Kingdom of the Forgotten
Today WorldNetDaily has a fascinating article written by Eun Jeong about Christian persecution and the ministries involved in helping those who are persecuted.
Christians face forced ejection from refugee camps, death
Questions abound: Where is this happening? How long has this been going on? Families turned out of refugee centers with nowhere to go? Why is the government wordlessly condoning the terror afflicting its own people? Why isn’t this story in the mainstream media? Shouldn’t the mention of genocide call for world wide media attention?
The people featured in these articles are Christians from the state of Orissa in India. Christian news organizations, such as Voice of the Martyrs, Mission Network News, and Compass Direct have been following the events as far back as July 2007. The New York Times, on the other hand, had only two articles in September and October of 2008. The Los Angeles Times mentioned the violence in Orissa in one paragraph of an article about the Mumbai attacks on Thanksgiving. But VOM, MNN, and CD have 10 to over a dozen different articles each on the violence in Orissa. The blatant discrepancy in reporting raises questions beyond the news outlets' coverage of religious violence. What does it mean to represent and report well when it comes to something as personal as religion? What other stories concerning the abuse and mistreatment of Christians around the world has the mainstream media neglected to report? Who are the Christians being attacked and abused around the world, and who is covering their stories?
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"Over 200 million Christians worldwide suffer interrogation, arrest, and even death for their faith in Jesus Christ, with another 200 to 400 million facing discrimination and alienation," according to Open Doors, a faith-based mission supporting persecuted Christian believers.
The Voice of the Martyrs, another such group, says "more Christians have died for their faith in Christ in the past 100 years than in all of history prior to that."
The Voice of the Martyrs is a Christian organization working to raise awareness and grant assistance to Christians who are persecuted and mistreated across the globe. Another is the Mission Network News, a "mission news service dedicated to keeping Christians informed about evangelical mission activity around the world." As Christians mistreated because of their faith are hard-pressed to be found in the United States, many times this kind of news coverage is the only way information gets out. VOM uses the phrase "It Didn’t End At The Coliseum" in its posters, implying that a common misconception is that Christian persecution does not exist anymore in the 21st century.