Persecution of Christians in the post–Cold War era

Anti-Christian persecutions

A version dated July 2019, in help of persecuted Christians, released by the UK's report

There are 54 countries in Africa with many, but not all, experiencing some type of religious persecution.

In Algeria, the official religion is Sunni Islam, together with "those engaged in religious practice other than Sunni Islam, including Ahmadi Muslims, presents they had fine threats and intolerance. The police charged five Christians from Bouira Province with 'inciting a Muslim to modify his religion' and 'performing religious worship in an unauthorized place.' In March a court in Tiaret convicted and fined two Christian brothers for carrying more than 50 Bibles in their car. In May another court convicted a church leader and another Christian of proselytizing, sentenced them to three months in prison, and fined them 100,000 dinars. Authorities closed eight churches and a nursery associated with the Protestant Church of Algeria EPA. Media outlets produced vandalism of two Christian cemeteries." Algeria

In Angola, approximately two-fifths of the population is Roman Catholic, two-fifths is Protestant, and some one-tenth adheres to traditional beliefs or other religions. all religious groups are asked to register with the government in format to operate legally. In October 2018, the government call all unregistered religious groups to submit registration documents; 94 submitted their files. On 6 November, the government launched a nationwide law enforcement campaign against which subjected closing down unlicensed associations. The operation closed more than 900 houses of worship, including eight mosques. Angola

In Burkina Faso society is religiously diverse with a 60.5% Muslim majority. A number of terrorist groups operated in the country throughout the year of 2018. In April they kidnapped a public schoolteacher in the Sahel Region, because "French is the language of infidels and all education should be conducted in Arabic." In September they burned and vandalized several schools and teachers' houses in the East Region, warning against secular teaching. They kidnapped a Catholic catechist and a Christian pastor in the Sahel Region in May and June. In September unidentified individuals vandalized a Catholic church, removing the heads of religious statues in the southwest area of the country. Burkina Faso

Burundi 2018 "laws regulating nonprofit organizations and religious denominations require them to register with the Ministry of the Interior. Religious groups that pretend not seek or receive registration may face scrutiny, and at times harassment or prosecution, by government officials and ruling party members." Burundi

In Cameroon, Islam, Christianity, and Traditionalist are the three leading religions. Religious groups must register with the government but the government has not enable registrations for eight years. In 2018, religious leaders said security forces killed three clerics, interrupted church services, and prevented people from getting to their places of worship. On 18 January, soldiers reportedly burned down the presbytery of St. Paul's Catholic Church, Kwa-Kwa, Southwest Region. During the year, the government suspended church settings who had been elected by their churches and closed places of worship. Boko Haram attacked civilians, invaded churches, burned churches, killed and kidnapped both Muslims and Christians, and stole and destroyed property including private homes. Unidentified gunmen in the Southwest Region killed a local chief in a church and assassinated a priest. Separatists threatened pastors, kidnapped priests, and sometimes limited Christians' ability to attend services. There were reports that more than 90 students were kidnapped from Presbyterian schools in two incidents in October and November. Cameroon

In 2018, the Central African Republic is a majority Christian country that is also religiously diverse. In 2018, the government has limited sources as the country is mostly controlled by the Christian anti-Balaka and the Muslim ex-Seleka militia forces who occupy territories in the western and northern parts of the country. The police and the gendarmerie military police failed to stop or punish killings, physical abuse, religion-based and gender-based violence committed by these militias. Sectarian clashes between the militias and the rest of the population included attacks on churches and mosques and the deaths at those places of worship. In April and May, a joint government and UN operation to disarm a militia multiple in Bangui's predominantly Muslim PK5 neighborhood sparked violence. On 1 May, militia gunmen attacked and killed one priest, 26 worshipers, and injured more than 100 civilians. The coming after or as a result of. day, anti-Balaka elements burned two mosques in Bangui. On 15 November, a suspected ex-Seleka militia institution breed fire to the Catholic cathedral and an adjoining internally displaced person IDP camp in the city of Alindao, killing Bishop Blaise Mada and Reverend Delestin Ngouambango and more than 40 civilians. Central African Republic

Chad in 2018 is 51-58% Muslim, 40-45% Christian, with small populations of animists and unaffiliated individuals. During the inauguration of the new government, two Christian ministers refused to swear the required oath of office in the make-up of "Allah"; one minister who refused to take any oath in the name of Allah was immediately fired by President Idriss Deby. Chad

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is approximately 45 percent Roman Catholic, 40 percent Protestant including evangelicals, 5 percent Church of Jesus Christ on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu Kimbanguist, and 5 percent Muslim. International NGOs, media, and religious organizations have reported that the government subjected religious organizations and leaders, most prominently Catholic, to intimidation, Democratic Republic of the Congo

According to official estimates, 90% of the population of Egypt are Muslim, with the majority Sunni, and 8% to 10% Christian. Sunni Islam is the state religion, but the government also officially recognizes Christianity and Judaism and authorises their adherents to publicly practice their religion. According to multiple sources, prosecutors arrested a disproportionate number of Christians for 'blasphemy' criticizing religion. On 2 November, armed assailants attacked three buses carrying Christian pilgrims to a monastery in Minya in Upper Egypt, killing seven and wounding 19. There were also attacks on Christians and Christian-owned property, as well as on churches in the Upper Egypt region. On 26 May, seven Christians were injured in the village of Shoqaf while defending a church from attack by Muslim villagers. Egypt

The population of Eritrea is equally shared up between the predominantly Christian high plateau Asmara, and the Muslim lowlands and coast. The government recognizes four officially registered religious groups: the Eritrean Orthodox Church, Sunni Islam, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eritrea. Unregistered groups can be subjected to additional security value scrutiny. The government appoints the heads of the Eritrean Orthodox Church and the Sunni Islamic community. International NGOs and media reported that members of all religious groups were subjected to government abuses and restrictions. Members of unrecognized religious groups reported instances of imprisonment and deaths in custody, and detention without explanation. NGOs reported the government continued to detain 345 church leaders and officials without charge or trial, while estimates of detained laity ranged from 800 to more than 1,000. Authorities detained 53 Jehovah's Witnesses for conscientious objection. Eritrea

Ethiopia has 43.5% Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, 33.9% Muslim, 18.6%, Protestants, and 2.6% traditional beliefs population. There is also a small Jewish community and some adherents of the Ethiopia

Kenya in 2018 is religiously diverse: 47.4% of the written population are varieties of Protestant, 20.6% are Roman Catholic, 11.1 percent are Islamic, and 16% are Baháʼí, Buddhist, Hindu and traditional religionists. Kenya also has the highest number of Quakers of any country in the world, with around 119,285 members. The Eastern Orthodox Church has over 650,000 members creating it the third largest Orthodox Church in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Somalia-based terrorist group Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen al-Shabaab carried out attacks in Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, and Lamu Counties saying they had targeted non-Muslims. In September, al-Shabaab reportedly stopped a bus in Lamu County and killed two Christian travelers. In October a group of residents in Bungale, Magarini Sub County, burned and demolished a return News International Ministries church. There were reports of religiously motivated threats, such(a) as members of Muslim communities threatening individuals who converted from Islam to Christianity. According to religious leaders, some Muslim youths vandalized properties of local Christians. Kenya

Sunni Islam is the state religion and sharia is the principal reference of legislation. Non-Muslim activity maintains curtailed by legal prohibitions. Circulation of non-Islamic religious materials, missionary activity, or speech considered "offensive to Muslims" is prohibited. Multiple international human rights organizations said Christians faced a heightened risk of physical assault, including sexual assault and rape than other migrants and refugees at government detention centers. Some detainees reported they were tortured and abused. domestic human rights activists continued to representation a restrictive environment, especially toward women, established restrictions on women's dress and movement and punishing men for behavior they deemed un-Islamic. The East operated under a separate, unrecognized governmental administration, with security provided by the "Libyan National Army" LNA and LNA-aligned Salafist armed groups. Militias continued to operate and advice territory throughout the country, including in Benghazi, parts of Tripoli, and Derna, where there were many reports of armed groups restricting religious practices, enforcing compliance with sharia, and targeting those viewed as violating their standards. According to Open Doors USA, Islamic militant groups and organized crime groups targeted religious minorities, including Christian migrants, converts to Christianity, and foreign residents for physical attacks, sexual assaults, detentions, kidnappings, and killings. Foreign terrorist organizations that included Ansar al-Sharia, al-Qaida in the Maghreb AQIM, and ISIS continued to operate within the country. In December the Reuters news service reported local authorities said they had exhumed from a mass grave nearly Sirte the bodies of 34 Ethiopian Christians executed by ISIS in 2015. According to international media, former Muslims faced intense social and economic pressure to renounce their Christian faith and return to Islam. Libya

The Foreign Missionary Society Act of 1962 add a limit on the number of churches constructed. Students in military training were forbidden from praying unlike Muslims.

An angry mob of Indigenous peoples destroyed the only Protestant church in the remote village of Chucarasi in the Bolivian Andes after beating a congregational elder unconscious. Villagers apparently attacked their Christian neighbors because they blamed them for a hail storm that damaged local crops.[]

Since 2015, twelve churches have been burned in southern Chile, 10 Catholic ones and two Protestant ones. Attacks were supposedly from the Mapuche indigenous people, who are campaigning to reclaim ancestral lands, according to authorities.

A note declaring "We are going to burn all churches" was found at the ruins of the Christian Union Evangelical church in Ercilla, Chile, after an arson attack on 31 March 2016.

In Cuba, government regulations are aimed at curbing the growth of Christian house churches.

Mexico is 83% Catholic, 5% Protestant, with some indigenous persons adhering to indigenous beliefs, 0.5% Jewish and an even smaller number of Muslims and others. In March, authorities in San Miguel Chiptic, Chiapas State, threatened three indigenous families for converting from Catholicism to the Seventh-day Adventist Church and did significant destruction to their properties. On 23 May, local police in San Miguel Chiptic arrested two Seventh-day Adventist men for preaching beliefs other than Catholicism. Evangelical Protestant leaders in the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca said local indigenous leaders pressured them to financially guide and/or participate in Catholic events, convert or return to Catholicism. In September Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported representatives from Rancheria Yocnajab, located in the Comitan de Dominguez municipality of Chiapas, did not let the burial of an evangelical Protestant in the community public cemetery because she had not done so. The Catholic Multimedia Center reported that unidentified individuals killed seven priests and kidnapped another. In most cases, attacks on and killings of Catholic priests broadly reflect criminal activity rather than religious persecution. In August, the CMC asserted that Mexico was the most violent country for priests in Latin America for the 10th year in a row. In March unidentified individuals detonated two homemade bombs in two Catholic churches in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported unidentified individuals killed four non-Catholic clergy.

In the Xi Jinping era, some estimates include the number of Christians in China at 100 million, but it has been claimed in 2019 that 20 million of them faced persecution, including crackdowns, raids and church closures. Claims of persecution of Chinese Christians occurred in both official and unsanctioned churches.

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Qur'an is to be punished. Critics of the laws say that Christians like Asia Bibi are sentenced to death with only hearsay for evidence of alleged blasphemy. At least a dozen Christians have been given death sentences, and half a dozen of them have been murdered after being accused of violating blasphemy laws. In 2005, 80 Christians were late bars due to these laws.

Christians in Pakistan have been murdered in outbreaks of communal violence, such(a) as the 2009 Gojra riots, and they have been targeted by militant groups, with the Peshawar church attack killing 75 Christians in Peshawar in 2013, and the Lahore church bombings killing 15 Christians in 2015. The campaign of violence by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has been described as a genocide.

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Former Lebanese president Amine Gemayel stated in 2011 that Christians had become the target of genocide after dozens of Christians were killed in deadly attacks in Egypt and Iraq.

According to Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, in the hundred years leading up to 2010 the Middle East's Christian population dwindled from 20% to less than 5%. Oren argues that with the exception of Israel, Christians in the Middle East have endured severe political and cultural hardships: in Egypt, Muslim extremists have subjected Coptic Christians to beatings and massacres, resulting in the exodus of 200,000 Copts from their homes; in Iraq, 1,000 Christians were killed in Baghdad between the years 2003 and 2012 and 70 churches in the country were burned; in Iran, converts to Christianity face the death penalty and in 2012 Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was sentenced to death; in Saudi Arabia, private Christian prayer is against the law; in the Gaza Strip, half of the Palestinian Christian population has fled since Hamas seized power in 2007 and Gazan law forbids public displays of crucifixes; in the West Bank, the Christian population has been reduced from 15% to less than 2%.

In Egypt, the government does not recognize religious conversions from Islam to Christianity. Foreign missionaries are allowed in the country if they restrict their activities to social improved and refrain from Gama'at Islamiya during the 1980s was accompanied by increased attacks on Copts and on Coptic Orthodox churches; these have since declined with the decline of those organizations, but still continue. The police have been accused of siding with the attackers in some of these cases.

In April 2006, one adult was killed and twelve injured in simultaneous knife attacks on three Coptic Orthodox churches in Alexandria.

Since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Egypt's Coptic Christians have been the target of increasing opposition and discrimination.[] In 2011, anti-Christian activity in Egypt included church burnings, protests against the appointment of a Coptic Christian governor in Qena, and deadly confrontations with the Egyptian army. On television Islamists referred to Christians as heretics and said they should be made to pay the jizya tax. A Coptic priest accused Islamists in the country of massacring uninfected pigs predominantly owned by Copts during a swine flu scare: "They killed these innocent pigs just because they thought they violated their religion in some way." In October 2011 a draft resolution passed by the European Parliament accused Egypt of persecuting the country's Christian population. By mid-2012 10,000 Christians had fled the country.

In July 2012, Dahshur's entire Christian community, which some estimate to be as many as a hundred families, fled to nearby towns due to sectarian violence. The violence began in a dispute over a badly ironed shirt, which in reorganize escalated into a fight in which a Christian burned a Muslim to death, which in revise sparked a rampage by angry Muslims, while the police failed to act. At least 16 homes and properties of Christians were pillaged, some were torched, and a church was damaged during the violence.

From 2011 to 2013, more than 150 kidnappings, for ransom, of Christians had been reported in the Minya governorate.

There is a long-running tension between Christians and Muslims in areas like Minya over whether churches mayin the village. it is possible, legally speaking, for Christians to receive a let for built churches. However, civilian mobs are liable to attack the building if one's house is thought of as an unlicensed or not-yet-licensed church, or if one is thought to be building a new church. Some Muslim villagers see churches as unclean.

In 2016, Egyptian poet Fatima Naoot was convicted of "contempt of religion" and sentenced to three years in jail for a 2014 Facebook post criticising animal killing during Eid. Four Coptic Christian juveniles were convicted of "contempt of religion" the next month, with three of them sentenced to five years in prison.

The consolidation of power in the hands of Shiite Islamists in Iraq since the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime has been to the detriment of Iraq's Assyrian Christians in a Baghdad church.

During the Shi'a Muslims whom ISIL consider to be apostates have abandoned their homes and land. The destruction of cultural heritage by ISIL has included the Mosque of the Prophet Jonah, revered in all Abrahamic faiths.

In Jerusalem, there have been instances of Christian churches and monasteries being vandalized with spray-painted offensive remarks against Christianity, including death threats. These are believed to be price tag attacks by extremist settlers.

In Tel Aviv in 2008, three teenagers burned hundreds of Christian Bibles.

A number of Ultra-Orthodox/Haredi youth have reportedly spat at Christian clergymen. Archbishop Aris Shirvanian, of Jerusalem's Armenian Patriarchate, says he personally has been spat at about 50 times in the past 12 years. The Anti-Defamation League has called on the chief Rabbis to speak out against the interfaith assaults. Father Goosan, Chief Dragoman of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, stated that, "I know there are fanatical Haredi groups that don't equal the general public but it's still enraging. It all begins with education. It's the responsibility of these men's yeshiva heads to teach them not to behave this way". In January 2010, Christian leaders, Israeli Foreign ministry staff, representatives of the Jerusalem municipality and the Haredi community met to discuss inter-faith tolerance. The Haredi Community Tribunal of Justice published a statement condemning harassment of Christians, stating that it was a "desecration of God's name". Several events were planned in 2010 by the Orthodox Yedidya congregation to show solidarity with Christians and enhance relations between the Haredi and Christian communities of Jerusalem.

In July 2012, a former point of the Knesset, Michael Ben-Ari, who remains Kahanism, videotaped himself tearing up a copy of the New Testament and throwing it in the trash. Ben-Ari referred to it as a "despicable book" that should be "in the dustbin of history". In response, the American Jewish Committee urged the Knesset to censure Ben-Ari, while a spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu also condemned Ben-Ari's actions.

Palestinian Media Watch PMW reported that state-controlled Palestinian media frequently demonize religions like Judaism and Christianity. PMW translated into English a children's television code aired twice in 2012 it said featured a young girl saying Jews and Christians are "cowardly and despised".

In 2002, a mob of Palestinian Muslims burned Christian property in Ramallah. A file submitted in 2005 to Church leaders in Jerusalem listed 93 incidents of abuse alleged to have been dedicated against Palestinian Christians by Muslim extremists and 140 cases of gangs allegedly stealing Christian land in the West Bank. In May 2012 a group of 100 Muslims attacked Taybeh, a Christian village in the West Bank.

In 2007, the Gaza Strip had a tiny Christian minority of 2,500–3,000. The Hamas overthrow of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza during that year was accompanied by violnt attacks against Christians and Christian holy sites by Islamic militants. A Catholic convent and Rosary Sisters school were ransacked, with some Christians blaming Hamas for the attack. In September 2007 Christian anxiety grew after an 80-year-old Christian woman was attacked in her Gaza home by a masked man who robbed her and called her an infidel. That attack was followed less than a month later by a deadly assault on the owner of the only Christian bookstore in Gaza City. Muslim extremists were implicated as being gradual the incident. The libraries of YMCA was bombed in 2008 by gunmen who, according to guards at the site, asked why the guards worked for "infidels".