Organized persecution of minority Christians in their traditional Middle East homelands is approaching genocide and has driven an exodus in the past two decades, a report commissioned by the British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, warned Thursday.
Millions of Christians in the region have been uprooted from their homes, and many have been killed, kidnapped, imprisoned and discriminated against, the report compiled by the Bishop of Truro, the Right Rev Philip Mounstephen, found.
It also uncovered “shocking” evidence that the persecution is worse today than ever with widespread discrimination across south-east Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and in east Asia – often driven by state authoritarianism and intolerance of religious diversity.
Its findings come after 359 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in attacks at hotels and churches in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.
“The inconvenient truth,” the report finds, is “that the overwhelming majority (80%) of persecuted religious believers are Christians”.
“I think we have no more hope,” Archbishop Vicken Aykazian, the diocesan legate in America’s capital and ecumenical director for the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Orthodox Church of America, also told Breitbart News, referring to the future of Christianity in its Middle East cradle. “Middle East Christians have no nation that protects them openly.”
In the Middle East and north Africa, the report says, “forms of persecution ranging from routine discrimination in education, employment and social life up to genocidal attacks against Christian communities have led to a significant exodus of Christian believers from this region since the turn of the century.”
It highlights countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia which have worked to make life close to impossible for devout Christians and other minorities.
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