At least 2,100 Christians died because of their beliefs in 2013 according to a group monitoring persecution of Christians worldwide. Most of the dead were in Syria, where radical Islamist groups have clamped down on a long-established religious minority.
Open Doors, a US-based non-denominational group that first formed
in the 1950s smuggling Bibles into Communist Eastern Europe,
conducts an annual survey of 50 countries where Christians suffer
the worst discrimination.
“Overwhelmingly, the main engine driving persecution of
Christians in 36 of the top 50 countries is Islamic
extremism,” write the authors.
North Korea, which is officially atheist but is dominated by the
Kims’ personality cult, and where merely owning a Bible is
reportedly grounds enough for a life sentence or execution,
remains the worst country in the world for Christians. Open Doors
claims that as many as 70,000 believers are in North Korean labor
camps and prisons.
But the rest of the top five is made up of Muslim states
suffering from internal instability, with Somalia, Syria, Iraq
and Afghanistan all earning a place.
Of these, the situation has worsened “least surprisingly” in
Syria, which had a Christian population of more than 1.7 million
prior to the start of the internal conflict nearly three years
ago.
“The Syrian opposition is increasingly ‘Islamizing’, and
Christians are becoming more vulnerable in all spheres of life.
Many Christians were reported to have been abducted, physically
harmed or killed, and many churches damaged or destroyed,”
write the authors.
The situation has deteriorated fundamentally since professional
foreign jihadists, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant
(ISIL), joined the fray.
The most notable recent attacks have been on centuries-old
Aramaic-speaking communities, such as Maaloula and Sadad.
Open Doors, which says that it uses conservative estimates
sourced from the news media and believers on the ground, claims
that at a “minimal count”, 1,213 Christians were
“martyred” in the country last year. The figure is
higher than the world total for 2012.
Nigeria, which has a roughly equal split between Christians and
Muslims, is next on the list with 612 deaths, mostly at the hands
of newly-active militias in the north, such as Boko Haram, which
frequently bombs Christian schools and churches.
In Somalia, “retreating al-Shabaab rebels vent their anger by
imposing an even more restrictive form of Sharia law” and
while the Christian minority is small, anyone who is found out to
follow the faith risks execution.
Open Doors predicts that Central African Republic, which erupted
into a civil war at the end of last year, could be the hotspot to
watch out for in 2014.
“The country has been torn apart by warlords and especially
foreign mercenaries from Chad and Sudan who target Christians for
rape, robbery and murder,” write the authors.
“Like Mali last year, Central African Republic shows how
rapidly a seemingly stable state can disintegrate and a Christian
minority or even majority can come to the brink of
extinction.”