COVID-19 exacerbates discrimination against minority Christians globally

Christian prays during COVID-19, Cairo
• Christians refused coronavirus aid in countries from India to Yemen to West Africa • COVID-19 legitimises increased surveillance and restrictions by authoritarian governments • Organised criminal groups use virus as means to extend their control, including over churches • Nationalism driven by majority religious identity rises in countries such . . . Read More

Church surveillance, COVID-19 controls affect China’s Christians – 1 of 5 global trends

Chinese woman, phone in hand, 2020
                  The emergency that dominated the globe during the past year — the novel coronavirus — also dominated the countries of the World Watch List published by Open Doors International today (Jan 13) and the lives of the estimated 340 million Christians . . . Read More

Turkey orders deportation of pastor’s American wife, a mother-of-three, in string of expulsions

Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)
An American mother-of-three has been told she has to leave Turkey, one of the latest incidents in a series of expulsions of Christian expatriates from the country. Joy Anna Crow Subasigüller, originally from Florida, USA, and her Turkish husband Lütfü were married seven years ago. They settled and started a . . . Read More

Korean murdered in southeast Turkey ‘for mobile phone’

Korean murdered in southeast Turkey ‘for mobile phone’
Criminal investigations into the stabbing to death of a Korean Christian last week in southeast Turkey’s largest city are continuing under a cloak of judicial secrecy, as authorities search for evidence to resolve the controversy over the killer’s motive. South Korean Jin-Wook Kim, 41, was murdered in a late-night Nov. . . . Read More

Turkey serves deportation order after German’s 20 years of tourism work

Hans-Jurgen Louven has worked in Turkish tourism for 20+ years
    Without any warning, the Turkish government last month notified a German who’s worked for two decades in its tourism sector that his routine application to renew his residency visa had been denied. Abruptly, 58-year-old Hans-Jurgen Louven was then ordered to leave Turkey – where he owns property, and . . . Read More

Pastor Brunson case increased ‘hate speech’ against Turkey’s Protestants – report

Malatya’s Kurtulus (Salvation) Church posted this message on the broken glass after an attacker heaved a brick through the church’s display window on November 24, 2017:  “’Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.’ – Jesus Christ.” (Photo: World Watch Monitor)
Turkey’s high-profile criminal case against Protestant pastor Andrew Brunson has triggered a significant increase in public hate speech against the nation’s small Protestant community, creating what its church leaders last week called a ‘climate of insecurity’ for its congregations and individual members. According to the Turkish Association of Protestant Churches’ . . . Read More

UK parliamentary group calls out 27 countries for ‘significant’ religious freedom violations

A church in Bartella, a town near the Iraqi city of Mosul, after Islamic State militants left the area in October 2016. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)
A “Commentary on the Current State of Freedom of Religion or Belief” presented by a group of British parliamentarians today, 10 December, highlights 27 countries where people’s religious freedom has been denied and abused in the past year. The report, presented by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for International . . . Read More

70 years since universal declaration, human rights ‘ignored and abused all over the world’

Ahok protests
Ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Monday, 10 December, rights group ADF International has called for “recommitment” to the founding principles, which it says are being “consistently ignored and abused … all over the world”. Chief among those rights, ADF notes, is the . . . Read More