Anti-Christian Persecution Around the World
The most persecuted religious group in the world.
Given the events of 2020—the Internment of America and endemic leftist violence—it’s easy for Americans (like me) to forget that as bad as things have become in our country, most people throughout the world have it exponentially harder.
This is especially the case with respect to Christians.
Just this year, “Chu,” a Hmong woman living in North Vietnam, communist Vietnam, finally fled her husband after 30 years of marriage. For years prior to this, you see, Chu was regularly beaten by him because of her faith in Christ.
As is customary for her people, Chu had practiced animism—the belief that spirits pervade all things. In her own words, she had worshipped “the devil.” Eventually, though, she would encounter Christ. Her husband converted as well, but when the village leaders began bringing pressure to bear upon him for his Christian confession and that of his family, he succumbed and proceeded to beat his wife. Not infrequently, he would bludgeon her with weapons.
Chu, however, refused to renounce her faith.
The last beating proved to be the final straw. The police to whom Chu twice turned expressed indifference to her charges. And so, with nothing more than the clothes on her back, Chu left.
With her husband she had eight children, three of whom had died. Some of her children are young adults, but some are still younger and in need of her care. Tragically, it was determined that she could not see her children and that if she returned to her village, she could be killed. The latter she recognized as a credible threat, for two of her sons, who are themselves Christians, had their homes destroyed because of their faith.
Over in Iran, around the beginning of July, at least a dozen Christians had their property confiscated while being arrested, blindfolded, incarcerated, and beaten by government agents—all because of their faith in Jesus.
In India, Kande Munda, a mason by profession and a husband and father to two young children, was murdered because of his faith in Christ. He and his family had been persecuted for quite some time. Among his persecutors were his own brothers and other relatives. Open Doors, an organization that exists for the sake of serving Christian victims of oppression around the globe, supplies the following account of what Kande Munda and his family were made to endure:
“The local community demanded Kande pay them huge donations. And in 2018, the persecution took a horrifying turn.
“When Bindu’s mother—who was not a Christian or part of the same community—was visiting the family, villagers raped her in an attempt to threaten Kande’s family and discourage them for following Jesus. The villagers regularly shouted death threats at Kande to try to get him to leave Christianity.
“As this continued over the course of two years, Kande and Bindu began to discuss fleeing their village, simply for the safety of their family. They were talking about their escape as they ate dinner on June 7, when suddenly a mob of people showed up outside their home, demanding Kande come outside. At this point [according to Bindu, his wife], Kande ‘knew that their lives were in danger and that the men had bad intentions. He told his wife that he might be killed but assured her to remain strong and to never give up her faith in Jesus even if they killed him.’”
Well, they did kill him.
In Burma, a man named “Samson,” who was a practicing Buddhist, realized that the Buddha’s admonition, “Work out one’s salvation with diligence,” was untenable. Along with the rest of his family, he found his Savior in Christ.
This, however, did not please his fellow villagers. Samson and his family—his 20 or so children and grandchildren, all of whom live with him in his wooden hut—were summoned for questioning at a “town hall” gathering of sorts. Around 200 people were present, including village elders and approximately 50 or so Buddhist monks.
One monk asked Samson: “Do you really believe in the Christian faith? Are you really going to believe in Jesus? Are you not coming back to our religion?”
Samson replied: “We are not going to deny our faith. We’re not going to reject our faith. We’ll believe Jesus until we die!”
The next morning, five trucks descended upon Samson’s village and dumped numerous stones in front of his home. At the school in the rear, two other trucks created yet another pile of stones. The headmaster of the school informed Samson that he had not ordered the stones and that he didn’t know why they were left on school grounds. Samson didn’t give it another thought, assuming rather that perhaps they were going to be used for road repairs.
He would soon discover just how mistaken he was.
The following day, early in the morning, Samson and his daughter were praying. They had been called back to the monastery for another meeting that was supposed to determine their fate for having abandoned the Buddhist faith of their village. As they were praying, though, they heard people gathered around their home. Then, the voice of the village chief bellowed forth: “KILL him! Samson, ask your God to save you now!”
Samson recalls the nightmarish incident:
“They threw stone upon stone upon stone. All our windows and doors were open and they were stoning us nonstop. My granddaughter stood up and closed the windows. She was hit on her breast and was wounded. She gasped in pain, screaming ‘Jesus save me! Jesus save me!’ and placed her palm on her wound.”
According to Samson: “Right then and there, it was miraculously healed.”
The stoning continued, and some tried setting both Samson’s motor bikes and his home on fire.
But they failed.
Samson and his family survived, a fact that they attribute to the saving power of Jesus Christ.
They succeeded in fleeing their village. Today they live in an Open Doors safe house.
The aforementioned stories constitute just a small sampling of the kinds of persecution to which Christians—the most persecuted religious group in the world—continue to be subjected in scores of countries.
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