"Perhaps the most disturbing trend is that, since the inception of the World Watch List, the persecution of Christians has nearly doubled..."
The Never Ending ‘Pandemic’: 360 Million Christians Persecuted Worldwide
by Raymond Ibrahim, 2/8/2023
originally published at Gatestone Institute
In 2022, 5,621 Christian around the world were “killed for faith related reasons.” Another 4,542 Christians were illegally detained or arrested, and 2,110 churches were attacked, many destroyed. Over all, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 360 million believers suffering high levels of discrimination and violence.
These are among some of the findings of the World Watch List-2023, which was recently published by the international humanitarian organization, Open Doors. Each year the report ranks the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted for their faith by using data from approximately 4,000 field workers and external experts to quantify and analyze persecution worldwide.
Crunching some numbers, the report finds that, on average, one in seven Christians (14%) are persecuted around the world. In Africa, that number grows to one in five (20%), while in Asia it is as much as two in five—meaning a whopping 40% of all Christians are persecuted there.
Christians suffer “extreme levels of persecution” in the top 11 of the 50 nations. This ranges from being assaulted, raped, imprisoned or slaughtered on being identified as a Christian or attending (usually underground) churches.
Those nations and their respective rankings are: 1) North Korea, 2) Somalia, 3) Yemen, 4) Eritrea, 5) Libya, 6) Nigeria, 7) Pakistan, 8) Iran, 9) Afghanistan, 10) Sudan, 11) India.
Coming in at #1, the absolute worst nation is North Korea, “with the highest levels of persecution ever seen,” says the report:
If discovered by the authorities, believers are either sent to labour camps as political prisoners where the conditions are atrocious, or killed on the spot—and their families will share their fate as well. Christians have absolutely no freedom…. A new ‘anti-reactionary thought law’ makes it amply clear that being a Christian or possessing a Bible is a serious crime and will be severely punished.
Most of the “extreme persecution” meted out to Christians in nine of the top 11 worst nations continues, however, to come either from Islamic oppression, or takes place in Muslim-majority nations. This means that approximately 80% of the absolute worst persecution around the globe takes place in the name of Islam.