For Immediate Release | Save the Persecuted Christians | February 7, 2020
SRO Audience at National Prayer Breakfast Prays for Victims, Truth-Tellers
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Save the Persecuted Christians (STPC),a growing grassroots movement aimed at addressing systemically the global, genocidal assault on 327 million followers of Jesus, hosted a riveting truth-telling “End the Silence” program yesterday as a side event of the National Prayer Breakfast.
Present and former government leaders joined with representatives of persecuted Christian communities from Nigeria, China, Cuba, Sudan and South Sudan, and India to bear witness to the magnitude of the crimes against humanity afflicting such communities—and the imperative need to hold accountable and punish those responsible.
STPC President Frank Gaffney moderated the panel discussion which featured the following extraordinary presenters:
- Hon. Frank Wolf, former member of Congress and sponsor of the International Religious Freedom Act, who passionately decried the attacks on Christians around the world and the lack of effective action in response.
- Dr. Oluwasayo Abijoye, a Nigerian expatriate and President of Mission Africa International, who recounted personal experience with victims of anti-Christian persecution in his homeland and the urgent need for President Trump to appoint a special envoy for Nigeria and the neighboring Lake Chad Region to coordinate and enhance U.S. policy toward the African continent’s most populous—and now-imploding—nation.
- Pastor Bob Fu, Founder and President of China Aid, who described Communist China’s defacing and destruction of Christian churches, its incarceration of clerics and oppression of the faithful.
- Hon. Kristina Arriaga, former Commissioner on the U.S. International Religious Freedom Commission, who detailed the plight of believers at the hands of Cuba’s Communist regime and the enabling of their persecution unintentionally provided by tourists to the island.
- Faith McDonnell, Director of the Religious Liberty Programs at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, spoke movingly about the continuing oppression of Christians and other minorities by the new government of Sudan and the sabotaging of the government of South Sudan and its efforts to build a sovereign and tolerant state.
- A senior Indian cleric spoke so candidly about India’s burgeoning, state-tolerated—if not actually state-sponsored—Hindu persecution of Christians and other religious minorities that the decision was made to obscure his identity for his personal safety and that of his family and flock. (Video of this presentation is not available due to security concerns.)
- State Secretary of Hungary Tristan Azbej, the world’s only senior government official whose portfolio is exclusively providing aid for persecuted Christians, explained why his country assigns such importance to defending Western civilization in this way and how it is doing so, initially in the Middle East and now in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.
Gaffney concluded the program by calling attention to a letter circulated by Save the Persecuted Christians that called upon President Trump and his administration to “speak boldly” on behalf of believers. He also invited participants to join STPC’s grassroots movement aimed at holding accountable and imposing costs on persecutors and their enablers (including lobbyists on behalf of state-sponsors of persecution like Squire Patton Boggs).
Clerical leaders and prayer warriors in the audience brought the event to a close by movingly praying over the participants and for those they seek to save—the world’s afflicted Christians.
View video of STPC’s “End the Silence” program held on the margins of the National Prayer Breakfast at ChristianPersecutionNews.com. Tax-deductible contributions to support this organization’s vital work can be arranged there as well.
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