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Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Martyrdom in Burkina Faso

As has been noted in this space on previous occasions the most underreported human rights story of the 21st century is the slaughter of Christians around the world, primarily by Islamic terrorists, but also by Hindus in India and atheists in communist countries like North Korea.

One can only guess as to why the media shrinks from reporting this story, but I'm pretty sure that were it Muslims and Hindus being slaughtered by Christians, or blacks being slaughtered by whites the headlines would be screaming the media's condemnations of the atrocities. But since it's dark-skinned Christians being murdered by dark-skinned Muslims, the mainstream media yawns and focuses its attention on the Democratic primaries, the Harvey Weinstein trial and whether the Equal Rights Amendment should be resurrected.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently discussed religious persecutions around the world at the National Prayer Breakfast and didn't even specifically mention Christians despite the fact that in 2018 some 4300 Christians were murdered.

A piece in The Daily Caller gives us an example of what Christians are going through in the African nation of Burkina Faso:
Gunmen killed 24 people including a Christian pastor in Burkina Faso, an attack that comes as analysts warn of increasing attacks against civilians and Christians.

About 20 attackers separated men from women near a Protestant church, Boundore commune Mayor Sihanri Osangola Brigadie told the Associated Press.

“The provisional toll is 24 killed, including the pastor … 18 wounded and individuals who were kidnapped,” Colonel Salfo Kabore, the regional governor, told Agence France-Presse. Kabore blamed “armed terrorists” for the attack.

The attackers also kidnapped three young people who they forced to transport oil and rice that the attackers stole from shops, Brigadie said. The mayor, who visited some of the victims in the hospital, said that “It hurt me when I saw the people.”

The attack comes after gunmen killed a retired Christian pastor and kidnapped another pastor in the Yagha province only last week, the AP reports.

Burkina Faso has become a hotbed for religiously motivated attacks. More than 1,300 people were killed in targeted attacks in Burkina Faso in 2019, a number that is more than seven times the amount of people killed the previous year, the AP reported, citing the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

Attacks against Christians and other civilians are increasing at “at an alarming rate,” West Africa director for Human Rights Watch Corinne Dufka told the AP.
The article which mentions Nancy Pelosi bizarre omission of Christians among persecuted peoples around the world as tells us this:
Over 245 million Christians lived in places where they endured serious religious persecution between Nov. 1, 2017 and Oct. 31, 2018, according to Open Doors USA, an organization that aids persecuted Christians worldwide. The organization also found that during this same time period, 4,305 Christians were killed for their faith, 1,847 churches and Christian buildings were attacked, and 3,150 believers were detained without trial, arrested, sentenced, or imprisoned.

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a Catholic charity that administers to persecuted Christians, reports that “almost 300 million Christians around the world — or 1 out of every 7 — live in a country where they suffer some form of persecution, such as arbitrary arrest, violence, a full range of human rights violations and even murder.”

A 2019 report ordered by former British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt found that Christians were the most persecuted group in the world and that the persecution of Christians has reached near “genocide” levels. Christianity faces being “wiped out” from certain parts of the Middle East, the report found.
Killings are not of course, the only form of persecution these people suffer. Their homes are burned down, their families disown them, they're beaten, they can't get employment and their children are kidnapped.

How could Pelosi have ignored this and why don't our major media outlets care?