The number of religiously motivated hate crimes committed against Christians in Europe jumped by 226 percent in one year, according to a report by a well-known group that monitors Christian persecution.
The Observatory of Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe) published its 2024 annual report on Friday, which revealed that
the number of incidents of violence and hostility against Christians, as well as the number of vandalism and arson attacks against churches, rose to an alarming rate in one year.
Last year, the Observatory identified 2,444 anti-Christian hate crimes documented by the police and civil society in 35 European countries, compared to 749 in 2022.
The hate crimes included 232 personal attacks against Christians involving harassment, threats and physical violence, according to the report released on November 15, the International Day of Tolerance.
As for anti-Christian hate crimes, we recorded 2,444 cases by 2023, but we assume a large number of unreported cases
- stated Anja Hoffmann, managing director of OIDAC Europe. Police statistics on anti-Christian hate crimes from only five European countries, viz
They were publicly available from Austria, Finland, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. A total of 2,111 anti-Christian hate crimes were registered in these five countries alone.
In terms of the number of anti-Christian hate crimes in 2023, France was at the top, with almost a thousand such cases, followed by the United Kingdom and Germany, the Breitbart news portal pointed out, recalling several cases.
In January 2023, a jihadist attacked two Catholic churches in Algeciras, Spain. The man killed a minister with a machete and wounded four others while shouting "Allah is mighty" and "death to Christians".
In November, a Tunisian Christian convert was beaten and robbed in Italy for attending a Christian church. The attackers were his Tunisian compatriots who opposed his conversion from Islam to Christianity.
In January 2023, four churches in Paris were set on fire, including with Molotov cocktails. According to the French Observatory of Religious Heritage, there have already been 14 arson attacks in France in the first ten months of 2024.
In March 2023, two Catholic nuns in Nantes, France, reported being beaten, spat on, and insulted.
In October 2023, a Christian was seriously injured and another killed in a knife attack in the United Kingdom. The first victim, who converted from Islam to Christianity, was stabbed several times by his Muslim roommate while lying in bed. The perpetrator considered him an "apostate" and therefore "someone who deserves to die".
The number of anti-Christian hate crimes in Germany has more than doubled in the past year, from 135 in 2022 to a total of 277 in 2023. As for church vandalism, in 2023 the German police registered more than two thousand cases of material damage to Christian places of worship.
Of the cases documented by OIDAC Europe in which the motive or background of the perpetrators could be established, the majority of the perpetrators have a radical Islamist background.
They are followed by anti-religious, radical left-wing and other groups with political motives.
The report also documents legal developments in several European countries that violate Christians' religious freedom, including "hate speech" laws that have been used to persecute Christians for publicly expressing their Christian beliefs.
Cover image: Christian persecution in Europe at an unprecedented level
Source: V4NA
