CHRISTIAN TODAY: Reclusive North Korea has yet again topped Open Doors’ list of the worst persecutors of Christians in the world.
North Korea ranked number one on the persecution watchdog’s 2008 World Watch List, the seventh year in a row that the communist country has come out on top.
Open Doors and other Christian rights groups say North Korea denies its citizens the right to freedom of worship and report imprisonment and torture of people caught practising the Christian faith.
"It is certainly not a shock that North Korea is No 1 on the list of countries where Christians face the worst persecution," says Carl Moeller, President and CEO of Open Doors USA.
"There is no other country in the world where Christians are persecuted in such a horrible and systematic manner.”
No 2 on the list was the Wahhabi kingdom of Saudi Arabia, while Iran came in at No 3. Both countries are ruled by a strict interpretation of Shariah law under which apostasy is punishable by death.
In the last five months, Compass News Direct reported that a daughter of a member of Saudi Arabia’s religious police was murdered after she wrote online about her faith in Christ, while a 28-year-old Christian man was allegedly arrested by Saudi authorities for telling of his conversion and criticising the kingdom’s judiciary on his website.
Open Doors said 2008 had been one of the toughest years for Christians in Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 with a major crackdown on house churches and a large number of Christians arrested. >>> By Jenna Lyle | Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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