Editorial: should UK aid go to countries where Christians are persecuted?
Country/Region: Middle East and North Africa, Africa, South and East Asia, Europe, United Kingdom, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Burma, Eritrea, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Vietnam
The UK government gives hundreds of millions of pounds in aid to countries where Christians are grossly and systematically persecuted. It says that the partner government’s commitment to respecting human rights is “robustly assessed” when the provision or withdrawal of financial aid is being considered. So how do countries such as Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Eritrea, Pakistan and Sudan qualify, and should the British government exert more pressure on those regimes to which it sends money?
In the last financial year (2011-12), the UK sent vast sums to some of the very worst countries in which to be a Christian:
But the same cannot be said of some other regimes on the list. Eritrea is perhaps the very worst. The latest US State Department International Religious Freedom Report says of Eritrea:
Thousands of Christians are believed to be imprisoned in Eritrea’s notoriously cruel detention system; they are held in metal shipping containers with extreme temperature changes and tortured in an effort to make them recant their faith.
The government of Sudan is another extreme persecutor of Christians, and since the secession of South Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir has made it clear that Christians are not welcome in the country. Reinforcing earlier pronouncements, he said in July 2012:
Afghanistan is similarly governed on the basis of sharia law, and, in accordance with its tenets, the government threatens to wield the death penalty against those who convert from Islam.
In Pakistan, the notorious “blasphemy laws” continue to cause grave problems for Christians and other non-Muslims. “Defiling the name of Muhammad” carries a mandatory death penalty, and though nobody has yet been executed for this offence, those accused can spend years languishing in prison while their cases grind through the Pakistani justice system at a painfully slow pace. Christians are particularly vulnerable to malicious, false accusation.
Another problem that besets the Christian community in Pakistan is the abduction of Christian women by Muslim men; the women are forcibly converted to Islam and married against their will to their captors. In both cases of this kind and the aforementioned blasphemy accusations, the police and lower courts often do little to protect Christians or grant them justice.
The Burmese military’s violent campaign against the country’s ethnic minorities, the majority of whom are Christians, shows no signs of abating; the groups are targeted for both their ethnicity and their faith. The military launched an offensive in Kachin state in June 2011 and has been brutally attacking the predominantly Christian population ever since. On 15 January, three boys, aged 11, 12 and 13, were killed in a bombing; they were buried alive when the bunker in which they were sheltering collapsed on them.
In the last financial year (2011-12), the UK sent vast sums to some of the very worst countries in which to be a Christian:
- Afghanistan £146,131,000
- Burma (Myanmar) £36,150,000
- Eritrea £3,686,000
- Iraq £3,087,000
- Nigeria £161,789,000
- Pakistan £211,682,000
- Somalia £101,483,000
- Sudan £32,607,000
- Vietnam £37,413,000
But the same cannot be said of some other regimes on the list. Eritrea is perhaps the very worst. The latest US State Department International Religious Freedom Report says of Eritrea:
The government demonstrated a trend toward deterioration in respect for and protection of the right to religious freedom. The government continued to harass and detain members of registered and unregistered religious groups, some of whom reportedly died as a result of torture and lack of medical treatment while in detention… Many places of worship had to close because of government intimidation and the mass conscription of religious workers and parishioners.
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| The wreckage of a demolished church and its medical clinic in Khartoum |
The government of Sudan is another extreme persecutor of Christians, and since the secession of South Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir has made it clear that Christians are not welcome in the country. Reinforcing earlier pronouncements, he said in July 2012:
We want to present a constitution that serves as a template to those around us. And our template is clear, a 100 per cent Islamic constitution, without communism or secularism or Western [influences].A number of churches and other Christian buildings have been destroyed. On Monday (21 January), Barnabas Fund received a report of a church and its medical clinic in Khartoum being flattened (pictured).
Afghanistan is similarly governed on the basis of sharia law, and, in accordance with its tenets, the government threatens to wield the death penalty against those who convert from Islam.
In Pakistan, the notorious “blasphemy laws” continue to cause grave problems for Christians and other non-Muslims. “Defiling the name of Muhammad” carries a mandatory death penalty, and though nobody has yet been executed for this offence, those accused can spend years languishing in prison while their cases grind through the Pakistani justice system at a painfully slow pace. Christians are particularly vulnerable to malicious, false accusation.
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| The funeral of three Kachin boys killed in a bombing by the Burmese military |
The Burmese military’s violent campaign against the country’s ethnic minorities, the majority of whom are Christians, shows no signs of abating; the groups are targeted for both their ethnicity and their faith. The military launched an offensive in Kachin state in June 2011 and has been brutally attacking the predominantly Christian population ever since. On 15 January, three boys, aged 11, 12 and 13, were killed in a bombing; they were buried alive when the bunker in which they were sheltering collapsed on them.
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