A police officer stands guard inside St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church the day after worshipers had been attacked in Owo, Nigeria, June 6.
Picture:
Sunday Alamba/Related Press
As Christians in Owo, Nigeria, gathered to have a good time Pentecost on Sunday, gunmen burst into St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church and started taking pictures. Eyewitness reviews recommend not less than 50 parishioners, together with younger youngsters, had been killed.
The shock waves of this bloodbath are nonetheless reverberating by means of Nigeria’s Christian group, a gaggle already reeling from a flood of current violence. 4 weeks in the past a mob of Muslim college students beat to demise Deborah Samuel, a younger Christian lady accused of offending Islam after sharing the message “Jesus Christ is the best. He helped me move my exams” on a WhatsApp messaging group.
Two weeks later, on Could 25, the Rev.
Stephen Ojapa
and his assistant had been kidnapped by gunmen. Their whereabouts are unknown, and different Christian leaders kidnapped in comparable circumstances have died in captivity.
My group, Open Doorways USA, ranks the nations which might be most hostile to Christians. Nigeria is seventh on the checklist. Although the nation locations few restrictions on worship, it ranks first for the entire 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 12 months.
The U.S. Fee on Worldwide Non secular Freedom, to which I used to be lately appointed, has really useful since 2009 that Nigeria be added to the U.S. authorities’s “Nation of Explicit Concern” checklist. The checklist is a crucial device for figuring out the worst violators of non secular freedom throughout the globe. In December 2020, the Trump administration heeded that recommendation. The next 12 months, nevertheless, the Biden administration reversed the choice with out rationalization. In actual fact, it eliminated Nigeria from the checklist hours earlier than Secretary of State
Antony Blinken
landed within the nation for official conferences.
Final week the State Division launched its annual report on worldwide spiritual freedom, highlighting a spread of violent incidents perpetrated in opposition to spiritual communities in Nigeria. Beneath the Worldwide Non secular Freedom Act of 1998, the president has 90 days from the issuance of the report back to designate nations of specific concern. Given the carnage at St. Francis Xavier Church, the president ought to redesignate Nigeria instantly.
In principle, that’s simply step one. A designation requires the president, with some exceptions, to enact sanctions. But within the 24 years for the reason that Worldwide Non secular 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. received’t stand by because the harmless trustworthy are persecuted. He ought to make the redesignation and implement sanctions directly.
Mr. Curry is president and CEO of Open Doorways USA and a member of the U.S. Fee on Worldwide Non secular Freedom.
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Appeared within the June 8, 2022, print version.
