Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday, in a speech to the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers in Helsinki, stressed the importance of addressing the persecution of Christians and combating Islamophobia
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th May, 2019) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday, in a speech to the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers in Helsinki, stressed the importance of addressing the persecution of Christians and combating Islamophobia.
"The attacks on media freedom, linguistic, educational and religious rights of national minorities persist in many countries. The outgoing authorities in Kiev desperately sign laws leading to the prohibition of other languages except for� Ukrainian in all spheres of life. The shameful phenomenon of statelessness remains. Incidents of anti-Semitism have become more frequent ... It is time to face the global problem of persecution of Christians ... the issue of combating Islamophobia," Lavrov said, as quoted in a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.
Lavrov stressed that these issues required the intervention of European human rights institutions and the Council of Europe.
According to the data of the US Open Doors monitoring body for 2019, an average of 345 Christians around the world are killed for faith-related reasons every month, while about 245 million Christians experience high levels of persecution. The new edition of Open Doors' World Watch List showed earlier in the year that North Korea, Afghanistan and Somalia were the top three countries where Christians experienced the highest levels of pressure.
