EGN NEWS DESK
The authorities is being urged to dedicate extra international help to supporting Christians and different non secular minorities being persecuted for his or her religion.
An open letter to Foreign Secretary David Lammy warns that persecution just isn’t solely “widespread” however “it is also changing into extra merciless”.
The letter has been revealed by Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) within the run-up to its annual Red Wednesday initiative highlighting world persecution, which this yr takes place on 20 November.
“ACN analysis persistently reveals that oppression has intensified, and impunity towards perpetrators has grown,” the letter says.
“This persecution included excessive violations of Article 18 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the appropriate to freedom of thought, conscience, and faith.”
The letter expresses disappointment that help for persecuted non secular minorities was not included within the earlier authorities’s 10-year technique for worldwide growth launched in 2022.
The Labour authorities “has a possibility to alleviate important injustices around the globe by refocusing UK help”, ACN stated.
Although the charity is asking for extra international help to help all persecuted non secular minorities, it says that the plight of Christians “deserves to be highlighted specifically, as a plethora of sources present that their scenario continues to worsen across the globe”.
“Evidence reveals {that a}) Christians undergo harassment in additional international locations than another religion groupiii and b) extra Christians are oppressed than different religion teams – with lots of of thousands and thousands at the moment below menace,” the letter reads.
It requires non secular minorities to be included as one of many authorities’s international help priorities and concludes by recommending “a standalone non secular freedom technique to stipulate the best technique of help deployment to victims of spiritual discrimination and persecution”.
ACN’s John Pontifex stated: “For so a few years, governments and officers have tended to have a ‘religion blind’ method, overlooking the diploma to which non secular hatred and discrimination are important drivers of utmost poverty, joblessness, sexual violence and different types of torture.
“This new authorities has a superb alternative to handle one of many largest, most egregious injustices going through the world immediately. By making non secular minorities goal beneficiaries of ODA (UK Overseas Development Aid), the UK can play a number one position in assuaging the plight of numerous harmless individuals struggling around the globe merely for his or her religion.”
Red Wednesday will see the publication of ACN’s annual report on persecution, Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for his or her Faith, which is anticipated to point out a surge in violence, oppression and different discrimination.
