AFGHANISTAN OVERTAKES NORTH KOREA AS THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH TO BE A CHRISTIAN ON OPEN DOORS’ WATCH LIST

Afghanistan has displaced North Korea as “the most dangerous place on the planet to be a Christian” after 20 long years on Open Doors USA’s 2022 World Watch List.

During a virtual press conference on Wednesday, Open Doors CEO David Curry said that his organization, which monitors persecution in over 60 countries, takes into account “on-the-ground expert consensus about what’s happening around the world to Christians who are targeted simply for their faith.”

The World Watch List measures “pressure, intolerance and violence against the Christian faith worldwide.”

“The 2022 World Watch List reveals the most seismic changes in the history of our research,” Curry said. “For the first time ever, Afghanistan is the most dangerous place on the planet to be a Christian, coming in at No. 1 on the World Watch List. It has supplanted North Korea, which is now No. 2, for the first time in 20 years.”

Curry clarified that “North Korea has not gotten better” but rather that “Afghanistan has gotten worse.”

The ranking comes months after the Taliban Islamic radical insurgency retook control of the Central Asian country after the United States withdrew its military presence.

“Nine of the top 10 countries on the World Watch List are run or influenced by radical Islamists or Hindu extremists,” Curry stated. The only exception is North Korea, which is run by a “murderous dictator with a communist ideology.”

In addition to Afghanistan and North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Eritrea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran and India rounded out the World Watch List’s top 10 “countries where it’s most difficult to follow Jesus.”

“Our report shows that 360 million Christians globally now suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination. That’s one in seven Christians worldwide,” he lamented.

Curry emphasized that the World Watch List “also illustrates the challenges … to freedom of conscience and expression for all people, whether they have a religious faith or … consider themselves an atheist or just have different views from the majority of their culture.”

The list contains a total of 50 countries where persecution of Christians is either “extreme” or “very high.”

Open Doors determined that the top 10 countries on the list, as well as Saudi Arabia, have “extreme” levels of Christian persecution while the remaining 39 have a “very high” amount of persecution.

The complete report, which contains detailed examples of religious freedom violations in each country on the list, is available on the Open Doors USA website.

Source: Christianity Today