Rising Persecution
Open Doors International's annual rankings show a grim reality for Christians in many countries around the world.
(World News Service) - For the 11th straight year, Christians in North Korea suffered the most persecution in the world, according to 2012 rankings released Jan. 8 by Open Doors International, a U.S.-based group that keeps track of worldwide persecution of believers. Its annual World Watch List revealed persecution is on the rise worldwide, especially in Arab Spring countries and areas around the Sahel belt of Africa.
"All of the Arab Spring countries are going to get worse for the church for the next five to 10 years," Ron Boyd-MacMillan, Open Doors' chief strategy officer, told me after announcing the report at a press conference Tuesday (March 5) at the National Press Club. Boyd-MacMillan said the one exception is Egypt,which dropped from No. 15 to No. 25 on the list of 50 because "while the {Muslim} Brotherhood is still maneuvering, the church is fairly free." The reporting period ended in October, so rankings do not include violence sparked by Egypt's new constitution.
North Korea's No. 1 ranking came as no surprise, since between 50,000 and 70,000 Christians continue to suffer in brutal labor camps. Not only has the situation not improved under new leader Kim Jong Un, Boyd-MacMillan said the conditions for Christians may have even worsened.
The African country of Mali presented the biggest surprise of the list, jumping from unranked last year to No. 7 - one of 11 countries where Open Doors reports "extreme persecution." Islamic extremism accounts for the deteriorating conditions after Sharia law was instituted last year in the northern part of the country.
In Syria, where 40,000 peope have reportedly died, civil war has pushed the country from No. 36 to No. 11 on the list. Ethiopia jumped from No. 38 to No. 15 after members of the Muslim group al-Shabaab came from neighboring Somalia to establish "enclaves of Islam" that wreak havoc on Christians.
Clashes are increasingly occurring around the Sahel belt of Africa as Christianity pushes up from the south, and Islam pushes down from the north. One of those battlegrounds is northern Nigeria, which, despite sustained violence against Christians, remained at No. 13 because conditions also deteriorated in other countries. Christians are technically free to practice their religion in Nigeria, although attacks from the Islamic terrorist groups Boko Haram have killed tens of thousands over the last decade. Boyd-MacMillan said the Nigerian city of Jos is the "taproot of evangelization" in Africa, leading him to wonder if extremists have strategically targeted the area because they realize its significance to the rest of the continent. Nigerians "are good at taking the gospel around the world," he said. "But if the taproot gets turned off in northern Nigeria, that would be very significant for world evangelization."
China, ranked in the top 10 five years ago, represented the most significant improved country in the rankings, dropping from No. 21 to No. 37. The fall is due primarily to intensifying persecution elsewhere, but conditions are also improving for Christians in the world's most populous country.
Other countries making big drops were Bhutan ( No. 17 to No. 28) and Comoros ( No. 24 - No. 4 1).
(By J. C. Derrick, World News Service)
"Aborting the Future"
Alarm about low birthrates brings official attention to abortion in South Korea.
(World News Service) - South Korea is mired in contradictions when it comes to abortion. Abortion there is illegal, and has been since 1953 for all cases except rape, incest, or severe genetic disorder - and last year South Korea's highest court upheld the ban. But for six decades abortions have been common and cheap, costing only about $200. South Korea has had one of the highest abortion rates in the world - largely because the government has ignored the problem. A 2005 study estimated that south Korea had about 340,000 abortions a year in a population of 50 million: that's about double the U.S. rate. Only 30 cases have come to court, and most led to puny fines and probation instead of the heavy fines and prison sentence the law mandates.
The law hasn't changed, but the government's position has. A generation ago South Korean officials worried about the country's increasing population. South Korea's birthrate hovered at 4.5 children per woman in the 1970s. The government even offered men exemption from mandatory army reserve duty in exchange for free vasectomies. Now, with South Korea's birthrate dipping to 1.19 children per woman, one of the lowest in the world, officials want more babies. In 2009, President Lee Myung-bak called for "bold" steps to increase the nation's birthrate. The government started blaring public service announcements saying, "With abortion, you are aborting the future."
The South Korean pro-life movement is also growing. The most vocal group is an organization of obstetricians and gynecologists called Gynob, spearheaded by Seoul obstetricians Shim Sang-dik and Choi Anna. Shim in 2009 stopped doing abortions and held a press conference with other abortionists to ask for forgiveness. Then he essentially sent a cease and desist message to fellow obstetricians, beseeching them to stop all abortion practices - or he and other pro-life doctors would report their illegal abortions to judicial authorities.
Shim said he received trickles of support from Christian churches but "severe criticisms" from his fellow doctors and from feminists. Shim's Ion Women's Clinic has suffered financially since the cash flow from abortion ceased: "Even so," Shim said, "I don't regret my decision in the least." Shim, who is nonreligious, said he "sold his soul" by performing about 4,000 abortions in the past 20 years. He decided to stop when he could "no longer deny the cost of tragic destruction to unborn victims, women, and the sanctity of medical profession." He has "faith that one day medical professionals in South Korea will reform and practice their profession with self-dignity and pride."
( by Sophia Lee, World News Service)
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