A new report from the Family Research Council's Center for Religious Freedom, a US-based evangelical organization, documented a series of violations against Christians in more than 16 Western countries over a three-year period.
Irregularities include arrests and fines for public preaching and prayer, as well as punishments for expressing beliefs. In total, 168 cases were recorded, from open source documents, reports and media reports, which revealed a worrying trend against Christian practices and expressions, with at least 58 incidents in the United States, 36 in Canada, 43 in United Kingdom, and six in Greece. Other countries with similar episodes were France, Switzerland, Spain, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Germany, Malta, Australia and New Zealand.
For the report's author and director of the FRC's Center for Religious Freedom, Arielle Del Turco, “the data collected shows a trend toward the destruction of religious freedom in Western democracies.”
The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe also released a report that revealed an increase in hate crimes against adherents of the Christian faith across Europe in 2022, including physical assaults and murders.
The document's conclusions suggested underreporting of such crimes by authorities and the international media, which contributes to the growth of intolerance and religious persecution.
The war in the Middle East was another driver of hate crimes in the West, with several episodes of anti-Semitism in the United States and European countries.
Another report released by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif) pointed out that cases of anti-Semitism almost quadrupled in the country in 2023.
From May to September last year, France recorded around 40 anti-Semitic acts every 30 days. In the last three months of the year, the explosion of cases drew even more attention: 563 occurrences in October, when the war in the Middle East began, 504 in November and 175 in December.
More than half of the episodes of violence (58%) that were reported to public bodies involve physical actions, threatening words and gestures against Jews, according to the document, which sought data from the Ministries of Education, Interior and the Security Protection Service. Jewish Community (SPCJ).
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