As Christians in Owo, Nigeria, gathered to have fun Pentecost on Sunday, gunmen burst into St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church and started taking pictures. Eyewitness experiences counsel at the least 50 parishioners, together with younger youngsters, have been killed.
The shock waves of this bloodbath are nonetheless reverberating via Nigeria’s Christian neighborhood, a bunch already reeling from a flood of current violence. Four weeks in the past a mob of Muslim college students beat to dying Deborah Samuel, a younger Christian lady accused of offending Islam after sharing the message “Jesus Christ is the greatest. He helped me pass my exams” on a WhatsApp messaging group.
Two weeks later, on May 25, the Rev.
Stephen Ojapa
and his assistant have been kidnapped by gunmen. Their whereabouts are unknown, and different Christian leaders kidnapped in comparable circumstances have died in captivity.
My group, Open Doors USA, ranks the nations which can be most hostile to Christians. Nigeria is seventh on the listing. Though the nation locations few restrictions on worship, it ranks first for the overall variety of Christians killed for his or her religion. Our most up-to-date annual report documented the killing of 4,650 Christians in Nigeria in 2021, a couple of each two hours. The violence reveals no indicators of abating this yr.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, to which I used to be not too long ago appointed, has really useful since 2009 that Nigeria be added to the U.S. authorities’s “Country of Particular Concern” listing. The listing is a vital device for figuring out the worst violators of spiritual freedom throughout the globe. In December 2020, the Trump administration heeded that recommendation. The following yr, nonetheless, the Biden administration reversed the choice with out clarification. In reality, it eliminated Nigeria from the listing hours earlier than Secretary of State
Antony Blinken
landed within the nation for official conferences.
Last week the State Department launched its annual report on worldwide non secular freedom, highlighting a spread of violent incidents perpetrated in opposition to non secular communities in Nigeria. Under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the president has 90 days from the issuance of the report back to designate nations of explicit concern. Given the carnage at St. Francis Xavier Church, the president ought to redesignate Nigeria instantly.
In concept, that’s simply step one. A designation requires the president, with some exceptions, to enact sanctions. Yet within the 24 years for the reason that International Religious Freedom Act was handed, no president has enacted any significant sanctions in opposition to a CPC nation expressly due to religious-freedom violations.
Mr. Biden has the chance to ship a transparent sign that the U.S. gained’t stand by because the harmless devoted are persecuted. He ought to make the redesignation and implement sanctions directly.
Mr. Curry is president and CEO of Open Doors USA and a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
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Appeared within the June 8, 2022, print version.
Source: www.wsj.com”