Persecution
PALESTINIAN AMERICAN JOURNALIST Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed in May 2022 while covering an Israel Defense Forces raid on a refugee camp in the Palestinian West Bank village of Jenin. Abu Akleh had been standing with a group of other journalists and was wearing a blue vest with the word PRESS printed across it when she was shot; her producer was shot in the back but survived. Hours after Abu Akleh’s death, Israeli police went into her home, took away Palestinian flags, and prevented the singing of Palestinian nationalist songs.
In mid-November, the FBI opened an investigation into Abu Akleh’s death; Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Israel would refuse to cooperate since, Gantz said, the IDF had already investigated the IDF actions in the shooting. The U.S. State Department commented, “Not only was Shireen an American citizen, she was a fearless reporter whose journalism and pursuit of truth earned her the respect of audiences around the world.”
Before her death, households throughout the Arab world knew Abu Akleh’s work. Nicknamed “the daughter of Palestine” — and “the voice of Palestine” — Abu Akleh had worked for Qatar-based news outlet Al Jazeera for a quarter century. Viewed as courageous and thoughtful, Abu Akleh inspired many, including women interested in pursuing a career in journalism in the Middle East. A common signoff for her broadcasts summarized her motivation for being a journalist: “I chose journalism to be close to people. It might not be easy to change the reality, but at least I can bring their voices to the world. I am Shireen Abu Akleh.”
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Ritche T. Salgado, OCarm, is director of the Carmelite Center for Social Pastoral Communications in Quezon City, Philippines. He spoke with Sojourners’ Mitchell Atencio.
BEFORE I BECAME a priest, I was a journalist. I was writing for an alternative news outfit, Bulatlat. They asked me to write about a priest who was killed in Central Philippines. I was inspired by [his] story, and I wanted to be a priest. The [Carmelite order] I entered has very strong journalist and media advocacy. In fact, our patron saint in the Philippines, St. Titus Brandsma, is the martyr of press freedom and free speech. I never thought that I’d be in a congregation so involved in the pastoral care of media workers. As a priest, I continue as desk editor for Bulatlat.
A fringe Christian ideology helped stoke an out-of-control gun culture. People of faith are working to take back the conversation.
Mainul Islam, a freelance photographer specializing in street photography, lives in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. This interview was conducted by Sojourners' Jenna Barnett in December and January via WhatsApp.
I STARTED TAKING photos because I want to tell the stories of our Rohingya people’s struggle.
I was born in 1994 in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. I have been living in the camp for about 28 years. [It] is known to the government of Bangladesh as the Registrar Refugee Camp. The Bangladesh government has police, Ansar members, and an executive magistrate to control the camp. There are various NGOs, but we are not getting any good service from them. I don’t think of it as a camp. This is a detention center. Educational institutions have been closed for four years. We are not getting the basic rights that a human being needs to survive. The rejection of citizenship rights for Rohingya, denial of freedom of movement, eviction campaigns, violence against women, forced labor, expulsion from their lands and property, violence and torture have made Myanmar’s ethnic Rohingya the most persecuted minority in the world.
There is a barbed wire fence around the Rohingya camp. That’s why we are always trying to create joy inside the camp with sports, festivals, and weddings. We are playing football, volleyball, cricket, chinlone, etc. There are mosques and madrasas in the Rohingya refugee camps, and they go there to practice their faith.
In February 2017, Kashgary and her 53-year-old mother Sureyya co-founded Ana Care & Education, a Uyghur language school in Fairfax. Every Sunday, children and teenagers attend lessons on Uyghur language, culture, history, dance, and more.
As I write, thousands of Muslims families in Hyderabad have been cordoned off and interrogated for identity documents for themselves and their children. Concurrently, Modi’s BJP has forcefully stripped the predominantly Muslim Jammu and Kashmir of their autonomy and has shut off the internet and phones in the area with plans for ‘deradicalization camps’ similar to the Uighur detention centers.
From July 16-18, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hosted the second annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, which is touted as the “the largest religious freedom event of its kind in the world.” More than a thousand attendees representing delegations from 106 countries arrived in Washington D.C. to discuss challenges to religious liberty and how to collectively address the threats facing people of faith worldwide.
Uighur leaders and experts located outside China have warned that the situation could worsen, and “mass murder” could not be ruled out. With upwards of 10 percent of the Uighurs being held against their will, it is being called the worst and the most neglected humanitarian crisis of the past 10 years. Why is this is happening, and what makes the Chinese government see Muslims as a threat?
While the Trump administration has been vocal about confronting religious persecution for global Christians, many of its domestic and foreign policies only serve to exacerbate the conditions that make Christians in these regions more vulnerable. The Iraqi Christian Chaldean community in the United States has been susceptible to deportations in the aftermath of Trump’s executive orders. The “Muslim travel ban” has done little for Christian migrants and other vulnerable religious communities from nations now under travel restrictions to the United States.
Pence clearly scratched an itch for the crowd that gave him a standing ovation and loud chants of “U-S-A” after he was introduced. His words were also a familiar refrain in the white evangelical community. According to a 2017 study by the Public Religion Research Institute, white evangelical Protestants were the only religious group more likely to believe Christians face discrimination compared to Muslims.
HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORS have been raising alarms about the treatment of Christians in China. A report from Open Doors World Watch List said that Asia is “the new hotbed of persecution for Christians.” Some Chinese church leaders are saying, “It’s the worst since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976,” according to an Open Doors spokesperson.
Over the past 30 years, China has undergone one of the largest social and economic transformations ever seen. Nearly a billion people moved from peasantry to a modern middle-class lifestyle. While this change involved enormous economic progress for many people, it also entailed massive migrations, deep reorganization of family structures, and extensive urbanization. These came with growing social inequalities, rampant corruption, and environmental disasters.
In 2012, Xi Jinping was appointed as the new general secretary of the Communist Party; he became president in 2013. Xi has required extreme party loyalty and encouraged various economic reforms. Although his policy reduced corruption and smoothed the country’s transition, the changes have not protected China from a concerning economic slowdown.
In the context of this massive transformation, what specific difficulties affect Chinese Christians?
China has gained more Christian believers over the past 40 years, with the number of Chinese Protestants increasing by an average of 10 percent per year since the late 1970s, but Christians still represent only 2 to 4 percent of China’s population. Despite their increase, Christians are neither a threat to social cohesion nor a major political challenge to Beijing. The state is far more concerned about a trade war with the U.S., China’s aging population, and environmental damage. And, despite its communist legacy, Beijing is not specifically obsessed with religion, or Christianity in particular.
Caviezel went on to say, “There is one choice, it's Christ. And that doesn't mean it's gonna be easy ... Certainly wasn't easy for Jesus, certainly wasn't easy for Luke or Paul. So what does our faith do? In these tough times, not good times, the world in good times can handle it great. In bad times, what happens to us? That's when we become beautiful. That's when the world goes, how can you love?”
The Reuters report drew on interviews with Buddhists who confessed to torching Rohingya homes, burying bodies, and killing Muslims in what they said was a frenzy of violence triggered when Rohingya insurgents attacked security posts last August.
The account marked the first time soldiers and paramilitary police have been implicated by testimony from security personnel in arson and killings in the north of Rakhine state that the United Nations has said may amount to genocide.
Today, the Rohingya are the single largest “stateless” community in the world. Their “statelessness” or lack of citizenship increases their vulnerability because they are not entitled to any legal protection from the government.
This is one of numerous attacks on Coptic Christians this year. Christians have repeatedly been targeted and attacked by members of the Islamic State, who have vowed to carry out more attacks in the future.
THE BASILICA OF St. Bartholomew on the Island in Rome holds the bones of the apostle St. Bartholomew, who delivered the gospel of Matthew to India, southern Arabia, and Syria. Spreading the seditious good news eventually got him killed—crucified upside down in Baku, capital of modern Azerbaijan. Bartholomew proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus until the soldiers cut off his head.
In 1999, this church nestled on an island in the Tiber River was dedicated to modern Christian martyrs. Entering its cool interior, one can walk a global Via Dolorosa—each side altar is dedicated to parts of the world where Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox have been killed for their faith.
The relics include a letter from Franz Jägerstätter, the Austrian farmer beheaded for refusing to serve in Hitler’s army, and the missal of Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero left on the altar when he was assassinated during Mass in 1980.
Christians today fall out over Christian martyrs and persecution in a right/left divide. We fight about numbers. In 2015, Christian Freedom International released an often repeated statistic suggesting that Christians are “martyred for their faith every five minutes.” This has been widely debunked. But it raises questions about definitions, methodologies, and theological perspectives.
Thomas Schirrmacher directs the International Institute for Religious Freedom, which runs a research project with several universities to measure Christian persecution. He estimates that there are 7,000 to 8,000 Christian martyrs each year, a number that roughly matches the Open Doors World Watch List, which reported 7,106 Christians killed in 2015, an increase over previous years and far less than one Christian every five minutes.
Religious freedom remains under “serious and sustained assault” around the globe, according to a new annual report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
“At best, in most of the countries we cover, religious freedom conditions have failed to improve,” commission chairman Robert P. George said May 2.
“At worst, they have spiraled further downward.”
Pope Francis’ impassioned praise of China this week is the strongest sign of the pontiff’s ambitious agenda to use his personal and political clout to transform the historically fraught relations between Beijing and the Holy See. “For me, China has always been a reference point of greatness. A great country. But more than a country, a great culture, with an inexhaustible wisdom,” the pope said at the start of his interview with Asia Times, which was published Feb. 2.
A church and mosque in France’s “jungle” camp for migrants and refugees have been destroyed, despite authorities’ reportedly promising not to demolish the places of worship. Bulldozers moved into the camp in Calais, the departure point for ferries to Great Britain, on Feb. 1 and tore down the mosque, which reportedly drew up to 300 worshippers each day, and St. Michael’s Church, a makeshift chapel serving mainly Orthodox Ethiopian Christians.