"Religious freedom is an orphan right of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, i.e. it is very little sought after and sought after, it seems that the leaders of the UN member countries are not yet ripe for a real debate on this topic".
Persecution of Christians and Report 2024, we talk about it with Cristian Nani - president of Open doors, Italian base of Open doors International, international monitor and analyst of the persecution of Christians in the world.
Can you tell us about Open Doors and how you practically support persecuted Christians around the world?
Porte Aperte is the Italian base of Open Doors International, a missionary agency born almost 70 years ago (in 1955) from the intuition and passion of a young Dutchman, Anne Var der Bijl, who later became known as “Brother Andrea”, who was deeply touched by seeing how the religious freedom of Christians behind the Iron Curtain was constantly violated. He decided to meet the first need that was exposed to him: Bibles, a book that was increasingly forbidden in that part of the world.
From here was born a movement of people willing to undertake dangerous journeys beyond the Curtain to distribute Christian literature to Soviet Christians: "The Smuggler of God", the biography with which Anne Var der Bijl recounted these journeys and the beginnings of the Open Doors agency, sold million copies and became a boost for the organization now engaged in field research into causes and solutions to persecution, providing material support, emergency aid, literature, training and assistance to Christians who suffer because of their faith.
We are active in over 70 countries of persecution with around 25 bases in free countries such as Italy. Over the last 30 years our exposure has grown due to the World Watch List (WWL), a research that converges in a map of the top 50 countries where there is most persecution in the world.
Mainly in Italy our areas of intervention are: fundraising for practical and spiritual support field projects; awareness and mobilization through research and advocacy (WWL in the lead); and edification of Italian Christians through conferences, conferences and ad hoc resources that challenge Western Christianity.
Does persecution occur in different ways depending on the country and/or Christian denomination?
Yes, there are different sources and different drivers that interact in specific ways and intensities. We specify that our research embraces all Christian confessions, analyzing 4 types of Christian community:
-
Community of expatriates or immigrants,
-
Historic churches (such as Catholic, Orthodox and traditional Protestant ones),
-
Non-traditional Protestant communities (such as evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals and all other Christian groups not included in the first two categories),
-
Community of converts to Christianity (from Islam, Hinduism, etc., often the most affected by persecution).
We have developed a research methodology, certified by an external institute, which embraces the 5 spheres of the Christian's life precisely in order to measure the violation of freedom of faith in any country/circumstance. These spheres are the private sphere, the family, the community, the church, public life, to which violence is added as a separate element, in which we report the number of actual violent events (killings, torture, assaults, etc.), while the threat of violence is recorded in the aforementioned 5 spheres of the Christian's life.
The sources of persecution we have identified are 9: Islamic oppression, religious nationalism, ethnic antagonism, tribal oppression, denominational protectionism, communist and post-communist oppression, secular intolerance, dictatorial paranoia and finally organized crime and corruption. If you ask me what the main source is, I would say Islamic oppression, but it is important to point out that these sources are integrated with endemic factors, so each country will present one or more sources, combined with relevant internal conditions of the society in question.
The drivers are the most varied: from governments to religious leaders, from religious groups to ideological groups and/or paramilitary groups, from normal citizens (perhaps gathered in crowds) to the extended family, from cartels and criminal organizations to multilateral organizations.
WWL 2024 once again sees the highest level of persecution since the WWL was published, confirming the steady increase of recent years. Another visible sign of the decline in the religious freedom of Christians in the world is the fact that from the 2021 edition we find in the map of the top 50 countries only nations with a very high and extreme level of persecution and discrimination, thus the high level disappearing. They go up to over 365 million worldwide (there were 360 in WWL 2023) Christians who experience at least a high level of persecution and discrimination because of their faith: globally 1 Christian in every 7 is affected by this phenomenon, which, divided into macro-geographical areas, becomes: 1 Christian in every 5 in Africa; 2 Christians out of every 5 in Asia and 1 out of 16 in Latin America.
The killings of Christians for reasons related to faith decreased slightly to 4.998 from 5.621 (2023): it was Nigeria that caused this decrease, given that killings there went from 5.014 to 4.118, a decrease in the first months of the year in conjunction with the national elections (February/March 2023); Unfortunately, then the massacres started again in full swing. We remind you that these figures should be considered "conservative".
The data on attacks and/or closures/confiscations of churches and Christian public properties (hospitals, schools and the like) is impressive: as many as 14.766 (from 2.110 WWL 2023), especially as a result of the China's oppression strategy (over 10.000 cases alone): it should be noted that from 2016 to today over 30.000 churches have been closed, confiscated or destroyed in China!
The so-called "digital persecution" remains one of the most effective tools used by the Chinese government to limit religious freedom: the so-called "Chinese model" of population control and development without rights is dangerously emulated by other states, to which China exports technology this purpose.
Let's go to World Watch List 2024. Last week the Institutional Doors were opened to you. Can you tell us about the event?
Thanks to practical support projects for persecuted Christians in over 70 countries, Open Doors has been able to create local networks which have been one of the essential components of field research for 31 years; they are added to these networks national researchers (who collect information in their country), external experts (which provide information from other national and international sources for constant cross-check) e an ad hoc team of analysts (which combines all the research to draw up the final result), for a total of around 4.000 people involved and the production of around 2.500 pages of reports every year, including analyses, questionnaires, trends and dossiers of the individual nations: this is the World Watch List (WWL) that every year we launch in many countries at the same time through various types of events. In Italy we have chosen for the fifth consecutive year, a conference in the press room of the Chamber of Deputies, invited by the Parliamentary Intergroup for the religious freedom of Christians, promoted by deputies of various parties and whose creator and main promoter is the Hon. . Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove.
The event went very well, some parliamentarians and journalists from various newspapers were present. The WWL is now taken up by major national and international newspapers, used by research institutes and promoted in debates in international forums.
Will there be a continuation?
Yes, in the institutional field, I myself will go to Brussels on February 14th to the European Parliament, for a conference to present the results of this research in the presence of various MEPs, experts and witnesses from the field. The event will be moderated by MEP Miriam Lexmann (EPP), while the opening speech will be given by MEP Patrizia Toia (S&D).
In addition to this, Open Doors will launch another report in March, a product of the WWL and now in its seventh edition, called "report on gender-specific persecution", which analyzes how Christian men and women are discriminated against/persecuted in different ways and with different tools precisely by virtue of their gender.
How unsafe is the Middle East for Christians today?
Nowadays the Middle East, cradle of Christianity, is no longer "home" for Christians. This is what the thousands of people we help tell us in the field through our Centers of Hope in Syria and Iraq, churches transformed into help centers for the population which during this dark decade have catalyzed help and, indeed, hope. More than a decade of civil war in Syria had already dispersed and diminished the Christian presence in that country; then the escalation of Islamic extremism of various kinds (obviously beyond the trajectory of ISIS), which have radicalized the Syrian and Iraqi population (and beyond), making life impossible for Christians; then the humanitarian crises and, as if that weren't enough, the 2023 earthquake and now the Israel-Hamas war. This explains why we find Syria among the nations with extreme persecution (12th in our ranking), Iraq (16th), Jordan (48th) and Turkey (50th) with very high persecution.
Is there a stronger attack in the persecutions with respect to genders (women for example) and age (children for example)?
As I was saying, we will produce a new report on gender-specific persecution in March which exactly endorses what you allude to in your question: there are gender specificities in the modus operandi of the drivers of persecution. Therefore, according to our 2023 research, religious persecution affects men and women differently and is endemic, strategic, presents itself as a network of forces that trap the person. In nature, cobwebs are woven and positioned with the sole purpose to capture prey. The thin threads, intricate and expertly interconnected, create a complex network that traps. The more the victim tries to escape, the more entangled she becomes. In persecution it works the same way. Each pressure or threat alone can be like a thin filament, coming across as deceptive or almost irrelevant at times. Combined together, they are terribly effective.
For women, sexual violence, forced marriage, physical violence and slavery, combined with the threat of physical violence and the control of cell phones, are pressure points that trap women in a suffocating web. Men and boys, however, risk being kidnapped, imprisoned, beaten, exposed to false accusations or forced to join militias or criminal gangs.
We repeat it every year: it is difficult to collect reliable data on the number of victims of rape and abuse due to faith: in many countries reports are rare, for cultural and social reasons. However, a minimum starting figure, according to our estimates cross-referenced with testimonies collected, is 2.622 (there were 2.126 last year), to which over 609 forced marriages are added. These are the tip of a much more impressive iceberg. Domestic vulnerability specifically affects minority women and children.
What are the challenges and prospects for the future of those who fight against persecution?
First of all, religious freedom is an orphan right of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that is, it is very little sought after and sought after; it seems that the leaders of the UN member countries are not yet ripe for a real debate on this topic. It deserves a more detailed response, but the essential premise is to photograph the reality: religious freedom is denied to Christians in 78 countries that are part of the United Nations. The first difficulty is therefore this: recognizing religious freedom as fundamental for the human being and preparatory to human, social and economic progress.
I would add that digital persecution, with the advent of artificial intelligence applied to the monitoring of citizens, raises many concerns: not only the difficulty of moving funds and resources, but also people are increasingly monitored and, the China case is emblematic, subjected to pressure in the event of behavior not in line with more or less democratic authorities. The Chinese model of development without rights and strong (digital) control of the citizen's life is making converts in Asia, Latin America and Africa, which is worrying from many points of view.
Finally, simplifying, I would say the internal crisis in the Islamic world, which does not seem to "know how to resolve itself": 10 of the 13 countries that show a level of persecution and discrimination that can be defined as extreme (marked in red in our WWL), present Islamic oppression as a source of main persecution. I am talking about nations such as Somalia (2nd), Libya (3rd), and Yemen (5th), where the persecution is connected to a tribal Islamic society, active extremism and endemic instability in these countries, but also Nigeria (6th) and Pakistan (7) at the highest levels of violence, and then Sudan (8), Iran (9), and Afghanistan (10) where the Taliban are convinced they have eradicated the Christian presence, and finally Syria (12) and Saudi Arabia (13), 2 other countries where Islamic oppression is always the main source.
Photo: Open Doors Onlus
