As Global Persecution Intensifies Survivors and Advocates Seek Solutions: ‘I’m Shocked the World Is Just Sitting by Watching’ by Jennifer Wishon for CBN News
Across the globe, persecution against Christians and other people of faith is growing. In fact, 80 percent of people live in countries where religious activity is restricted by their governments.
Religious minorities are often blamed for the pandemic. Sexual violence has been increasingly used as a tool to get women to convert, and so-called “polite persecution” puts limits on how religious people live their faith.
This week people from around the world representing 30 different faith traditions gathered in Washington for the International Religious Freedom Summit aimed at finding solutions and growing the grassroots.
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Survivors like Mariam Ibrahim told their stories.
“Persecution is very hard,” she told CBN News in an interview.
Ibrahim made headlines when she refused to recant her Christian faith despite a death sentence in Sudan.
“It’s a choice because we as Christians, we know our freedom is in Jesus,” she explained with a smile.
Tursurnay Ziyawudun is a Uighur Muslim who managed to escape from a concentration camp in China. Her pain is palpable. She and other women were regularly raped, subjected to electric shock, and humiliated for the crime of their faith.
She’s thankful to be free, but can’t escape thoughts of her people continuing to suffer.
“Sometimes I think it would be better if I were back in the homeland with them even if it meant death. I’m so shocked that the world is just sitting by and watching. The Chinese government has absolutely no shame about this,” she told CBN News through tears.
The type of surveillance the Chinese Communist regime uses against Uighurs is being exported. Now more than 80 countries are adopting it.
“That means that the government in those dystopian regimes, the bad actors can use that technology to monitor who is going to what church, saying what during the sermon,” said Nury Turkel, an American-Uighur Muslim, who has experienced Chinese persecution first hand. Turkel is a current commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
