3-hour-long debate at the House of Parliament in London Tuesday, and the statistics may surprise you.
In a shocking revelation, members of the House of Commons were told that 1 Christian is killed every 11 minutes around the world, making Christianity the “most persecuted religion globally,” according to World Watch Monitor.
The most dangerous countries for Christians include Syria, North Korea, Egypt, Iraq, and Nigeria. The freedom of religion is scarcely given in these countries where Christians remain a religious minority.
Member of Parliament (MP), Jim Shannon, spoke about the persecution of Christians, calling it “the biggest story in the world that has never been told.”
“50,000 Christians have been cleared from the city of Homs”, MP Sammy Wilson said of Syria. However, in Sudan alone, two million Christians were killed by the regime over a 30-year period.
Wilson added, “Within the last month, hundreds of people, from Nigeria to Eritrea to Kazakhstan to China, have been arrested and put in prison simply because of their faith, and when they go into prison they are denied due process. They are denied access to lawyers. They are sometimes even denied knowledge of the charges facing them. They can languish in prison for a long time and in horrible conditions. This is not only happening in Muslim countries. From Morocco to Pakistan, Christians in Muslim countries are under threat, but it happens elsewhere too.”
MP Nigel Dodds noted the words of Canon Andrew White on Iraq, saying that Christians are“frightened even to walk to church because they might come under attack. All the churches are targets. We used to have 1.5 million Christians, now we have probably only 200,000 left. There are more Iraqi Christians in Chicago than there are here”.
According to World Watch Monitor, during the debate, the oppression experienced by Christians in China and Malaysia were also highlighted and outlined. As the British Prime Minister is currently in China, MP David Rutley raised the issue of the sizeable Christian community in China, and asked about the potential establishment of a deeper inter-faith dialogue to engage the Chinese authorities with Christian groups.
Meanwhile, a UK-based organisation has claimed that the number of countries posing an extreme risk to the human rights of their populations has risen by 70 per cent in the past five years.
Risk analysis company Maplecroft (which researched 197 countries for its annual Human Rights Risk Atlas 2014) says that since 2008 the number has risen steeply from 20 to 34, predominantly comprised of countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Syria tops the list, followed by Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.