U.K. Report: Christian Persecution ‘Overlooked in the West’
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – The final version of a UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office report was released at the beginning of July, detailing Christian persecution worldwide and citing a failure of Western governments to even recognize it.
The report, originally commissioned by UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jeremy Hunt in December of last year, recommends the UK place sanctions on countries where Christian persecution is widespread, among other stopgap measures it says are designed to halt a process coming close to “genocide.”
Among errors in the U.K.’s judgment regarding Christian persecution was a “religion-blind” policy toward foreign aid, which often contributed, for example, to radical Muslim education in countries like Pakistan that fueled persecution toward Christians.
As part of this pattern, the report found that Christian persecution had “to some significant extent been overlooked in the West”.
“Quite rightly, witnesses felt, there was an outcry from the UK government over the Rohingya Muslim crisis in Myanmar, but politicians and media said very little about the Christian minority groups who were targeted as much as the Rohingyas, and who also had to leave their homes and country,” wrote Bishop of Truro Philip Mount Stephen, who gathered evidence for and composed the report.
In terms of statistics gathered from Christian NGOs and foreign aid workers, the report notes that of 197 countries in the world, 144 reflect significant trends of Christian persecution, while 80% of the people persecuted for their faith worldwide are Christians.
“The sense of misguided political correctness that has stopped us standing up for Christians overseas must end,” said Foreign Secretary Hunt, responding to the report’s claim that Christians are the most persecuted faith in the world.
Proposals for the protection of Christians in the report included the adoption of a UN security council resolution, religious literacy training on the extent of Christian persecution for Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) workers, and coinage of a term comparable to “Islamophobia” and “Antisemitism” to denote the unbridled hatred and persecution of Christians going on around the world.
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