Open Doors Delivers a Million-Signature Petition to Downing Street
Open Doors delivered a million-signature petition to 10 Downing Street, seeking protection for Christians facing violence in sub-Saharan Africa.
The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.
A delegation organized by the evangelical charity Open Doors delivered a petition signed by more than one million people to 10 Downing Street on Thursday, calling for protection, justice, and restoration for Christians facing violent persecution in sub-Saharan Africa. Open Doors said 1,046,377 people worldwide had signed the Arise Africa petition, and that a box of about 200,000 names collected in the United Kingdom was handed in. The Religion Media Centre, in a Friday bulletin, also reported that the petition was handed in to Number 10 on Thursday.
The five-person delegation included Open Doors CEO Tiffany Barrans, two Nigerian Christians, Afordia and a community leader from Plateau State who uses the pseudonym Kewente, the Rev. Osoba Otaigbe of the Nigerian diaspora church in Britain, and Tom Collins, a member of Parliament for Worcester, the charity said. At the same time, supporters held photographs of 12 murdered Christians in Parliament Square, a number Open Doors uses for the average number of believers it says are killed for their faith each day in sub-Saharan Africa. A 13th poster read, "12 killed every day. Without action, who will be next?" The Christian Post, reprinting a Christian Today report, also cited Open Doors research that an average of 12 Christians are killed for their faith every day in the region, and that the violence is more widespread there than anywhere else in the world.
Barrans thanked people who had signed and shared the petition. Because they did, she said, "the body of Christ who's been suffering know that they're not alone and know that we stand with them in their pain and suffering, and for the change they're asking for." Otaigbe said, "No one should live in fear, suffer violence, lose their home or be killed simply for following Jesus." He added, "Those affected must know they are not forgotten. Their suffering must not be met with silence."
Afordia, a Nigerian pastor and widow, lost her husband, Isaac, also a pastor, in a 2014 Boko Haram attack, Open Doors reported. After he declared that he was a Christian, he knelt and prayed and was shot dead. In an account first published by Christian Today and carried by the Christian Post, she said the couple had been stopped on Oct. 29, 2014, by men in uniform. "We thought they were Nigerian Army," she said. "He knelt down and started praying. Seconds later, they shot my husband several times." "He died on the spot." Standing at Downing Street, she told Open Doors, "We are so happy, because today God has seen our case and He will intervene for us."
The Church Times interviewed Afordia and Kewente this week. Kewente has compiled records of attacks in his area of Plateau State. The Church Times reported that he lists 10,000 people "directly impacted." Open Doors and the Church Times both recorded his figures of 1,315 killed and 547 women widowed and caring for more than 2,000 children. Asked about claims that the violence is mainly a climate or resource fight, he said, "If a ten-month-old baby will be killed, what has that got to do with climate?" He told the paper he had come so that the global community would be "properly informed about what is going on in Nigeria." Open Doors, the Church Times noted, places Nigeria seventh on its latest World Watch List and has called it "the most violent place in the world for followers of Jesus for several years."
The United Kingdom is the first government to receive the petition. Open Doors said it will also be delivered in the coming weeks to governments in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, and Denmark, as well as to the European Union and the United Nations. The Church Times reported that the United States has listed Nigeria as a country of particular concern, a step Kewente said had "encouraged the government to start doing something about it," though he added there was still much room for improvement. Questions of religious freedom and public authority are being fought in other countries as well, including in Britain, where UK bishops urged lawmakers to abandon a conversion practices bill.
Opinion:
A million signatures should not be required to make a government look at a murdered pastor and a widowed wife and tell the truth about what happened. These are not anonymous clashes over weather or grazing land. Boko Haram asked a man about his faith, heard him confess Christ, and shot him while he was on his knees. That is persecution. The church should say so without apology, and so should anyone who claims to care about human rights.
The dead had names. The widows and the fatherless are still here. Prayer is not a substitute for courage, and courage is not a substitute for prayer. Officials in London, Washington, and Abuja should stop softening the account until it is palatable. If a ten-month-old child can be killed, the least the living can do is refuse to look away.
