Alot of stuff to miss

The Free Copts has a good article on the fact that the persecution of the Copts (and Christians in general) was left out of the Amnesty International report (link).

I'll quote from the post (the sum up here is very well done):

As we will see, this Coptic problem is only part of a worldwide problem that no one really cares about, with the exception of a few Christian organizations that focus on human rights issues. And in the following we will not employ an emotional writing style, but rather numbers and percentages that constitute undisputable facts.

1. The largest persecuted group in the world today are the Christians.

2. 75% of the persecuted people around the globe are Christians, and 75% of these Christians are persecuted by Muslims. Communists are the second most meaningful group that persecutes Christians.

3. Experts estimate the number of persecuted Christians today to be around 200 million, in addition to another 400 millions that suffer from discrimination.

4. 82% of those killed in 1998 because of their religion were Christians .

5. Experts estimate that, since the beginning of the twentieth century, the average number of Christians killed annually has been between 130,000 and 170,000 .

6. Since the year 33AD, the number of Christian martyrs has been around 69,420,000, which represents about 0.8% of the total number of Christians throughout history. More than half of these martyrs (about 45,400,000) were martyred in the twentieth century alone.

7. The higher the religious rank of a Christian (bishop, priest, monk, nun, preacher etc), the higher the chance of his/her martyrdom. Thus, the percentage of martyrdom increases to about 2% of all Christian leaders throughout history.

8. The first genocide in the twentieth century was that committed by the Turks when they killed 1.5 million of the Christian Armenian nation, among which were 4000 bishops and priests between 1894 and 1923. This genocide is known to the world as the massacres of the Armenians.

9. In Southern Sudan, between 1963 and 1999, Muslims killed about 2 million people, most of whom were Christians. Another 4 million were left homeless.

10. In the year 1998 alone, Muslims burned 500 churches in the Indonesian island of Java.

11. In November 1998, Muslims burned 22 churches in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and killed 13 Christians.

12. Amidst the Christmas celebrations in 1998, Muslims destroyed 180 houses belonging to Christians in Indonesia.

13. The myth that Christianity is the religion of the white man, no longer exists. Today about 60% of Christians do not live in the West, but rather in third world countries. Furthermore, 80% of practicing Christians do not live in the West.

The good news are few, and include:

1. Christians in China (who are persecuted) who attend services on regular basis outnumber those who attend services in all the following countries combined: France, Spain, Germany, Italy, England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria.

2. The countries where Christians face persecution are the same countries that witness the conversion of new people to Christianity. For instance, in China where the persecution is quite fierce, the number of Christians has increased within 25 years from a few millions to 80 million.