Christian persecution

Christian persecution has occured from the very beginnings of Christianity and continues today. Currently more than 200 million Christians around the globe suffer imprisonment, abuse and sometimes death because of their faith. In 1998, the publication The Voice of the Martyrs named 42 countries where Christians are facing persecution in various forms such as arrest, imprisonment, physical torture and death.

Early Christian persecution was severe in Ancient Roman. In Ancient Rome, Christians were most commonly murdered by crucifixion and being put in arenas with lions. The emperor Nero was one of the most notorious persecutors. Christians continue to be persecuted around the world today in communist countries like China, and Islamic countries.

This persecution continued up through the fourth century, when Constantine's Edict of Milan in 317 A.D. promulgated a doctrine of religious tolerance. In 393 A.D., Christianity became the state religion of Rome, gaining strength after Constantine's conquest of Rome from his fellow caesars of the time.

Deep divisions remained within the Empire. Examples include:

1. The Altar of Victory affair.
2. The removal of avowed polytheists from office.

Persecution generally ended in the Roman Empire in 317 A.D., with the Edict of Milan.

Muslim persecution of Christians

Ottoman Empire

The new Ottoman government that arose from the ashes of Byzantine civilization was neither primitive nor barbaric. Islam not only recognized Jesus as a great prophet, but tolerated Christians as another People of the Book. As such, the Church was not extinguished nor was its canonical and hierarchical organization significantly disrupted. Its administration continued to function. One of the first things that Mehmet the Conqueror did was to allow the Church to elect a new patriarch, Gennadius Scholarius. The Hagia Sophia and the Parthenon, which had been Christian churches for nearly a millennium were, admittedly, converted into mosques, yet countless other churches, both in Constantinople and elsewhere, remained in Christian hands. Moreover, it is striking that the patriarch's and the hierarchy's position was considerably strengthened and their power increased. They were endowed with civil as well as ecclesiastical power over all Christians in Ottoman territories. Because Islamic law makes no distinction between nationality and religion, all Christians, regardless of their language or nationality, were considered a single millet, or nation. The patriarch, as the highest ranking hierarch, was thus invested with civil and religious authority and made ethnarch, head of the entire Christian Orthodox population. Practically, this meant that all Orthodox Churches within Ottoman territory were under the control of Constantinople. Thus, the authority and jurisdictional frontiers of the patriarch were enormously enlarged.

However, these rights and privileges (see Dhimmitude), including freedom of worship and religious organization, were often established in principle but seldom corresponded to reality. The legal privileges of the patriarch and the Church depended, in fact, on the whim and mercy of the Sultan and the Sublime Porte, while all Christians were viewed as little more than second-class citizens. Moreover, Turkish corruption and brutality were not a myth. That it was the "infidel" Christian who experienced this more than anyone else is not in doubt. Nor were pogroms of Christians in these centuries unknown (see Greco-Turkish relations). Devastating, too, for the Church was the fact that it could not bear witness to Christ. Missionary work among Moslems was dangerous and indeed impossible, whereas conversion to Islam was entirely legal and permissible. Converts to Islam who returned to Orthodoxy were put to death as apostates. No new churches could be built and even the ringing of church bells was prohibited. Education of the clergy and the Christian population either ceased altogether or was reduced to the most rudimentary elements.

The Ottoman Empire was marked by periods of limited tolerance and periods of often bloody repression of non-Muslims. The Janissary army corps consisted of young men who were brought to Istanbul as child-slaves (and were often from Christian households) who were converted, trained and later employed by the Sultan (the devshirme system).

Turkey

For more detailed treatments, see Armenian Genocide and Pontic Greek Genocide.
Things worsened after the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I. Nationalist movements like the Young Turks began persecuting and murdering Greek, Armenian, Assyrian and other Christians in what is known as the Armenian, the Pontic Greek and the Assyrian Genocides. This mass murder of Christians is fairly unknown today outside Greece and Armenia, despite taking place not very long ago (1915-1922). It is estimated that 1,500,000 Armenians, 750,000 Assyrians and another 350,000 Pontic Greeks were murdered and most had to abandon regions inhabited by them for thousands of years.

Since the establishment of the secular nationalist Republic of Turkey, the number of Orthodox in the Anatolian peninsula has sharply declined amidst complaints of Turkish governmental repression.Template:Facts These complaints include various perceived campaigns by the Turkish government against various Eastern and Oriental Orthodox groups such as the Istanbul Pogrom in 1955 and the closure of the Halki seminary in 1971 (along with private universities).

The Istanbul pogrom was a state-sponsored and state-orchestrated pogrom that compelled Greek Christians to leave Constantinople (Turkish Istanbul), the first Christian city in violation to the Treaty of Lausanne (see Istanbul Pogrom). The issue of Christian genocides by the Turks may become a problem, since Turkey wishes to join the European Union. The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is still in a difficult position. Turkey requires by law that the Ecumenical Patriarch must be an ethnic Greek, holding Turkish citizenship by birth, although most of the Greek minority has been expelled. The state's expropriation of church property and the closing of the Orthodox Theological School of Halki are also difficulties faced by the Church of Constantinople. Despite appeals from the United States, the European Union and various governmental and non-governmental organizations, the School remains closed since 1971. Persecution of Christians is continuing in modern Turkey. On February 5, 2006, the Catholic priest Andrea Santoro was murdered in Trabzon by a student influenced by the massive anti-Christian propaganda in the Turkish popular press, following the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. On April 18, 2007, 3 Christians were brutally murdered in Malatya , the hometown of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the assassin who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981.

Persecution of Christians in Iraq

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that Christians comprise 44% of Iraqi refugees, although only 4% of the overall population is Christian. Northern Iraq remained predominantly Christian until the destructions of Tamerlane at the end of the 14th century. The Church of the East has its origin in what is now South East Turkey. By the end of the 13th century there were twelve Nestorian dioceses in a strip from Peking to Samarkand. When the a 14th-century Muslim warlord of Turco-Mongol descent Tamerlane (Timul Lenk) conquered Persia, Mesopotamia and Syria, the civilian population was decimated. Timur Lenk had 70,000 Assyrian Christians beheaded in Tikrit, and 90,000 more in Baghdad.

Ethnic Assyrians (most of whom are adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East) account for most of Iraq's sizable Christian population, along with Armenians.

Iraq's Christian community numbered 1.4 million in 1980 at the start of Iran-Iraq War. They were tolerated under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein, who even made one of them, Tariq Aziz, his deputy. But as the war has radicalised Islamic sensibilities, Christians have seen their total numbers slump to about 500,000 today, of whom 250,000 live in Baghdad. An exodus to the neighbouring countries of Syria, Jordan and Turkey has left behind closed parishes, seminaries and convents. As a small minority without a militia of their own, Iraqi Christians have been persecuted by both Shi’a and Sunni Muslim militias, and also by criminal gangs.

As of November 4, 2006, the UNHCR estimated that 1.8 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighboring countries, and 1.6 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. A May 25, 2007 article notes that in the past seven months only 69 people from Iraq have been granted refugee status in the United States.

One of the most recent tragic events of the present Iraqi situation for the Christian community is the assassination by Islamic terrorists of Chaldean Catholic priest Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni and subdeacons Basman Yousef Daud, Wahid Hanna Isho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed in the ancient city of Mosul. Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni was driving with his three deacons when they were stopped by Muslim terrorists who demanded their conversion to Islam, when they refused the terrorists shot them.

Persecution of Christians in Kosovo

After the defeat of a Christian Balkan coalition lead by a prince of Serbia, Lazar, the Ottomans occupied Kosovo. The Christian population of Kosovo was composed overwhelmingly of Serbs (see Demographic history of Kosovo). Initially, former Christian nobles were allowed to maintain their properties and privileges, especially the local nobles that fought on the side of the Ottomans during the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Christians within the Ottoman Empire were not violently persecuted but gradually Islamized through incentives such as property, reduced taxes and the right to bear arms. The Orthodox and Catholic churches of Kosovo during the Ottoman period were awarded special protections and rights including placing Christians under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople[1]. The living conditions of the average serf in Kosovo improved druing the Ottoman occupation due to the rationalization of the Ottoman Timar system which was less demanding then previous feudal relations. Persecution of Christians has been limited to the Serbian Orthodox tardition and is ethnic not religious. Catholic's, most of whom were Albanian, were unmolested in Kosovo. The ongoing ethnic conflict has resulted in the destruction of 56 Serb Orthodox Christian churches, monasteries, graveyards and other religious monuments, some of them being of great historical and architectural importance. The latest wave of anti-Serb violence was in March 2004 (see Unrest in Kosovo).^{[Citation Needed]}

Christian casualties of the War in Lebanon

The war in Lebanon saw a number of massacres of both Christians and Muslims. Among the earliest was the Damour Massacre in 1975 when Palestinian militias attacked Christian civilians. The persecution in Lebanon combined sectarian, political, ideological, and retaliation reasons. The Syrian regime was also involved in persecuting Christians as well as Muslims in Lebanon.

Persecution of Christians in Sudan

There is an abundance of evidence since the early 1990s of oppression and persecution of Christians, including by Sudan's own Sudan Human Rights Organization, which in mid-1992 reported on forcible closure of churches, expulsion of priests, forced displacement of populations, forced Islamisation and Arabisation, and other repressive measures of the Government. In 1994 it also reported on widespread torture, ethnic cleansing and crucifixion of pastors. Pax Christi has also reported on detailed cases in 1994, as has Africa Watch. Roman Catholic bishop Macram Max Gassis, Bishop of El Obeid, also reported to the Fiftieth Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, in Geneva, in February 1994 on accounts of widespread destruction of hundreds of churches, forced conversions of Christians to Islam, concentration camps, genocide of the Nuba people, systematic rape of women, enslavement of children, torture of priests and clerics, burning alive of pastors and catechists, crucifixion and mutilation of priests. The foregoing therefore serve to indict the Sudanese Government itself for flagrant violations of human rights and religious freedom.^{[Citation Needed]}

In addition, it is estimated that over 1.5 million Christians have been killed by the Janjaweed, the Arab Muslim militia, and even suspected Islamists in northern Sudan since 1984.[2]

It should also be noted that Sudan's several civil wars (which often take the form of genocidal campaigns) are often not only or purely religious in nature, but also ethnic, as many black Muslims, as well as Muslim Arab tribesmen, have also been killed in the conflicts.

Persecution of Christians in Pakistan

Blasphemy laws

In Pakistan 1.5% of the population are Christian. Pakistani law mandates that "blasphemies" of the Qur'an are to be met with punishment. On July 28, 1994 Amnesty International urged Pakistan's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, to change the law because it was being used to terrorize religious minorities. She tried but was unsuccessful. However, she modified the laws to make them more moderate. Her changes were reversed by the Nawaz Sharif administration which was backed by Muslim fundamentalists.^{[Citation Needed]}

Ayub Masih, a Christian, was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death in 1998. He was accused by a neighbor of stating that he supported British writer, Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. Lower appeals courts upheld the conviction. However, before the Pakistan Supreme Court, his lawyer was able to prove that the accuser had used the conviction to force Masih's family off their land and then acquired control of the property. Masih has been released.

On September 22, 2006 a Pakistani Christian named Shahid Masih was arrested and jailed for allegedly violating Islamic "blasphemy laws" in Pakistan. He is presently held in confinement and has expressed fear of reprisals by Islamic Fundamentalists.

Attacks on Pakistani Christians by Islamists

The Christian community in Pakistan is frequently the target of attacks by Islamic extremists.

On October 28, 2001 in Lahore, Pakistan, Islamic militants killed 15 Christians at a church.

On September 25, 2002 two terrorists entered the "Peace and Justice Institute", Karachi, where they separated Muslims from the Christians, and then executed eight Christians by shooting them in the head [3]. All of the victims were Pakistani Christians. Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil said the victims had their hands tied and their mouths had been covered with tape.

In November 2005 3,000 militant Islamists attacked Christians in Sangla Hill in Pakistan and destroyed Roman Catholic, Salvation Army and United Presbyterian churches. The attack was over allegations of violation of blasphemy laws by a Pakistani Christian named Yousaf Masih. The attacks were widely condemned by some political parties in Pakistan. However, Pakistani Christians have expressed disappointment that they have not received justice. Samson Dilawar, a parish priest in Sangla Hill, has said that the police have not committed to trial any of the people who were arrested for committing the assaults, and that the Pakistani government did not inform the Christian community that a judicial inquiry was underway by a local judge. He continued to say that Muslim clerics "make hateful speeches about Christians" and "continue insulting Christians and our faith".

In February 2006 churches and Christian schools were targeted in protests over the publications of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in Denmark, leaving two elderly women injured and many homes and properties destroyed. Some of the mobs were stopped by police.

On June 5, 2006 a Pakistani Christian stonemason named Nasir Ashraf was working near Lahore when he drank water from a public facility using a glass chained to the facility. He was assaulted by Muslims for "Polluting the glass". A mob developed, who beat Ashraf, calling him a "Christian dog". Bystanders encouraged the beating and joined in. Ashraf was eventually hospitalized.

In August of 2006, a church and Christian homes were attacked in a village outside of Lahore, Pakistan in a land dispute. Three Christians were seriously injured and one missing after some 35 Muslims burned buildings, desecrated Bibles and attacked Christians.

Based, in part, on such incidents, Pakistan was recommended by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in May 2006 to be designated as a "Country of Particular Concern" (CPC) by the Department of State.

Attacks on Christians by Islamists in Indonesia

Religious conflicts have typically occurred in western New Guinea, Maluku (particularly Ambon), and Sulawesi. The presence of Muslims in these regions is largely due to Suharto's transmigrasi plan of population re-distribution. Conflicts have often occurred because of the aims of radical Islamist organizations such as Jemaah Islamiah or Laskar Jihad to impose Sharia. The following list is far from comprehensive:

• 1998 - 500 Christian churches burned down in Java.
• November, 1998 - 22 churches in Jakarta are burned down. 13 Christians killed.
• Christmas Day 1998 - 180 homes and stores owned by Christians are destroyed in Poso, Central Sulawesi.
• Easter 2000 - 800 homes and stores owned by Christians are destroyed in Poso, Central Sulawesi.
• May 23, 2000 - Christians fight back against a Muslim mob. 700 people die.
• June, 2001 - the Laskar Jihad declares Jihad against Christians. Muslim citizens are recruited by the thousands to exterminate Christians.
• May 28, 2005 - A bomb is exploded in a crowded market in Tentena, killing 28. This marks the highest death toll due to bombing after the devastating attacks in Bali.
• October 29, 2005 three school girls were found beheaded near Poso. The girls, students at Central Sulawesi Christian Church, were killed by six unidentified assailants while on their way to class.

Discrimination and persecution in other Muslim nations

In Saudi Arabia Christians are arrested and lashed in public for practicing their faith openly. Bibles and other non-Muslim religious books are captured, piled up and burned by the religious police of Saudi. No non-Muslims are allowed to become Saudi citizens. Prayer services by Christians are frequently broken up by the police and the Christians are arrested and tortured without even allowing them to be released on bail.

In Egypt the government does not officially recognise conversions from Islam to Christianity; because certain interfaith marriages are not allowed either, this prevents marriages between converts to Christianity and those born in Christian communities, and also results in the children of Christian converts being classified as Muslims and given a Muslim education. The government also requires permits for repairing churches or building new ones, which are often withheld. Foreign missionaries are allowed in the country only if they restrict their activities to social improvements and refrain from proselytizing. The Coptic Pope Shenouda III was internally exiled in 1981 by President Anwar Sadat, who then chose five Coptic bishops and asked them to choose a new pope. They refused, and in 1985 President Hosni Mubarak restored Pope Shenouda III, who had been accused of fomenting interconfessional strife. Particularly in Upper Egypt, the rise in extremist Islamist groups such as the Gama'at Islamiya during the 1980s was accompanied by attacks on Copts and on Coptic churches; these have since declined with the decline of those organizations, but still continue. The police have been accused of siding with the attackers in some of these cases. Nevertheless, high-ranking government officials in Egypt have included Copts like Boutros Ghali and his grandson, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

There have been anti-Christian incidents carried out in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority. Some claim that this represents a pattern of deliberate mistreatment by the PA; others hold that these are isolated incidents that reflect the beliefs of the individuals involved, but not the society in general. Two American courts, one in Illinois and the other in North Carolina, accepted the threat of "religious persecution" as grounds for granting asylum to Evangelical converts fleeing PA territory. There is an ongoing trend for emigration among Palestinian Christians doubling that of Muslims. The ratio of Christians among Palestinians went from 18%-20% in 1947 to 13% in 1966 to 2.1% in 1993. Among the causes there are the insecurity of living under Israeli rule after the 1967 Six Day War, the comparatively warmer welcome that Christians have in the Americas and the rise of Islamism in Palestine politics

Though Iran recognizes Assyrian and Armenian Christians as a religious minority (along with Jews and Zoroastrians) and they have representatives in the Parliament, after the 1979 Revolution, Muslim converts to Christianity (typically to Protestant Christianity) have been arrested and sometimes executed. See also: Christianity in Iran.

In the Philippines, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf has attacked and killed Christians.

Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old Afghan citizen, was charged in Afghanistan with rejecting Islam (apostasy), a crime punishable by death under Sharia law. He has since been released into exile in the West under intense pressure from Western governments.

Atheist persecution of Christians

The Dechristianization program during the French Reign of Terror

The Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution is a conventional description of the results of a number of separate policies, conducted by various governments of France between the start of the French Revolution in 1789 and the Concordat of 1801.

The program of dechristianisation waged against Catholicism, and eventually against all forms of Christianity, included:

• the deportation of clergy and the condemnation of many of them to death,
• the closing of churches,
• the institution of atheistic and deist cults, including the Cult of Reason and subsequently the Cult of the Supreme Being,
• the large scale destruction of religious monuments,
• the outlawing of public and private worship and religious education,
• forced marriages of the clergy,
• forced abjurement of priesthood, and
• the enactment of a law on October 21, 1793 making all suspected priests and all persons who harbored them liable to death on sight.

The climax was reached with the celebration of the Goddess "Reason" in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November.

The dechristianisation of France reached its zenith around the middle of 1794 with the fall of Robespierre. By early 1795 a return to some form of religion-based faith was beginning to take shape and a law passed on February 21, 1795 legalized public worship, albeit with strict limitations. The ringing of church bells, religious processions and displays of the Christian cross were still forbidden. As late as 1799, priests were still being imprisoned or deported to penal colonies and persecution only worsened after the French army led by General Louis Alexandre Berthier captured Rome and imprisoned Pope Pius VI, who would die in captivity in Valence, France in August of 1799. Ultimately, with Napoleon now in ascendancy in France, year-long negotiations between government officials and the new Pope, Pius VII, led to the Concordat of 1801, formally ending the dechristianisation period and establishing the rules for a relationship between the church and the French State.

Victims of the Reign of Terror totaled approximately 40,000. Among those people who were condemned by the revolutionary tribunals, about 6 percent clergy and countless others were killed or persecuted because of their faith. Of the various social groupings, the clergy of the Roman Catholic church suffered proportionately the greatest loss.

Communist persecution of Christians

Marxist ideology promotes atheism. This can often lead communist-states to persecute Christians as well as other theists.

Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

After the Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks undertook a massive program to remove the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church from the government and Russian society, and to make the state atheist. Thousands of churches were destroyed or converted to other uses, such as warehouses. Monasteries were closed and often converted to prison camps, most notably the Solovetz monastery becoming Solovki camp. Many members of clergy were imprisoned for anti-government activities. These victims are now recognized as the "New Martyrs" by the Russian Orthodox Church, the old martyrs being the victims of the Roman persecutions. Church property, including the icons and other objects of worship (especially those made of precious metals) was confiscated and put to other uses.

While religion was never outlawed in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Constitution actually guaranteed religious freedom to all Soviet citizens, persecution was still government policy.^{[Citation Needed]} The persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church abated during World War II, at which time Stalin's government reached a truce with the Church in order to use it as part of its program to inspire Russian patriotic fervor. Nevertheless, the Soviet government sought to put the Church under control by appointing loyal men as priests, allegedly ending up with the entire upper ranks of the Church being officers of the KGB.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the celebration of Christmas and the traditional Russian holiday of New Year (Feast of the Circumcision of Christ) was prohibited (later on New Year was reinstated as a secular holiday and is now the most significant family holiday in Russia). Gatherings and religious processions were initially prohibited and later on strictly limited and regulated. In later years, a more subtle method of disrupting Christian holidays involved broadcasting very popular movies one after the other on the major holidays when believers are expected to participate in religious processions, especially during the Easter celebration. Apparently, this was intended to keep those whose faith was uncertain or wavering in their homes and glued to their TVs.^{[Citation Needed]}

An intense ideological anti-Christian and anti-religious campaign was carried out throughout the history of the Soviet Union. An extensive education and propaganda campaign was undertaken to convince people, especially the children and youth, not to become believers. The role of the Christian religion and the Church was painted in black colors in school textbooks. For instance, much emphasis was placed on the role of the Church in such historical horror stories as the Inquisition, persecution of Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and other heretical scientists, and the Crusades. School students were encouraged to taunt and use peer pressure against classmates wearing crosses or otherwise professing their faith. In the 1920s there were many "anti-God" publications and social clubs sponsored by the government, most notably the scathingly satirical "Godless at the Workbench" ("Bezbozhnik u Stanka" in Russian). Later on, these disappeared because a new generation has grown up essentially atheist.^{[Citation Needed]}

A "scientific" perspective was used to attack religion extensively. The Church was portrayed as obscurantist and opposed to the findings of science. Much was made of alleged Christian belief in the literal Creation account in the book of Genesis which the pro-Darwinian textbooks ridiculed.^{[Citation Needed]} As part of the anti-foreign and anti-capitalist propaganda, an effort was made, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, to imprint in the minds of the people an image of the West as dominated by the anti-scientific ignorance of the Church, as opposed to the scientifically "progressive" atheist Soviet state.^{[Citation Needed]}

In general, Christianity was portrayed as corrupt, hypocritical, a loyal servant of the reactionary czar, obscurantist, "opium for the people" according to Karl Marx, and otherwise evil. This Communist persecution of the Church proved enormously successful. Within the span of one generation, the traditionally highly devout Russian people became overwhelmingly atheist. This transformation was, for the most part, complete by the 1950s. As such, it counted as one of the greatest and the most successful persecutions Christianity had ever experienced, on par only with the destruction of Christianity in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia Minor by the Islamic and Turkish conquests.^{[Citation Needed]}

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the government of Russia openly embraced the Russian Orthodox Church, and there was a reputed renaissance in the number of the faithful in Russia. As of 2004 it is generally noted, however, that whereas a very large percent of Russians today identify themselves as believers and members of the Church (up from a very small group in the Soviet days), still relatively few of them actually attend church regularly, read the Bible, or otherwise take their communion with the Church seriously. For many, it seems, faith has become a matter of personal identification and readiness to baptize their children or have church marriage and burial ceremonies, and not much else. This is a clear testimony to the completeness and the long term success of the Communist persecution of the Christianity in Russia.^{[Citation Needed]}

Richard Wurmbrand, author of Tortured for Christ described the systematic persecution of Christians in one East Bloc nation. Many Christian believers in the Soviet Union have told of being imprisoned for no other reason than believing in God. Many have recently been canonized as saints following their death at the hands of Soviet authorities; they are collectively referred to in the Orthodox Church as the "new martyrs". (See also Enemy of the people, Gulag, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov)

Persecution in other Eastern Bloc nations

Enver Hoxha conducted a campaign to extinguish all forms of religion in Albania in 1967, closing all religious buildings and declaring the state atheist. Albania was the only Eastern Bloc nation that actually outlawed religion. See Communist and post-Communist Albania.^{[Citation Needed]}

However, persecution of Christians, especially Protestants, Pentecostals and non-registered minority denominations, has continued after the fall of the Soviet Union, in many countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, notably Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus.

Persecution of Christians in North Korea

Persecution of Christians is currently the worst in North Korea.

Nazi-Fascist persecution

Although far less hostile to Christianity than to Judaism, which the Nazis sought to exterminate throughout the Third Reich and lands that came under Nazi rule, Nazi totalitarianism demanded that all religious activity conform to the desires of Nazi leadership. Christian churches were obliged to accept the racist doctrines of Nazism. The Gestapo monitored Christian clergy and congregations for any semblance of dissent with Nazi policies, and many Christian clergy and laymen ended up in concentration camps when they asserted opposition to the teachings and practices of Nazism or if they acted upon pacifist convictions (like many Jehovah's Witnesses and some Confessing Church members). During the early part of the Nazi rule, the "German Christians" were an important pseudo-Protestant tool of the regime to bring about the Gleichschaltung of the churches.

The expansion of Nazi Germany and the establishment of Nazi rule in occupied countries brought about persecutions ranging from those characteristic in Germany itself to conditions approaching those of the Soviet Union. Catholic priests in Poland that were opposed to the Nazis were taken to the concentration camps; many were murdered in the liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia. Due to its long historical association with Slavic cultures, Nazi occupation officials used collaborators such as the Roman Catholic Ustashe to specifically target Eastern Orthodox Christians in Yugoslavia. Roman Catholics were heavily persecuted in Nazi Germany because of their opposing views on Nazi eugenics and racial hatred.

In Italy the fascist regime of Mussolini persecuted Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and other Protestant groups following the Lateran Accords with the Roman Catholic church. In 1935, the interior minister Guido Buffarini Guidi ordered the complete break-up of the Pentecostalist network in Italy.