By Ruth Peacock
An annual report on religious persecution says Afghanistan is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian.
The World Watch List 2022, published by the Open Doors charity, says 360 million Christians suffered persecution and discrimination worldwide in the year to October 2021, a rise of 20 million on the previous year.
The report, subtitled The Suffocating Struggle Daily Life of Persecuted Christians, has been presented to 93 MPs at a digital launch in the House of Commons, but it has received a cautious response from academics who fear it is partisan and fails to give context to acts of violence where larger forces are at play than religious belief.
The Open Doors research is based on information from churches, non-governmental organisations, charities and partner organisations. The charity says it gathers information “on a village level”, has in-country networks and interviews people who have escaped across borders.
It understands that religious persecution arises from a combination of factors in a chaotic world and identifies “double vulnerability”, where all citizens face challenges but Christians are particularly targeted.
For the past 20 years, North Korea has been ranked as the worst country in their reports, but David Landrum, director of advocacy at Open Doors UK and Ireland, says harsh punishments by the Taliban and the large number of incidents of violence and discrimination has made Afghanistan the worst this year.
The report says Afghan men discovered to have a Christian faith are executed and women face a life of slavery or imprisonment. In North Korea, Christians and their families are deported to labour camps as political criminals or killed on the spot.
The top 10 most dangerous countries listed are: Afghanistan, North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Eritrea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran and India. The top 50 include China at 17.
Overall, Mr Landrum says, persecution of Christians has gone up every year globally over the past 30 years, but it has risen sharply over the past 10.
This may be due to a rise in religious nationalism, a shift away from democracy to autocracy in many parts of the world, Islamist extremism or “clan oppression” with tribes or ethnic groups turning on each other, he suggests.
But he also reports persecution of Christian groups prevented from meeting together by established Christian denominations.
He denies that Open Doors is concerned only with evangelical or Pentecostal Christians. The charity was started by the work of Brother Andrew who smuggled Bibles into communist countries behind the Iron Curtain. But Mr Landrum says they now represent the stories of all who identify as Christians from small sects to larger denominations.
In this latest report, the charity collates information about persecution in West Africa. “Post Afghanistan, we are quite concerned about the emboldening of jihadist groups in various parts of the world, particularly Africa and Asia,” Mr Landrum says.
Illia Djadi, Open Doors’ senior analyst on freedom of religion and belief in sub-Saharan Africa, says there is a deteriorating situation in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, with churches and leaders attacked and killed in the past 20 years.
Areas have been emptied of Christians who have fled after jihadist incursions and persecution is rife in rural areas where jihadist groups encircle villages, he says.
Open Doors says 4,650 Christians were killed in Nigeria in the year to October 2021. It uses data from two NGOs in Nigeria and one international NGO, which says the proportion of Christians killed in Nigeria in 2021 was 77.9 per cent, compared with 21.6 per cent Muslims. It says 79 per cent of the global number of deaths to Christians in that period were from Nigeria, yet it ranks only number seven in the list.
The bloody phase of attacks, killings and rapes is the way towards founding a caliphate, it says. The report cites Commodore Kunle Olawunmi, the former head of naval intelligence in Nigeria, believing there is a strategy of “Talibanisation” — “a deliberate, religiously motivated degrading of security and order in which state actors and tribal groups are also complicit”.
This is disputed by Professor Stephen Chan from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, who says jihadist groups cause havoc in many countries, not just in the West, but there is no unified command and “in no instance has anything like an emirate been successfully established”.
On the overall picture of Christian persecution in Nigeria, Professor Chan’s understanding is that there has been much more Muslim-on-Muslim violence and far more fatalities among Muslims. Muslim-on-Christian violence reflects “much more a north-south cleavage in Nigeria, where northerners (mostly Muslim) resent the seemingly more prosperous southerners (mostly forms of Christian). People are attacked as southerners as much as Christians.”
Jocelyn Cesari, visiting professor of religion, violence, and peacebuilding at Harvard University, says the report overall is problematic and neglects the big picture. “It is heavily biased on the Christian side. It is true that Taliban are discriminating but they are not discriminating Christians only — other minorities and Muslims are also targeted,” she says. Open Doors says it reports on persecution of Christians only and does not claim to represent violations against other religions.
For the first time, Israel has entered the list of countries where there is strong persecution of Christians, ranking number 76 out of 100. Open Doors says this is based on information that churches are vandalised, Jews who have converted to Christianity have been denied residence permits and face demonstrations, while Palestinian Christians say they are treated as second-class citizens.
Open Doors is calling on the UK government to make the freedom of religion or belief a priority in international foreign policy and diplomatic engagement, especially in trade negotiations. It wants the persecution of religious minorities to be raised with governments around the world, especially with West Africa and Nigeria. It also seeks assurances that Afghan Christians will be able to access the Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme.
The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office will host an international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief in London on 5 and 6 July.
David Landrum interview available here https://youtu.be/KQcb9XVLoAU
