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“Violence Against Christians on the Rise in the Middle East”
by The Balfour Post   
July 2nd, 2013
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Violence against Christians has become all too frequent in recent years, with attacks on them in a wide variety of countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.  Repression and intolerance have been displayed against the Christian community in Nigeria; against the Coptic Christians in Alexandria, Egypt ; by bombing in a chapel in Sulu, Philippines; by bomb attacks against Assyrian Christians in Iraq; by discrimination against them in the Islamic Republic of Iraq; by prosecution under the blasphemy laws in Pakistan and elsewhere.

It was the interruption and disruption by force of the celebration of Christian Mass in the villages of Rizokarpaso and Ayia Triada in northern Cyprus that led the European Parliament in a resolution on January 19, 2011 to comment on the situation of Christians in the context of freedom of religion.  Since the “Arab Spring,” thousands of Christians have fled the countries of the Middle East except Israel.  Christian communities have existed for two thousand years in the Middle East, though they are now declining as a result of low birth rates and emigration caused by discrimination and persecution in most of the Arab and Muslim countries in the area.  The case of northern Cyprus is a recent example of that discrimination and intolerance towards a Christian community.

The disruption of the Christian liturgy in the two villages was, as admitted by the World Council of Churches at the time, a flagrant violation of fundamental freedoms and human rights, the freedom of religion and belief, as guaranteed in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in otherinternational declarations, including the 1981 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination based on Religion and Belief.

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