title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Graham moved the Rex to the corner of Third Avenue and Dominion Street. After gutting and upgrading, it opened in 1926 as the 500-seat Strand Theatre. Condemned as a safety risk, the Capitol was demolished in 1934. Adding a level floor above the existing one in 1935, the Princess served as a dance hall/ballroom, and community centre for indoor sports. After an extensive 1942 upgrade, it returned as a movie theatre. Graham built, briefly operated, and sold the Wells theatre. Selling his two local theatres to Herb G. Stevenson in 1944, Graham devoted his attention to his Six Mile (Tabor) Lake Lodge enterprise.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Odeon Theatres acquired the Strand and Princess in 1969, demolishing the former in 1975. Eighteen months later, the latter suffered the same fate, replaced by a three-screen complex on the site. Cinema Treasures appears reasonably accurate in covering later theatre developments.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: A 2005 cultural project that involved Prince George had 'Spirit Bears' placed throughout various locations around the city. The 'Spirit Bear' is a fiberglass statue of a bear that has various sceneries painted on it.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Mr. PG was first constructed in 1960 as a symbol of the importance of the forest industry to Prince George. That year he took part in the Prince George May Day parade and could speak and bow. In 1961, he was entered in the Kelowna Regatta and the Vancouver PNE Parade, and also travelled to Smithers. Two years later, he appeared in the 1963 Grey Cup parade.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Today, Mr. PG stands at the junction of Highway 97 and Highway 16. He is tall and his head is in diameter.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Located at the intersection of Highways 97 and 16, Prince George is the hub for northern British Columbia. Considerable truck traffic passes through Prince George, which also has extensive facilities for maintenance of trucks and heavy equipment.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: The streets in the "Bowl" area of Prince George are laid out in a grid, with streets travelling north–south, and avenues travelling east–west. The streets are named after prominent citizens, and they are placed in alphabetical order, starting with "A" (Alward Street) near downtown, and continuing westward to "R" (Ruggles Street) in the western part of the city. Some avenues in the city are numbered. 1st Avenue is located the northern part of the Bowl, and the numbering increases southward until 22nd Avenue (the highest-numbered avenue in the city).


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: The grid in the downtown area is rotated so that avenues run from northwest to southeast, and streets run northeast to southwest. All avenues in downtown are numbered, while most of the streets are named after various cities and provinces of Canada.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Many streets in College Heights are named after various colleges and universities. However, College Heights streets are not laid out in a grid like the Bowl. Instead, many roads in College Heights are curved and/or winding, and most are called avenues or crescents.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Prince George Airport, located just within the southern boundary of the city, southeast. The airport is classified as an airport of entry by Nav Canada and is staffed by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). The airport can handle aircraft with up to 30 passengers or 120 if they are unloaded in stages. In 2016, 462,007 passengers used Prince George Airport. The primary air connection to the rest of the world is provided by multiple daily flights to Vancouver International Airport on Air Canada Express and WestJet Encore. Flair Airlines provides twice weekly winter seasonal service to Tucson, Arizona. WestJet provides seasonal service with a weekly direct flight to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico during the winter months. Pacific Coastal Airlines offers a daily flight to and from Victoria International Airport. Central Mountain Air and Northern Thunderbird Air fly to regional and smaller centres. Horizon Air provided daily service to Seattle for a few months in 2008, but the service no longer exists as of 2009. Charter services provide flights to outlying areas primarily by floatplane, though helicopter service is also available. An expansion study to allow the airport to handle Boeing 747 cargo flights was completed. The airport was expanded and is listed as having the third longest runway in Canada but since it was opened in 2009 it has not seen expanded use by any new airlines or 747s other than the test use by one cargo flight.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: CNR freight lines operate out of Prince George as well as Via Rail passenger service; the Jasper–Prince Rupert train overnights at the Prince George station.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: West of Prince George is Vanderhoof (), Fraser Lake (), Burns Lake (), Houston (), Smithers (), Terrace (), and Prince Rupert ().


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Lyn Hall is the Mayor of Prince George and serves with eight councillors. Prince George holds four of the fourteen seats at the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Trent Derrick is the chair of the Board of School District 57, which includes not only the city of Prince George but a large, sparsely populated area to the east and north, and serves with six other elected school trustees.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Provincially, Prince George is divided into two electoral districts: Prince George-Valemount represented by Shirley Bond, and Prince George-Mackenzie represented by Mike Morris. Both are BC Liberals.


title: Prince George, British Columbia

text: Federally, Prince George is divided between Cariboo—Prince George represented by Todd Doherty and Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies with Bob Zimmer. Both are federal Conservatives.


title: Reactions to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

text: On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014. The invasion caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II, with more than 6.4 million Ukrainians fleeing the country and a third of the population displaced. The invasion also caused global food shortages. Reactions to the invasion have varied considerably across a broad spectrum of concerns including public reaction, media responses, and peace efforts.


text: The invasion received widespread international condemnation from governments and intergovernmental organisations, with reactions including new sanctions imposed on Russia, which triggered widespread economic effects on the Russian and world economies. The European Union financed and delivered military equipment to Ukraine. The bloc also implemented various economic sanctions, including a ban on Russian aircraft using EU airspace, a SWIFT ban on certain Russian banks, and a ban on certain Russian media outlets. Non-government reactions to the invasion included widespread boycotts of Russia and Belarus in the areas of entertainment, media, business, and sport. Many Indians, Africans and Middle Easterners working and studying in Ukraine have reported racism at the hands of Ukrainian and other Eastern European countries. The head of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has asked whether or not "the world really gives equal attention to black and white lives". He then proceeded to list other countries and compared them to the coverage of Ukraine: Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria.


text: There were also immediate worldwide protests against the invasion and daily protests in Russia itself. As well as the demonstrations, petitions and open letters were published in opposition to the war, and public figures, both cultural and political, released statements against the war. The protests were met with widespread repression by the Russian authorities. According to OVD-Info, at least 14,906 people were detained from 24 February to 13 March 2022. The Russian government cracked down on other forms of opposition to the war, including introducing widespread censorship measures and repression against people who signed anti-war petitions. In July 2022, Moscow city councillor was jailed for seven years for criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the first time someone went to jail under the new Russian 2022 war censorship laws. Meanwhile, other Russians, including Alexandra Skochilenko and Vladimir Kara-Murza, await similar trials. As well as the protests, there were also reported instances of anti-Russian sentiment and discrimination against the Russian diaspora and Russian-speaking immigrants as a result of the war. Ukraine has decided to rename the streets of Ukrainian cities named after Russian historical figures like Tchaikovsky or Tolstoy. In some parts of Ukraine that were newly occupied by Russian armed forces, protests against the occupiers took place.


text: In China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Serbia and the Arab regions, many social media users showed sympathy for Russian narratives due in part to distrust of US foreign policy, with Malaysian social media users stated that the MH17 shooting and 2020 Summer Paralympics incidents being the main reasons for supporting Russia. In March 2022, 98% of Ukrainians – including 82% of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine – said they did not believe that any part of Ukraine was rightfully part of Russia. At the end of April, a poll conducted in Russia by the Levada Center concluded the following: "74% of Russians support Russia's invasion in Ukraine and the actions of the Russian military. 19% of respondents said they did not support the actions of the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, 39% of respondents said that they were not following the war in Ukraine." Many respondents in Russia do not want to answer pollsters' questions for fear of negative consequences. When a group of researchers commissioned a survey on Russians' attitudes to the war in Ukraine, 29,400 of the 31,000 people they called refused to answer when they heard the question.


text: Pope Francis said that NATO may have caused Russia's invasion of Ukraine, because the alliance was "barking" at Russia's door. He also warned that the war in Ukraine was becoming like the Spanish Civil War, in which new and more powerful weapons were tested. He later implicitly accused Russia of an "armed conquest, expansionism and imperialism in Ukraine."


text: The invasion received widespread public condemnation internationally. Protests and demonstrations were held worldwide including in many post-Soviet countries and some in Russia itself.


text: Russian ambassadors in Europe, particularly western Europe and EU, were met with violent attacks by antiwar protesters while moving in the streets and in public ceremonies. The invasion became a viral phenomenon on social media and calls for mass boycotts of Russian culture and goods flooded multiple social media platforms. People from across the world tried to attack and shutdown Russian websites, particularly those operated by the Russian government. Many public machines connected to the internet inside Russia were shut down by hackers and some even displayed messages denouncing the invasion and glorifying Ukraine.


text: Anti-Russian sentiment and racism against Russians living abroad surged after the invasion with Russians in Europe facing discrimination, hatred and violent attacks. Many Russians living in Europe were expelled without clarification after the invasion broke with calls in the United States to expel all the Russian students.


text: There have been several warnings regarding the danger of "Ukraine fatigue" being established within the public mindset.


text: Depictions of earlier events or other misinformation, sometimes deliberate, were also shared, in addition to authentic first-hand portrayals. While many outlets tagged these misleading videos and images as false content, other sites did not.


text: Putin introduced prison sentences of up to 15 years for publishing "fake news" about Russian military operations, and fines or up to three years prison for calling for sanctions, prompting most Russian outlets to stop reporting on Ukraine. The Russian censorship agency "Roskomnadzor" ordered media to only use information from Russian state sources, and to describe the war as a "special military operation". Roskomnadzor also restricted access to Facebook, after it refused to stop fact-checking posts by state-owned Zvezda, RIA Novosti, "Lenta.ru", and "Gazeta.Ru". Pro-Kremlin television pundits like Vladimir Solovyov and Russian state-controlled channels like Russia-24, Russia-1, and Channel One follow the government narrative. The state-controlled TV where most Russians get their news presented the invasion as a liberation mission. Echo of Moscow closed down, and Roskomnadzor blocked access to BBC News Russian, Voice of America, RFE/RL, Deutsche Welle, and "Meduza", as well as Facebook and Twitter. A Moscow court demanded that Russian-language Wikipedia remove information about the invasion, and it fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million rubles for refusing to comply.


text: Ukrainian propaganda focused on awareness of the war and Ukraine's need for weapons. Official Ukrainian social media accounts targeted recruiting and international aid.


text: State-controlled media in China saw an opportunity for anti-American propaganda, and along with Cuban state media, amplified false claims of "secret US biolabs". Media outlets in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Iran repeated Russian propaganda, as did RT Actualidad in Latin America. Pro-government Turkish media blamed NATO and the US for the war. Pro-Fidesz media outlets in Hungary claimed that Ukraine provoked the war by becoming "a military base for America". Vietnam told reporters not to say "invasion", and to minimise coverage. South Africa's African National Congress endorsed the denazification narrative. Some Indonesian social media users and academics also spread Russian propaganda.


text: Some criticised the greater emphasis on events in Ukraine than on those in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen, claiming racial bias and a racial "double standard" when it comes to news reporting.


text: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been widely regarded as an act of aggression that violated the Charter of the United Nations. In addition, Russia was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and waging war in violation of international law, indiscriminately attacking densely populated areas and exposing civilians to unnecessary and disproportionate harm. Russian forces used cluster munitions, repudiated by most states because of their immediate and long-term danger to civilians. and fired other wide-area explosives like air-dropped bombs, missiles, heavy artillery shells and multiple launch rockets. Ukrainian forces reportedly also fired cluster munition rockets. Russian attacks damaged or destroyed homes, hospitals, schools and kindergartens the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, and 191 cultural properties such as historic buildings and churches. As of 25 March, the attacks had resulted in at least 1,035 civilian deaths and at least 1,650 civilian injuries. Russian forces were accused of forcibly deporting thousands of civilians to Russia, sexual assaults, and deliberately killing Ukrainian civilians. When Ukrainian forces recaptured Bucha in late March, evidence emerged of war crimes, including torture and deliberate killings of civilians, including children.


text: The invasion also violated the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court and prohibits "the invasion or attack... or any annexation by the use of force". Russia withdrew from the statute in 2016 and does not recognise ICC authority, but thirty-nine member states officially referred the matter to the ICC, and Ukraine accepted ICC jurisdiction in 2014. On 2 March, Karim Ahmad Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, opened a full investigation into past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed in Ukraine by any person from 21 November 2013 on.


text: The ICC also set up an online portal for people with evidence to contact investigators, and sent investigators, lawyers and other professionals to Ukraine to collect evidence.


text: On 4 March 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council created the International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, an independent committee of three human rights experts with a mandate to investigate violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the invasion. In the first month of the invasion, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, deployed by OHCHR to monitor all parties since 2014 using 60 UN human rights monitors, documented arbitrary detentions in Russian-occupied territories of 21 journalists and civil society activists, and 24 public officials and civil servants. They also expressed concern about reports and videos of ill-treatment, torture, and public humiliation of civilians and prisoners of war in territory controlled by Ukraine, allegedly committed by police officers and territorial defence forces. As of 15 July, the mission had documented approximately 271 cases of Russian troops forcibly detaining Ukrainians, with many of those detained being tortured, often by FSB officers, and with Russian mass detention of around 10,000 Ukrainians being likely.


text: In late March, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova stated that Ukrainian prosecutors had collected evidence for 2,500 "possible war crimes cases" and had "several hundred suspects". On 13 May the first war crimes trial began in Kyiv, of a Russian soldier who was ordered to shoot an unarmed civilian.


text: Ukraine filed a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Russia of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention, which both Ukraine and Russia had signed, with false claims of genocide as a pretext for the invasion. The International Association of Genocide Scholars supported Ukraine's request that the ICJ direct Russia to halt its offensive in Ukraine. On 16 March, the ICJ ordered Russia to "immediately suspend the military operations" on a 13–2 vote, with the Russian and Chinese judges in opposition. The order is binding, but the ICJ has no means of enforcement.


text: On 27 May 2022, a report by New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights stated that there were reasonable grounds to conclude that Russia breached two articles of the 1948 Genocide Convention, by publicly inciting genocide through denial of the right of Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a nation to exist, and by the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia, and that the serious risk of genocide triggers the legal obligation of all states to prevent it.


text: Under international criminal law's principle of universal jurisdiction, investigations were opened in Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.


text: On 16 July, Mikhail Mizintsev, chief of Russia's national defence control centre, has said during a briefing that over the last 24 hours, "28,424 people, including 5,148 children" have been evacuated from the Donbas and other parts of Ukraine to Russia. In total since 24 Feb, some "2,612,747 people, of which 412,553 are children" have been evacuated to Russia. Ukrainian authorities haven't been involved in these evacuations, both US and Ukrainian officials regard it as forcible deportations.


text: On 15 March, the Russian government targeted 313 Canadian individualsmainly parliamentarianswith sanctions, and on 21 April banned 61 more Canadians.


text: In June 2022, Russia imposed sanctions against Joe Biden's wife, Jill Biden, and daughter, Ashley Biden. They were amongst the list of 25 Americans who were restricted from entering Russian territory.


text: A YouGov poll conducted in April 2022 had 44% of Bulgarian respondents believing NATO was more responsible for the war, compared to 23% who believed Russia was more responsible. The percentage blaming NATO was higher than in the other 16 EU countries surveyed.


text: According to a survey of internet users from China published by the US-China Perception Monitor, 75% of respondents said they agreed or strongly agreed that supporting Russia in the conflict was in China's national interest. According to a survey conducted by Blackbox Research in March 2022, 71% of respondents from China expressed more sympathy for Ukraine over Russia and 3% expressed more sympathy for Russia.


text: As a consequence of the Russian invasion, opinion polls in Finland found that public support for joining NATO climbed from 28% in February to 68% in March.


text: A study performed by Airlangga University revealed that 71% of Indonesian netizens supported the invasion.


text: Polling in Russia is a challenge due to the autocratic nature of the Putin regime, which generates effects like self-censorship, worsened, once the invasion started, by military censorship. A majority of Russians polled supported the war prior to and immediately after the invasion, according to different measures by different polls in February and March 2022. A pre-invasion poll, conducted on 7–15 February by the British agency Savanta ComRes for CNN, found that approximately half of respondents agreed that Moscow should "use military force to prevent Kiev from joining NATO." Another two-thirds stated that they think Russians and Ukrainians are "one people," compared to only 28% of Ukrainians.


text: Another poll, conducted by the Russian Levada Center on 17–21 February, found that 52% of Russians polled expressed negative sentiments towards Ukraine. 60% believed that the United States and NATO are responsible for the escalation in Eastern Ukraine, while only 4% blamed Russia. The polls also suggested that public approval of Putin had surged by 13 percentage points since December 2021, a rally 'round the flag effect, with almost three-quarters (71%) supporting his leadership by February 2022.


text: In late February and mid-March 2022, two polls were conducted by a group of independent Russian sociologists to survey Russians' sentiments about the invasion; the results were obtained by Radio Liberty. The polls showed that just over 71% of Russians surveyed expressed positive emotions regarding the invasion of Ukraine, such as "pride, joy, respect, trust, and hope". Older respondents were more likely to support the invasion, with Russians over 35 being more likely to express positive emotions, and with these sentiments being even more prominent in those over 55, in which category more than half supported the invasion. Those under 18 were more "disappointed and anxious" about the war than other age groups; Russians aged 18–24 were more likely to feel indifference. The differences between the first and second polls show an increase in the number of people supporting the "special military operation" and DPR and LPR independence. The polls also revealed that a third of Russians surveyed strongly believe that Putin is "working in their interests," and another 26% believe that is true "to some extent." Most Russians polled think that it would be best if Putin stayed president for "as long as possible."


text: Another poll by "The Washington Post", conducted a week into the invasion, showed similar results, with 58% approving the invasion while 23% opposed it. A private survey agency, Russian Field, likewise reported that 59% of respondents supported "Russian military action in Ukraine" in polls conducted from 26 to 28 February 2022. According to the poll, of 18-to-24-year-olds, only 29% supported the invasion.


text: At the end of March, a poll conducted in Russia by the Levada Center found the following: When asked why they think the military operation is taking place, 43% of respondents stated it was to protect and defend civilians, ethnic Russians or Russian speakers in Ukraine, 25% to prevent an attack on Russia, 21% to get rid of nationalists and "denazify" Ukraine, and 3% to incorporate Ukraine and/or the Donbas region into Russia.


text: As detected by the polls, some observers noted a "generational struggle" among Russians over the war, with younger Russians generally opposed, and older Russians more likely to accept the narrative of state-controlled media in Russia. Kataryna Wolczuk, an associate fellow of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia programme, said, "[Older] Russians are inclined to think in line with the official 'narrative' that Russia is defending Russian speakers in Ukraine, so it's about offering protection rather than aggression."


text: A September 2022 survey conducted by MNFORCE, Seesame agencies and the Slovak Academy of Sciences found that in measuring with a 10-point scale, more than half of Slovak respondents said they tended to favour a Russian victory compared to a third saying they tended towards a Ukrainian one.


text: More than 90% of Ukrainians supported the actions of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, including more than 90% in western and central Ukraine and more than 80% in Russian-speaking regions in eastern and southern Ukraine. At the end of 2021, 75% of Ukrainians said they had a positive attitude toward ordinary Russians, while in May 2022, 82% of Ukrainians said they had a negative attitude toward ordinary Russians.


text: A poll conducted by NPR/Ipsos between 18 and 21 March 2022 found that only 36% of Americans approved the Biden administration's response to the invasion. An overwhelming 73 percent of Americans polled in October say the United States should continue to support Ukraine despite Russian threats to use nuclear weapons.


title: Beaker (Muppet)

text: Beaker is a Muppet character from "The Muppet Show". He is the shy, long-suffering assistant of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and is also similarly named after a piece of laboratory equipment.


title: Beaker (Muppet)

text: During the first season of "The Muppet Show", Dr. Honeydew presented the Muppet Labs segments by himself; Beaker was added as his lab assistant from the second season on. Beaker has bulging eyes, a shock of red hair, and a drawbridge mouth which serves as a frown. He was originally puppeteered and voiced by Richard Hunt until Hunt's death in 1992, when the role was taken over primarily by Steve Whitmire. After Whitmire was fired in 2016, David Rudman took over the character.


title: Beaker (Muppet)

text: Beaker is a magnet for disaster; he routinely experiences mishaps such as being blown up, electrocuted, eaten by large monsters, or afflicted with awkward side effects caused by Honeydew's experiments. Beaker communicates in a nervous, high-pitched squeak that sounds like "Mee-mee-mee mee". In books and merchandise, the sound is spelled "Meep". In "The Muppet Movie", he "meeps" Honeydew's line "sadly temporary". Rarely he can say normal words, such as "Bye-bye." Otherwise, his tone or expression helps to communicate his meaning. This helps Beaker communicate to his viewers directly without having to speak any real words at all.


title: Beaker (Muppet)

text: Beaker rapidly became a favorite with audiences, who both sympathized with and enjoyed laughing at his humorous sufferings. Occasionally, Beaker was able to take revenge, particularly in a segment when he inadvertently made numerous copies of himself and spent the rest of the episode chasing Dr. Honeydew around the theater. (This segment of "Muppet Labs" was from the Mac Davis episode.) In the 2008 TV special, "", Beaker is even more fortunate when he tests a wish machine and gets the company of model Petra Němcová, and not only refuses Honeydew's order to send her back, but then also successfully teleports away with her to apparently enjoy his first wish for the rest of the story.


title: Beaker (Muppet)

text: Beaker has also appeared as a musical performer, singing "Danny Boy", "Carol of the Bells", and "Habanera" with the Swedish Chef and Animal, and "Feelings" and "Dust in the Wind" solo. He also sang "Ode to Joy" with his clones who were accidentally formed by Honeydew's copying machine. The "Danny Boy" performance was marked by the Chef's singing in his trademark gibberish and Animal's inability to remember anything but the first three words. For "Feelings", Animal had to shush the increasingly unruly crowd (who tormented the Muppets throughout the episode) so Beaker could finish: "QUIET!!...Thank you." In the 2011 film "The Muppets", Beaker sang a comedic a cappella version of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as part of a barbershop quartet with Sam the Eagle, Rowlf the Dog and Link Hogthrob. Because of Disney's designation of the Muppets franchise as being for family audiences, Beaker was given a crucial role replacing the song's more questionable lines like "a mulatto" and "my libido" with "mee-mee-mee-mo."


title: Beaker (Muppet)

text: The two scientists were later incorporated into the "Muppet Babies" animated series. Howie Mandel (during early seasons) and Dave Coulier voiced Bunsen, and Frank Welker provided Beaker's squeaky meeps. Beaker was performed by Kevin Clash in "The Muppet Show Live". An animated Beaker was also voiced by Richard Hunt, his usual performer during that period, when he appeared in the short lived "Little Muppet Monsters" series.


title: Beaker (Muppet)

text: In a 2004 Internet poll sponsored by the BBC and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew were voted Britain's favourite cinematic scientists. They beat Mr. Spock, their closest rival, by two-to-one, winning a third of the total votes.


title: Beaker (Muppet)

text: Beaker features in an episode of "WWE Raw", assisting Santino Marella ringside in his match with Jack Swagger by providing him with a special energy drink formulated by Dr. Honeydew. In the same episode, Beaker is revealed to be distantly related to WWE wrestler Sheamus.


title: Beaker (Muppet)

text: and Ed Miliband have both been disparagingly likened to Beaker in appearance. Moreover, it was revealed in an interview in 2021 that Manic Street Preachers drummer Sean Moore was nicknamed "Beaker" while at school.


title: Korma

text: Korma or qorma (; ; ) is a dish originating in Indian subcontinent, consisting of meat or vegetables braised with yogurt (dahi), water or stock, and spices to produce a thick sauce or gravy.


title: Korma

text: The English name is an anglicisation of Hindi-Urdu "qormā" (क़ोरमा, قورمہ), meaning "braise". It refers to the cooking technique used in the dish. All these words, and the names of dishes such as the Iranian ghormeh (), Turkish Kavurma and the Azerbaijani qovurma or "kavarma", are ultimately derived from a Turkic word "qawirma", meaning "[a] fried thing". The Indian korma is, however, possibly unrelated in a culinary sense to the modern Turkish kavurma or to some other dishes using the same root word, as they use widely varying techniques and ingredients.


title: Korma

text: Korma has its roots in the Mughlai cuisine of the Indian subcontinent. A characteristic Mughal dish, it can be traced back to the 16th century and to the Mughal incursions into the region. Kormas were often prepared in the Mughal court kitchens, such as the famous white korma, perhaps garnished with "vark", said to have been served to Shah Jahan and his guests at the inauguration of the Taj Mahal.


title: Korma

text: Classically, a korma is defined as a dish where meat or vegetables are braised with yogurt or stock. The technique covers many different styles of korma. The flavour of a korma is based on a mixture of spices, including ground coriander and cumin, combined with yogurt kept below curdling temperature and incorporated slowly and carefully with the meat juices. Traditionally, this would have been carried out in a pot set over a very low fire, with charcoal on the lid to provide all-round heat. A korma can be mildly spiced or fiery and may use lamb, goat meat, chicken, beef or game; some kormas combine meat and vegetables such as spinach and turnip. The term "Shahi" (), used for some kormas indicates its status as a prestige dish, rather than an everyday meal, and its association with the court.


title: Korma

text: The korma style is similar to other braising techniques in that the meat or vegetable is first cooked briskly, or seared, using a high heat, traditionally using ghee, and then subjected to long, slow cooking using moist heat and a minimum of added liquid. The pot may be sealed with dough during the last stages of cooking, using a technique called "dum" or "dampokhtak".


title: Korma

text: The korma can make use of a technique called "bagar": later in the cooking, additional spices are mixed with heated ghee and then combined with the sauce formed by the braising; the pan is then covered and shaken to release steam and mix the contents.


title: Korma

text: There is a wide variation between individual korma and other "curry" recipes. Chilli and ginger are often used, but the precise method of preparation results in widely different flavors. Indian bay leaves or dried coconut may be added, the latter being a predominantly South Indian flavoring.


title: Korma

text: In the United Kingdom, a typical korma as served in curry houses is a mildly spiced dish with a thick sauce. It often features almonds, cashews or other nuts, and coconut or coconut milk. In the 21st century, chicken korma has several times been cited as the most popular curry in the UK, replacing chicken tikka masala in surveys of public eating habits.


title: Korma

text: Navratan korma is a vegetarian korma made with vegetables and either paneer (an Indian cheese) or nuts – or sometimes both. "Navratan" means "nine gems", and it is common for the recipe to include nine different vegetables.


title: Korma

text: In some parts of South Asia, "korma" is used to denote a traditional Eid al-Adha (festival of the sacrifice) dish of lamb, goat or cow that is braised in minimal or no spices. The flavour comes from the meat and fat of the chosen cuts. It was often done to preserve meats for a short-term period, as the fat layer forms a barrier to help prevent spoilage, similar to potted beef.


title: Korma

text: Korma or 'gulai kurma' in Malaysia is cooked with coconut milk instead of yogurt. Meats used for kurma include chicken, mutton, beef and deer.


title: Mut

text: Mut, also known as Maut and Mout, was a mother goddess worshipped in ancient Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush in present-day North Sudan. In Meroitic, her name was pronounced mata): 𐦨𐦴. Her name means "mother" in the ancient Egyptian language. Mut had many different aspects and attributes that changed and evolved a lot over the thousands of years of ancient Egyptian culture.


title: Mut

text: Mut was considered a primal deity, associated with the primordial waters of Nu from which everything in the world was born. Mut was sometimes said to have given birth to the world through parthenogenesis, but more often she was said to have a husband, the solar creator god Amun-Ra. Although Mut was believed by her followers to be the mother of everything in the world, she was particularly associated as the mother of the lunar child god Khonsu. At the Temple of Karnak in Egypt's capital city of Thebes, the family of Amun-Ra, Mut and Khonsu were worshipped together as the Theban Triad.


title: Mut

text: In art, Mut was usually depicted as a woman wearing the double crown of the kings of Egypt, representing her power over the whole of the land.


title: Mut

text: During the high point of Mut's cult, the rulers of Egypt would support her worship in their own way to emphasize their own authority and right to rule through an association with Mut. Mut was involved in many ancient Egyptian festivals such as the Opet Festival and the Beautiful Festival of the Valley. Her greatest temple was located at Karnak in Thebes.


title: Mut

text: Mut was the consort of Amun, the patron deity of pharaohs during the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BC) and New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC). Amaunet and Wosret may have been Amun's consorts early in Egyptian history, but Mut, who did not appear in texts or art until the late Middle Kingdom, displaced them. In the New Kingdom, Amun and Mut were the patron deities of Thebes, a major city in Upper Egypt, and formed a cultic triad with their son, Khonsu. Her other major role was as a lioness deity, an Upper Egyptian counterpart to the fearsome Lower Egyptian goddess Sekhmet.


title: Mut

text: In art, Mut was pictured as a woman with the wings of a Vulture, holding an ankh, wearing the united crown of Upper and Lower Egypt and a dress of bright red or blue, with the feather of the goddess Ma'at at her feet.


title: Mut

text: Alternatively, as a result of her assimilations, Mut is sometimes depicted as a cobra, a cat, a cow, or as a lioness as well as the vulture.


title: Mut

text: Before the end of the New Kingdom almost all images of female figures wearing the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt were depictions of the goddess Mut, here labeled "Lady of Heaven, Mistress of All the Gods". The last image on this page shows the goddess's facial features which mark this as a work made sometime between late Dynasty XVIII and relatively early in the reign of Ramesses II (c. 1279–1213 BC).


title: Mut

text: There are temples dedicated to Mut still standing in modern-day Egypt and Sudan, reflecting her widespread worship. The center of her cult in Sudan became the Mut Temple of Jebel Barkal and in Egypt the temple in Karnak. That temple had the statue that was regarded as an embodiment of her real "ka". Her devotions included daily rituals by the pharaoh and her priestesses. Interior reliefs depict scenes of the priestesses, currently the only known remaining example of worship in ancient Egypt that was exclusively administered by women.


title: Mut

text: Usually the queen served as the chief priestess in the temple rituals. The pharaoh participated also and would become a deity after death. In the case when the pharaoh was female, records of one example indicate that she had her daughter serve as the high priestess in her place. Often priests served in the administration of temples and oracles where priestesses performed the traditional religious rites. These rituals included music and drinking.


title: Mut

text: The pharaoh Hatshepsut had the ancient temple to Mut at Karnak rebuilt during her rule in the Eighteenth Dynasty. Previous excavators had thought that Amenhotep III had the temple built because of the hundreds of statues found there of Sekhmet that bore his name. However, Hatshepsut, who completed an enormous number of temples and public buildings, had completed the work seventy-five years earlier. She began the custom of depicting Mut with the crown of both Upper and Lower Egypt. It is thought that Amenhotep III removed most signs of Hatshepsut, while taking credit for the projects she had built.


title: Mut

text: Hatshepsut was a pharaoh who brought Mut to the fore again in the Egyptian pantheon, identifying strongly with the goddess. She stated that she was a descendant of Mut. She also associated herself with the image of Sekhmet, as the more aggressive aspect of the goddess, having served as a very successful warrior during the early portion of her reign as pharaoh.


title: Mut

text: Later in the same dynasty, Akhenaten suppressed the worship of Mut as well as the other deities when he promoted the monotheistic worship of his sun god, Aten. Tutankhamun later re-established her worship and his successors continued to associate themselves with Mut afterward.


title: Mut

text: Ramesses II added more work on the Mut temple during the nineteenth dynasty, as well as rebuilding an earlier temple in the same area, rededicating it to Amun and himself. He placed it so that people would have to pass his temple on their way to that of Mut.


title: Mut

text: Kushite pharaohs expanded the Mut temple and modified the Ramesses temple for use as the shrine of the celebrated birth of Amun and Khonsu, trying to integrate themselves into divine succession. They also installed their own priestesses among the ranks of the priestesses who officiated at the temple of Mut.


title: Mut

text: The Greek Ptolemaic dynasty added its own decorations and priestesses at the temple as well and used the authority of Mut to emphasize their own interests.


title: Mut

text: Later, the Roman emperor Tiberius rebuilt the site after a severe flood and his successors supported the temple until it fell into disuse, sometime around the third century AD. Later Roman officials used the stones from the temple for their own building projects, often without altering the images carved upon them.


title: Mut

text: In the wake of Akhenaten's revolution, and the subsequent restoration of traditional beliefs and practices, the emphasis in personal piety moved towards greater reliance on divine, rather than human, protection for the individual. During the reign of Rameses II a follower of the goddess Mut donated all his property to her temple and recorded in his tomb:


title: Mut

text: And he [Kiki] found Mut at the head of the gods, Fate and fortune in her hand, Lifetime and breath of life are hers to command ... I have not chosen a protector among men. I have not sought myself a protector among the great ... My heart is filled with my mistress. I have no fear of anyone. I spend the night in quiet sleep, because I have a protector.


title: Religious persecution

text: Religious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs or affiliations or their lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within societies to alienate or repress different subcultures is a recurrent theme in human history. Moreover, because a person's religion often determines their sense of morality, worldview, self-image, attitudes towards others, and overall personal identity to a significant extent, religious differences can be significant cultural, personal, and social factors.


title: Religious persecution

text: Religious persecution may be triggered by religious bigotry (i.e. when members of a dominant group denigrate religions other than their own) or it may be triggered by the state when it views a particular religious group as a threat to its interests or security. At a societal level, the dehumanization of a particular religious group may readily lead to violence or other forms of persecution. Religious persecution may be the result of societal and/or governmental regulation. Government regulation refer to the laws imposed by the government to regulate a religion, and societal regulation is the discrimination of citizens towards one or more religions. Indeed, in many countries, religious persecution has resulted in so much violence that it is considered a human rights problem.


title: Religious persecution

text: David T. Smith, in "Religious Persecution and Political Order in the United States", defines religious persecution as "violence or discrimination against members of a religious minority because of their religious affiliation," referring to "actions that are intended to deprive individuals of their political rights and to force minorities to assimilate, leave, or live as second-class citizens. In the aspect of a state's policy, it may be defined as violations of freedom of thought, conscience and belief which are spread in accordance with a systematic and active state policy which encourages actions such as harassment, intimidation and the imposition of punishments in order to infringe or threaten the targeted minority's right to life, integrity or liberty. The distinction between religious persecution and religious intolerance lies in the fact that in most cases, the latter is motivated by the sentiment of the population, which may be tolerated or encouraged by the state. The denial of people's civil rights on the basis of their religion is most often described as religious discrimination, rather than religious persecution.


title: Religious persecution

text: Examples of persecution include the confiscation or destruction of property, incitement of hatred, arrests, imprisonment, beatings, torture, murder, and executions. Religious persecution can be considered the opposite of freedom of religion.


title: Religious persecution

text: Bateman has differentiated different degrees of persecution. "It must be personally costly... It must be unjust and undeserved... it must be a direct result of one's faith."


title: Religious persecution

text: From a sociological perspective, the identity formation of strong social groups such as those generated by nationalism, ethnicity, or religion, is a causal aspect of practices of persecution. says it is these communities, who can be a majority or a minority, that generate violence. Since the development of identity involves 'what we are not' as much as 'what we are', there are grounds for the fear that tolerance of 'what we are not' can contribute to the erosion of identity. Brian J. Grim and Roger Finke say it is this perception of plurality as dangerous that leads to persecution. Both the state, and any dominant religion, share the concern that to "leave religion unchecked and without adequate controls will result in the uprising of religions that are dangerous to both state and citizenry," and this concern gives both the dominant religion and the state motives for restricting religious activity. Grim and Finke say it is specifically this religious regulation that leads to religious persecution. R.I. Moore says that persecution during the Middle Ages "provides a striking illustration of the classic deviance theory, [which is based on identity formation], as it was propounded by the father of sociology, Émile Durkheim". Persecution is also, often, part of a larger conflict involving emerging states as well as established states in the process of redefining their national identity.


title: Religious persecution

text: James L.Gibson adds that the greater the attitudes of loyalty and solidarity to the group identity, and the more the benefits to belonging there are perceived to be, the more likely a social identity will become intolerant of challenges. Combining a strong social identity with the state, increases the benefits, therefore it is likely persecution from that social group will increase. Legal restriction from the state relies on social cooperation, so the state in its turn must protect the social group which supports it, increasing the likelihood of persecution from the state as well. Grim and Finke say their studies indicate that the higher the degree of religious freedom, the lower the degree of violent religious persecution. "When religious freedoms are denied through the regulation of religious profession or practice, violent religious persecution and conflict increase."


title: Religious persecution

text: Perez Zagorin writes that, "According to some philosophers, tolerance is a moral virtue; if this is the case, it would follow that intolerance is a vice. But virtue and vice are qualities solely of individuals, and intolerance and persecution [in the Christian Middle Ages] were social and collective phenomena sanctioned by society and hardly questioned by anyone. Religious intolerance and persecution, therefore, were not seen as vices, but as necessary and salutary for the preservation of religious truth and orthodoxy and all that was seen to depend upon them." This view of persecution is not limited to the Middle Ages. As Christian R. Raschle and Jitse H. F. Dijkstra, say: "Religious violence is a complex phenomenon that exists in all places and times."


title: Religious persecution

text: In the ancient societies of Egypt, Greece and Rome, torture was an accepted aspect of the legal system. Gillian Clark says violence was taken for granted in the fourth century as part of both war and punishment; torture from the "carnifex," the professional torturer of the Roman legal system, was an accepted part of that system. Except for a few rare exceptions, such as the Persian empire under Cyrus and Darius, Denis Lacorne says that examples of religious tolerance in ancient societies, "from ancient Greece to the Roman empire, medieval Spain to the Ottoman Empire and the Venetian Republic", are not examples of tolerance in the modern sense of the term.


title: Religious persecution

text: The sociological view indicates religious intolerance and persecution are largely social processes that are determined more by the context the social community exists within than anything else. When governments ensure equal freedom for all, there is less persecution.


title: Religious persecution

text: The following statistics from Pew Research Center shows that Christianity is the world's most persecuted religion across all nations and that it continues to grow in number. According to the 2020 report, government restrictions and social hostilities toward Christianity have risen in over 150 countries. Furthermore, thirteen Christians die every day due to wide spread persecution. Following Christianity the following persecuted groups are Jews, Muslims, and others.


title: Religious persecution

text: "Religious cleansing" is sometimes used to refer to the removal of a population from a certain territory based on its religion. Throughout antiquity, population cleansing was largely motivated by economic and political factors, although ethnic factors occasionally played a role. During the Middle Ages, population cleansing took on a largely religious character. The religious motivation lost much of its salience early in the modern era, although until the 18th century ethnic enmity in Europe remained couched in religious terms. Richard Dawkins has argued that references to "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq are euphemisms for what should more accurately be called religious cleansing. According to Adrian Koopman, the widespread use of the term "ethnic cleansing" in such cases suggests that in many situations there is confusion between ethnicity and religion.


title: Religious persecution

text: Other acts of violence which are not always committed against adherents of particular religions such as war, torture, and ethnic cleansing, may take on the qualities of religious persecution when one or more of the parties which are involved in them are characterized by their religious homogeneity; an example of this occurs when conflicting populations that belong to different ethnic groups also belong to different religions or denominations. The difference between religious and ethnic identity might sometimes be obscure (see Ethnoreligious); nevertheless, cases of genocide in the 20th century cannot be fully-explained by the citation of religious differences. Still, cases such as the Greek genocide, the Armenian genocide, and the Assyrian genocide are sometimes seen as cases of religious persecution and as a result, the lines between ethnic and religious violence are sometimes blurry.


title: Religious persecution

text: Since the Early modern period, an increasing number of religious cleansings were entwined with ethnic elements. Since religion is an important or a central marker of ethnic identity, some conflicts can best be described as "ethno-religious conflicts".


title: Religious persecution

text: Nazi antisemitism provides another example of the contentious divide between ethnic and religious persecution, because Nazi propaganda tended to construct its image of Jews as belonging to a race, it de-emphasized Jews as being defined by their religion. In keeping with what they were taught in Nazi propaganda, the perpetrators of the Holocaust made no distinction between secular Jews, atheistic Jews, orthodox Jews and Jews who had converted to Christianity.


title: Religious persecution

text: The persecution of beliefs that are deemed schismatic is one thing; the persecution of beliefs that are deemed heretical or blasphemous is another. Although a public disagreement on secondary matters might be serious enough, it has often only led to religious discrimination. A public renunciation of the core elements of a religious doctrine under the same circumstances would, on the other hand, have put one in far greater danger. While dissenters from the official Church only faced fines and imprisonment in Protestant England, six people were executed for heresy or blasphemy during the reign of Elizabeth I, and two more were executed in 1612 under James I.


title: Religious persecution

text: Similarly, heretical sects like Cathars, Waldensians and Lollards were brutally suppressed in Western Europe, while, at the same time, Catholic Christians lived side by side with 'schismatic' Orthodox Christians after the East-West Schism in the borderlands of Eastern Europe.


title: Religious persecution

text: More than 300 Roman Catholics were put to death for treason by English governments between 1535 and 1681, thus they were officially executed for secular rather than religious offenses. In 1570, Pope Pius V issued his papal bull "Regnans in Excelsis", which absolved Catholics from their obligations to the government. This dramatically worsened the persecution of Catholics in England. The 1584 Parliament of England, declared in "An Act against Jesuits, seminary priests, and such other like disobedient persons" that the purpose of all Catholic missionaries who had come to Britain was "to stir up and move sedition, rebellion and open hostility". Consequently, even strictly apolitical Jesuit priests like Saint John Ogilvie and Robert Southwell were subjected to torture and execution, as were members of the laity like Sts. Margaret Clitherow and Richard Gwyn. This drastically contrasts with the image of the Elizabethan era as a golden age, but compared to the antecedent Marian Persecutions there is an important difference to consider. Queen Mary was motivated by determination to exterminate Protestantism from all her Kingdoms and to restore the independence of the English Church from control by the state. During her short reign from 1553 to 1558, about 290 Protestants were burned at the stake. While Mary's sister Queen Elizabeth I allegedly, "acted out of fear for the security of her realm", she sought to coerce both Catholics and Protestants to embrace a national church that was completely subservient to the state.


title: Religious persecution

text: Over the centuries that followed, English governments continued to fear and prosecute both real and imaginary conspiracies like the Popish Plot, an alleged plan to assassinate King Charles II and massacre the Protestants of the British Isles. In reality, the plot was a fictitious concoction by Titus Oates and Whig politician Lord Shaftesbury. Before the falsity of their claims were exposed, however, at least 22 innocent clergy and laity, including Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, had been unjustly convicted of high treason and executed at Tyburn.


title: Religious persecution

text: The descriptive use of the term religious persecution is rather difficult. Religious persecution has occurred in different historical, geographical and social contexts since at least antiquity. Until the 18th century, some groups were nearly universally persecuted for their religious views, such as atheists, Jews and Zoroastrians.


title: Religious persecution

text: Early Christianity also came into conflict with the Roman Empire, and it may have been more threatening to the established polytheistic order than Judaism had been, because of the importance of evangelism in Christianity. Under Nero, the Jewish exemption from the requirement to participate in public cults was lifted and Rome began to actively persecute monotheists. This persecution ended in 313 AD with the Edict of Milan, and Christianity was made the official religion of the empire in 380 AD. By the eighth century, Christianity had attained a clear ascendancy across Europe and neighboring regions, and a period of consolidation began which was marked by the pursuit of heretics, heathens, Jews, Muslims, and various other religious groups.


title: Religious persecution

text: By contrast to the notion of civil tolerance in early modern Europe, the subjects were required to attend the state church; this attitude can be described as "territoriality" or "religious uniformity", and its underlying assumption is brought to a point by a statement of the Anglican theologian Richard Hooker: "There is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the [English] commonwealth; nor any man a member of the commonwealth, which is not also of the Church of England."


title: Religious persecution

text: Before a vigorous debate about religious persecution took place in England (starting in the 1640s), for centuries in Europe, religion had been tied to territory. In England, there had been several Acts of Uniformity; in continental Europe, the Latin phrase "cuius regio, eius religio" had been coined in the 16th century and applied as a fundament for the Peace of Augsburg (1555). It was pushed to the extreme by absolutist regimes, particularly by the French kings Louis XIV and his successors. It was under their rule that Catholicism became the sole compulsory allowed religion in France and that the huguenots had to massively leave the country. Persecution meant that the state was committed to secure religious uniformity by coercive measures, as eminently obvious in a statement of Roger L'Estrange: "That which you call persecution, I translate Uniformity".


title: Religious persecution

text: However, in the 17th century, writers like Pierre Bayle, John Locke, Richard Overton and Roger William broke the link between territory and faith, which eventually resulted in a shift from territoriality to religious voluntarism. It was Locke who, in his Letter Concerning Toleration, defined the state in purely secular terms: "The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests." Concerning the church, he went on: "A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord." With this treatise, John Locke laid one of the most important intellectual foundations of the separation of church and state, which ultimately led to the secular state.


title: Religious persecution

text: One period of religious persecution which has been extensively studied is early modern England, since the rejection of religious persecution, now common in the Western world, originated there. The English 'Call for Toleration' was a turning point in the Christian debate on persecution and toleration, and early modern England stands out to the historians as a place and time in which literally "hundreds of books and tracts were published either for or against religious toleration."


title: Religious persecution

text: The most ambitious chronicle of that time is W.K.Jordan's magnum opus "The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 1558–1660" (four volumes, published 1932–1940). Jordan wrote as the threat of fascism rose in Europe, and this work is seen as a defense of the fragile values of humanism and tolerance. More recent introductions to this period are "Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689" (2000) by John Coffey and "Charitable hatred. Tolerance and intolerance in England, 1500–1700" (2006) by Alexandra Walsham. To understand why religious persecution has occurred, historians like Coffey "pay close attention to what the persecutors said they were doing."


title: Religious persecution

text: No religion is free from internal dissent, although the degree of dissent that is tolerated within a particular religious organization can strongly vary. This degree of diversity tolerated within a particular church is described as "ecclesiastical tolerance", and is one form of religious toleration. However, when people nowadays speak of religious tolerance, they most often mean "civil tolerance", which refers to the degree of religious diversity that is tolerated within the state.


title: Religious persecution

text: In the absence of civil toleration, someone who finds himself in disagreement with his congregation does not have the option to leave and chose a different faith—simply because there is only one recognized faith in the country (at least officially). In modern western civil law any citizen may join and leave a religious organization at will; In western societies, this is taken for granted, but actually, this legal separation of Church and State only started to emerge a few centuries ago.


title: Religious persecution

text: In the Christian debate on persecution and toleration, the notion of civil tolerance allowed Christian theologians to reconcile Jesus' commandment to love one's enemies with other parts of the New Testament that are rather strict regarding dissent within the church. Before that, theologians like Joseph Hall had reasoned from the ecclesiastical intolerance of the early Christian church in the New Testament to the civil intolerance of the Christian state.


title: Religious persecution

text: The Bishop of Vladimir Feodor turned some people into slaves, others were locked in prison, cut their heads, burnt eyes, cut tongues or crucified on walls. Some heretics were executed by burning them alive. According to an inscription of Khan Mengual-Temir, Metropolitan Kiril was granted the right to heavily punish with death for blasphemy against the Orthodox Church or breach of ecclesiastical privileges. He advised all means of destruction to be used against heretics, but without bloodshed, in the name of 'saving souls'. Heretics were drowned. Novgorod Bishop Gennady Gonzov turned to Tsar Ivan III requesting the death of heretics. Gennady admired the Spanish inquisitors, especially his contemporary Torquemada, who for 15 years of inquisition activity burned and punished thousands of people. As in Rome, persecuted fled to depopulated areas. The most terrible punishment was considered an underground pit, where rats lived. Some people had been imprisoned and tied to the wall there, and untied after their death. Old Believers were persecuted and executed, the order was that even those renouncing completely their beliefs and baptized in the state church to be lynched without mercy. The writer Lomonosov opposed the religious teachings and by his initiative a scientific book against them was published. The book was destroyed, the Russian synod insisted Lomonosov's works to be burned and requested his punishment.


title: Religious persecution

text: Although his book was written before the September 11 attacks, John Coffey explicitly compares Islamophobia in the contemporary Western world to the English Whig Party's paranoia about the fictitious Popish Plot. Mehdi Ghezali and Murat Kurnaz were among the Muslims who were imprisoned in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, but they were not found to have any connections to terrorism, because they had previously traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to pursue their religious interests.


title: Religious persecution

text: The United States submits an annual report on religious freedom and persecution to the Congress. The report contains data which the United States collects from U.S. embassies around the world in collaboration with the Office of International Religious Freedom and other relevant U.S. government and non-governmental institutions. The data is available to the public. The 2018 study details, country by country, the violations of religious freedom taking place in approximately 75% of the 195 countries in the world. Between 2007 and 2017, the PEW organization found that "Christians experienced harassment by governments or social groups in the largest number of countries"—144 countries—but that it is almost equal to the number of countries (142) in which Muslims experience harassment. PEW has published a caution concerning the interpretation of these numbers: "The Center's recent report ... does not attempt to estimate the number of victims in each country... it does not speak to the intensity of harassment..."


title: Religious persecution

text: No religious group is free from harassment in the contemporary world. Klaus Wetzel, an expert on religious persecution for the German Bundestag, the House of Lords, the US House of Representatives, the European Parliament, and the International Institute for Religious Freedom, explains that "In around a quarter of all countries in the world, the restrictions imposed by governments, or hostilities towards one or more religious groups, are "high" or "very high". Some of the most populous countries in the world belong to this group, such as China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Therefore, around three quarters of the world's population live in them."


title: Religious persecution

text: At the symposium on law and religion in 2014, Michelle Mack said: "Despite what appears to be a near-universal expression of commitment to religious human rights, the frequency-and severity-of religious persecution worldwide is staggering. Although it is impossible to determine with certainty the exact numbers of people persecuted for their faith or religious affiliation, it is unquestioned that "violations of freedom of religion and belief, including acts of severe persecution, occur with fearful frequency." She quotes Irwin Colter, human rights advocate and author as saying "[F]reedom of religion remains the most persistently violated human right in the annals of the species."


title: Religious persecution

text: Despite the ubiquitous nature of religious persecution, the traditional human rights community typically chooses to emphasize "more tangible encroachments on human dignity," such as violations based on race, gender, and class using national, ethnic, and linguistic groupings instead.


title: Religious persecution

text: Used before the 18th century as an insult, atheism was punishable by death in ancient Greece as well as in the Christian and Muslim worlds during the Middle Ages. Today, atheism is punishable by death in 13 countries (Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, the Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen), all of them Muslim, while "the overwhelming majority" of the 192 United Nations member countries "at best discriminate against citizens who have no belief in a god and at worst they can jail them for offences which are dubbed blasphemy".


title: Religious persecution

text: State atheism has been defined by David Kowalewski as the official "promotion of atheism" by a government, typically by the active suppression of religious freedom and practice. It is a misnomer which is used in reference to a government's anti-clericalism, its opposition to religious institutional power and influence, whether it is real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, including the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen.


title: Religious persecution

text: State atheism was first practiced for a brief period in Revolutionary France and later it was practiced in Revolutionary Mexico and Communist states. The Soviet Union had a long history of state atheism, in which social success largely required individuals to profess atheism, stay away from churches and even vandalize them; this attitude was especially militant during the middle Stalinist era from 1929 to 1939. The Soviet Union attempted to suppress religion over wide areas of its influence, including places like central Asia, and the post-World War II Eastern bloc. One state within that bloc, the Socialist People's Republic of Albania under Enver Hoxha, went so far as to officially ban all religious practices.


title: Religious persecution

text: The Baháʼís are Iran's largest religious minority, and Iran is the location of one of the seventh largest Baháʼí population in the world, with just over 251,100 as of 2010. Baháʼís in Iran have been subject to unwarranted arrests, false imprisonment, beatings, torture, unjustified executions, confiscation and destruction of property owned by individuals and the Baháʼí community, denial of employment, denial of government benefits, denial of civil rights and liberties, and denial of access to higher education.


title: Religious persecution

text: More recently, in the later months of 2005, an intensive anti-Baháʼí campaign was conducted by Iranian newspapers and radio stations. The state-run and influential "Kayhan" newspaper, whose managing editor is appointed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei The press in Iran, ran nearly three dozen articles defaming the Baháʼí Faith. Furthermore, a confidential letter sent on 29 October 2005 by the Chairman of the Command Headquarters of the Armed Forced in Iran states that the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei has instructed the Command Headquarters to identify people who adhere to the Baháʼí Faith and to monitor their activities and gather any and all information about the members of the Baháʼí Faith. The letter was brought to the attention of the international community by Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on freedom of religion or belief, in a 20 March 2006 press release .


title: Religious persecution

text: In the press release the Special Rapporteur states that she "is highly concerned by information she has received concerning the treatment of members of the Baháʼí community in Iran." She further states that "The Special Rapporteur is concerned that this latest development indicates that the situation with regard to religious minorities in Iran is, in fact, deteriorating."


title: Religious persecution

text: Persecution of Buddhists was a widespread phenomenon throughout the history of Buddhism, lasting to this day. This began as early as the 3rd century AD, by the Zoroastrian high priest Kirder of the Sasanian Empire.


title: Religious persecution

text: Anti-Buddhist sentiments in Imperial China between the 5th and 10th century led to the "Four Buddhist Persecutions in China" of which the "Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution" of 845 was probably the most severe. However Buddhism managed to survive but was greatly weakened. During the Northern Expedition, in 1926 in Guangxi, Kuomintang Muslim General Bai Chongxi led his troops in destroying Buddhist temples and smashing idols, turning the temples into schools and Kuomintang party headquarters. During the Kuomintang Pacification of Qinghai, the Muslim General Ma Bufang and his army wiped out many Tibetan Buddhists in the northeast and eastern Qinghai, and destroyed Tibetan Buddhist temples.


title: Religious persecution

text: The Muslim invasion of the Indian subcontinent was the first great iconoclastic invasion into the Indian subcontinent. According to William Johnston, hundreds of Buddhist monasteries and shrines were destroyed, Buddhist texts were burnt by the Muslim armies, monks and nuns killed during the 12th and 13th centuries in the Indo-Gangetic Plain region. The Buddhist university of Nalanda was mistaken for a fort because of the walled campus. The Buddhist monks who had been slaughtered were mistaken for Brahmins according to Minhaj-i-Siraj. The walled town, the Odantapuri monastery, was also conquered by his forces. Sumpa basing his account on that of Śākyaśrībhadra who was at Magadha in 1200, states that the Buddhist university complexes of Odantapuri and Vikramshila were also destroyed and the monks massacred. Muslim forces attacked the north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent many times. Many places were destroyed and renamed. For example, Odantapuri's monasteries were destroyed in 1197 by Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji and the town was renamed. Likewise, Vikramashila was destroyed by the forces of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji around 1200. The sacred Mahabodhi Temple was almost completely destroyed by the Muslim invaders. Many Buddhist monks fled to Nepal, Tibet, and South India to avoid the consequences of war. Tibetan pilgrim Chöjepal (1179–1264), who arrived in India in 1234, had to flee advancing Muslim troops multiple times, as they were sacking Buddhist sites.


title: Religious persecution

text: In Japan, the haibutsu kishaku during the Meiji Restoration (starting in 1868) was an event triggered by the official policy of separation of Shinto and Buddhism (or shinbutsu bunri). This caused great destruction to Buddhism in Japan, the destruction of Buddhist temples, images and texts took place on a large scale all over the country and Buddhist monks were forced to return to secular life.


title: Religious persecution

text: During the 2012 Ramu violence in Bangladesh, a 25,000-strong Muslim mob set fire to destroy at least twelve Buddhist temples and around fifty homes throughout the town and surrounding villages after seeing a picture of an allegedly desecrated Quran, which they claimed had been posted on Facebook by Uttam Barua, a local Buddhist man. The actual posting of the photo was not done by the Buddhist who was falsely slandered.


title: Religious persecution

text: From the beginnings of Christianity as a movement within Judaism, Early Christians were persecuted for their faith at the hands of both Jews and the Roman Empire, which controlled much of the areas where Christianity was first distributed. This continued from the first century until the early fourth, when the religion was legalized by the Edict of Milan, eventually becoming the State church of the Roman Empire. Many Christians fled persecution in the Roman empire by emigrating to the Persian empire where for a century and a half after Constantine's conversion, they were persecuted under the Sassanids, with thousands losing their lives. Christianity continued to spread through "merchants, slaves, traders, captives and contacts with Jewish communities" as well as missionaries who were often killed for their efforts. This killing continued into the Early modern period beginning in the fifteenth century, to the Late modern period of the twentieth century, and into the contemporary period today.


title: Religious persecution

text: In contemporary society, Christians are persecuted in Iran and other parts of the Middle East, for example, for proselytising, which is illegal there. Of the 100–200 million Christians alleged to be under assault, the majority are persecuted in Muslim-majority nations. Every year, the Christian non-profit organization Open Doors publishes the World Watch List—a list of the top 50 countries which it designates as the most dangerous for Christians.


title: Religious persecution

text: The 2018 World Watch List has the following countries as its top ten: North Korea, and Eritrea, whose Christian and Muslim religions are controlled by the state, and Afghanistan, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, India and Iran, which are all predominantly non-Christian. Due to the large number of Christian majority countries, differing groups of Christians are harassed and persecuted in Christian countries such as Eritrea and Mexico more often than in Muslim countries, although not in greater numbers.


title: Religious persecution

text: There are low to moderate restrictions on religious freedom in three-quarters of the world's countries, with high and very high restrictions in a quarter of them, according to the State Department's report on religious freedom and persecution delivered annually to Congress. The Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte—the International Society for Human Rights—in Frankfurt, Germany is a non-governmental organization with 30,000 members from 38 countries who monitor human rights. In September 2009, then chairman Martin Lessenthin, issued a report estimating that 80% of acts of religious persecution around the world were aimed at Christians at that time. According to the World Evangelical Alliance, over 200 million Christians are denied fundamental human rights solely because of their faith.


title: Religious persecution

text: A report released by the UK's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and a report by the PEW organization studying worldwide restrictions of religious freedom, both have Christians suffering in the highest number of countries, rising from 125 in 2015 to 144 as of 2018. PEW has published a caution concerning the interpretation of these numbers: "The Center's recent report ... does not attempt to estimate the number of victims in each country... it does not speak to the intensity of harassment..." France, who restricts the wearing of the hijab, is counted as a persecuting country equally with Nigeria and Pakistan where, according to the Global Security organization, Christians have been killed for their faith.


title: Religious persecution

text: In December 2016, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, published a statement that "between 2005 and 2015 there were 900,000 Christian martyrs worldwide—an average of 90,000 per year, marking a Christian as persecuted every 8 minutes." However, the BBC has reported that others such as Open Doors and the International Society for Human Rights have disputed that number's accuracy. Gina Zurlo, the CSGC's assistant director, explained that two-thirds of the 90,000 died in tribal conflicts, and nearly half were victims of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Klaus Wetzel, an internationally recognized expert on religious persecution, explains that Gordon-Conwell defines Christian martyrdom in the widest possible sense, while Wetzel and Open doors and others such as The International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) use a more restricted definition: "those who are killed, "who would not have been killed", if they had not been Christians." Open Doors documents that anti-Christian sentiment is presently based on direct evidence and makes conservative estimates based on indirect evidence. This approach dramatically lowers the numerical count. Open Doors says that, while numbers fluctuate every year, they estimate 11 Christians are currently dying for their faith somewhere in the world every day.


title: Religious persecution

text: The persecution of Copts is a historical and ongoing issue in Egypt against Coptic Orthodox Christianity and its followers. It is also a prominent example of the poor status of Christians in the Middle East despite the religion being native to the region. Copts are the Christ followers in Egypt, usually Oriental Orthodox, who currently make up around 10% of the population of Egypt—the largest religious minority of that country. Copts have cited instances of persecution throughout their history and Human Rights Watch has noted "growing religious intolerance" and sectarian violence against Coptic Christians in recent years, as well as a failure by the Egyptian government to effectively investigate properly and prosecute those responsible.


title: Religious persecution

text: The Muslim conquest of Egypt took place in AD 639, during the Byzantine empire. Despite the political upheaval, Egypt remained a mainly Christian, but Copts lost their majority status after the 14th century, as a result of the intermittent persecution and the destruction of the Christian churches there, accompanied by heavy taxes for those who refused to convert. From the Muslim conquest of Egypt onwards, the Coptic Christians were persecuted by different Muslims regimes, such as the Umayyad Caliphate, Abbasid Caliphate, Fatimid Caliphate, Mamluk Sultanate, and Ottoman Empire; the persecution of Coptic Christians included closing and demolishing churches and forced conversion to Islam.


title: Religious persecution

text: Since 2011 hundreds of Egyptian Copts have been killed in sectarian clashes, and many homes, Churches and businesses have been destroyed. In just one province (Minya), 77 cases of sectarian attacks on Copts between 2011 and 2016 have been documented by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. The abduction and disappearance of Coptic Christian women and girls also remains a serious ongoing problem.


title: Religious persecution

text: Political and religious animosity against Jehovah's Witnesses has at times led to mob action and government oppression in various countries. Their stance regarding political neutrality and their refusal to serve in the military has led to imprisonment of members who refused conscription during World War II and at other times where national service has been compulsory. Their religious activities are currently banned or restricted in some countries, including China, Vietnam, and many Islamic states.


title: Religious persecution

text: Authors including William Whalen, Shawn Francis Peters and former Witnesses Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Alan Rogerson and William Schnell have claimed the arrests and mob violence in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s were the consequence of what appeared to be a deliberate course of provocation of authorities and other religious groups by Jehovah's Witnesses. Whalen, Harrison and Schnell have suggested Rutherford invited and cultivated opposition for publicity purposes in a bid to attract dispossessed members of society, and to convince members that persecution from the outside world was evidence of the truth of their struggle to serve God. Watch Tower Society literature of the period directed that Witnesses should "never seek a controversy" nor resist arrest, but also advised members not to co-operate with police officers or courts that ordered them to stop preaching, and to prefer jail rather than pay fines.


title: Religious persecution

text: For almost 1000 years, the Dogon people, an ancient tribe in Mali had faced religious and ethnic persecution—through jihads by dominant Muslim communities. These jihadic expeditions were undertaken in order to force the Dogon to abandon their traditional religious beliefs and convert to Islam. Such jihads caused the Dogon to abandon their original villages and move up to the cliffs of Bandiagara in search of a place where they could defend themselves more efficiently and escape persecution—which they often did by building their dwellings in little nooks and crannies. In the early era of French colonialism in Mali, the French authorities appointed Muslim relatives of El Hadj Umar Tall as chiefs of the Bandiagara—despite the fact that the area has been a Dogon area for centuries.


title: Religious persecution

text: In 1864, Tidiani Tall, the nephew and successor of the 19th century Senegambian jihadist and Muslim leader—El Hadj Umar Tall, chose to make Bandiagara the capital of the Toucouleur Empire thereby exacerbating the inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict. In recent years, the Dogon have accused the Fulanis of supporting Islamic terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and they have also accused the Fulanis of sheltering members of these same terrorist groups in Dogon country, leading to the creation of the Dogon militia Dan Na Ambassagou in 2016—whose aim is to defend the Dogon against systematic attacks. That action resulted in the Ogossagou massacre of Fulanis in March 2019, and the Fula retaliated by committing the Sobane Da massacre in June of that year. In the wake of the Ogossagou massacre, the President of Mali, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and his government ordered the dissolution of Dan Na Ambassagou—whom they hold partly responsible for the attacks. The Dogon militia group denied its involvement in the massacre and it also rejected calls to disband itself.


title: Religious persecution

text: Historically the relationship between the Druze and Muslims has been characterized by intense persecution. The Druze faith is often classified as a branch of Isma'ilism. Even though the faith originally developed out of Ismaili Islam, most Druze do not identify as Muslims, and they do not accept the Five Pillars of Islam. The Druze have frequently experienced persecution by different Muslim regimes such as the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, Mamluk, Sunni Ottoman Empire, and Egypt Eyalet. The persecution of the Druze included massacres, demolishing Druze prayer houses and holy places and forced conversion to Islam. Those were no ordinary killings in the Druze's narrative, they were meant to eradicate the whole community according to the Druze narrative. Most recently, the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, saw persecution of the Druze at the hands of Islamic extremists.


title: Religious persecution

text: Ibn Taymiyya a prominent Muslim scholar muhaddith, dismissed the Druze as non-Muslims, and his fatwa cited that Druzes: "Are not at the level of ′Ahl al-Kitāb (People of the Book) nor mushrikin (polytheists). Rather, they are from the most deviant kuffār (Infidel) ... Their women can be taken as slaves and their property can be seized ... they are to be killed whenever they are found and cursed as they described ... It is obligatory to kill their scholars and religious figures so that they do not misguide others", which in that setting would have legitimized violence against them as apostates. Ottomans have often relied on Ibn Taymiyya religious ruling to justify their persecution of Druze.


title: Religious persecution

text: The persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual practice began with campaigns initiated in 1999 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to eliminate Falun Gong in China. It is characterised by multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education, and a variety of extralegal coercive measures such as arbitrary arrests, forced labor, and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death.


title: Religious persecution

text: There have being reports of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Several researchers—most notably Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, former parliamentarian David Kilgour, and investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann—estimate that tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience have been killed to supply a lucrative trade in human organs and cadavers.


title: Religious persecution

text: Hindus have experienced historical and current religious persecution and systematic violence. These occurred in the form of forced conversions, documented massacres, demolition and desecration of temples, as well as the destruction of educational centers.


title: Religious persecution

text: For example, Hindus have been one of the targeted and persecuted minorities in Pakistan. Militancy and sectarianism has been rising in Pakistan since the 1990s, and the religious minorities have "borne the brunt of the Islamist's ferocity" suffering "greater persecution than in any earlier decade", states Farahnaz Ispahani—a Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center. This has led to attacks and forced conversion of Hindus, and other minorities such as Christians. According to Tetsuya Nakatani—a Japanese scholar of Cultural Anthropology specializing in South Asia refugee history, after the mass exodus of Hindu, Sikh and other non-Muslim refugees during the 1947 partition of British India, there were several waves of Hindu refugees arrival into India from its neighbors. The fearful and persecuted refugee movements were often after various religious riots between 1949 and 1971 that targeted non-Muslims within West Pakistan or East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The status of these persecuted Hindu refugees in India was in political limbo until the passage of Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 by the Indian Government. Systemically in Pakistan, Hindus are persecuted under the government's Blasphemy Law (with often consequence of death irrelevant of the legal claim's accuracy), and as per the rhetoric of mainstream politicians interpreting vague constitutional law, have second-class rights in the nation regarding places of worship and facets of their religion.


title: Religious persecution

text: Similar concerns about religious persecution of Hindu and other minorities in Bangladesh have also been expressed. A famous report by Dr. Abul Barkat, a famous Bangladeshi economist and research, projects that there will be no Hindus left in Bangladesh in 30 years. The USCIRF notes hundreds of cases of "killings, attempted killings, death threats, assaults, rapes, kidnappings, and attacks on homes, businesses, and places of worship" on religious minorities in 2017. Since the 1990s, Hindus have been a persecuted minority in Afghanistan, and a subject of "intense hate" with the rise of religious fundamentalism in Afghanistan. Their "targeted persecution" triggered an exodus and forced them to seek asylum. The persecuted Hindus have remained stateless and without citizenship rights in India, since it has historically lacked any refugee law or uniform policy for persecuted refugees, state Ashish Bose and Hafizullah Emadi, though the recent Citizen Amendment Act passed by India is a form of solace for those Hindus having entered India before 2015.


title: Religious persecution

text: The Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) resulted in one of the largest genocides of the 20th century. While estimates of the number of casualties was 3,000,000, it is reasonably certain that Hindus bore a disproportionate brunt of the Pakistan Army's onslaught against the Bengali population of what was East Pakistan. An article in "Time" magazine dated 2 August 1971, stated "the Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Muslim military hatred." Senator Edward Kennedy wrote in a report that was part of United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations testimony dated 1 November 1971, "Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered, and in some places, painted with yellow patches marked "H". All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad". In the same report, Senator Kennedy reported that 80% of the refugees in India were Hindus and according to numerous international relief agencies such as UNESCO and World Health Organization the number of East Pakistani refugees at their peak in India was close to 10 million. Given that the Hindu population in East Pakistan was around 11 million in 1971, this suggests that up to 8 million, or more than 70% of the Hindu population had fled the country. The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Sydney Schanberg covered the start of the war and wrote extensively on the suffering of the East Bengalis, including the Hindus both during and after the conflict. In a syndicated column "The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored", he wrote about his return to liberated Bangladesh in 1972. "Other reminders were the yellow "H"s the Pakistanis had painted on the homes of Hindus, particular targets of the Muslim army" (by "Muslim army", meaning the Pakistan Army, which had targeted Bengali Muslims as well), (Newsday, 29 April 1994).


title: Religious persecution

text: Hindus constitute approximately 0.5% of the total population of the United States. Hindus in the US enjoy both "de jure" and "de facto" legal equality. However, a series of attacks were made on people Indian origin by a street gang called the "Dotbusters" in New Jersey in 1987, the dot signifying the Bindi dot sticker worn on the forehead by Indian women. The lackadaisical attitude of the local police prompted the South Asian community to arrange small groups all across the state to fight back against the street gang. The perpetrators have been put to trial. On 2 January 2012, a Hindu worship center in New York City was firebombed. The Dotbusters were primarily based in New York and New Jersey and committed most of their crimes in Jersey City. A number of perpetrators have been brought to trial for these assaults. Although tougher anti-hate crime laws were passed by the New Jersey legislature in 1990, the attacks continued, with 58 cases of hate crimes against Indians in New Jersey reported in 1991.


title: Religious persecution

text: Persecution of Hindus also contemporarily has been seen in the Indian-controlled, Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. In the Kashmir region, approximately 300 Kashmiri Pandits were killed between September 1989 to 1990 in various incidents. In early 1990, local Urdu newspapers "Aftab" and "Al Safa" called upon Kashmiris to wage jihad against India and ordered the expulsion of all Hindus choosing to remain in Kashmir. In the following days masked men ran in the streets with AK-47s, shooting to kill Hindus who would not leave. Notices were placed on the houses of all Hindus, telling them to leave within 24 hours or die. Since March 1990, estimates of between 300,000 and 500,000 pandits have migrated outside Kashmir due to persecution by Islamic fundamentalists in the largest case of ethnic cleansing since the partition of India. Many Kashmiri Pandits have been killed by Islamist militants in incidents such as the Wandhama massacre and the 2000 Amarnath pilgrimage massacre. The incidents of massacring and forced eviction have been termed ethnic cleansing by some observers.


title: Religious persecution

text: In Bangladesh, on 28 February 2013, the International Crimes Tribunal sentenced Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, the Vice President of the Jamaat-e-Islami to death for the war crimes committed during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Following the sentence, the Hindus were attacked in different parts of the country. Hindu properties were looted, Hindu houses were burnt into ashes and Hindu temples were desecrated and set on fire. This trend has continued, sadly; Islamist groups in Bangladesh, nearing the 50th anniversary of the Bengali Hindu Genocide, set fire to and vandalized several Hindu temples along with 80 houses.


title: Religious persecution

text: A major component of Jewish history, persecutions have been committed by Seleucids, ancient Greeks, ancient Romans, Christians (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant), Muslims, Nazis, etc. Some of the most important events which constitute this history include the 1066 Granada massacre, the Rhineland massacres (by Catholics but against papal orders, see also : Sicut Judaeis), the Alhambra Decree after the Reconquista and the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition, the publication of "On the Jews and Their Lies" by Martin Luther which furthered Protestant anti-Judaism and was later used to strengthen German antisemitism and justify pogroms and the Holocaust.


title: Religious persecution

text: According to FBI statistics, the majority of religiously motivated hate crimes which are committed in the United States are committed against Jews. In 2018, anti-Jewish hate crimes represented 57.8% of all religiously motivated hate crimes, while anti-Muslim hate crimes, which were the second most common, only represented 14.5%.


title: Religious persecution

text: Persecution of Muslims is the religious persecution that is inflicted upon followers of the Islamic faith. In the early days of Islam at Mecca, the new Muslims were often subjected to abuse and persecution by the pagan Meccans (often called Mushrikin: the unbelievers or polytheists). Muslims were persecuted by Meccans at the time of Muhammed.


title: Religious persecution

text: Currently, Muslims face religious restrictions in 142 countries according to the PEW report on rising religious restrictions around the world. According to the US State Department's 2019 freedom of religion report, the Central African Republic remains divided between the Christian anti-Balaka and the predominantly Muslim ex-Seleka militia forces with many Muslim communities displaced and not allowed to practice their religion freely. In Nigeria, "conflicts between predominantly Muslim Fulani herdsmen and predominantly Christian farmers in the North Central states continued throughout 2019."


title: Religious persecution

text: In China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has decreed that all members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must be "unyielding Marxist atheists". In Xinjiang province, the government enforced restrictions on Muslims. The U.S. government estimates that


title: Religious persecution

text: Shia-Sunni conflicts persist. Indonesia is approximately 87% Sunni Muslim, and "Shia and Ahmadi Muslims reported feeling under constant threat." Anti-Shia rhetoric was common throughout 2019 in some online media outlets and on social media."


title: Religious persecution

text: In Saudi Arabia, the government "is based largely on sharia as interpreted by the Hanbali school of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence. Freedom of religion is not provided under the law." In January and May 2019, police raided predominantly Shia villages in the al-Qatif Governorate... In April the government executed 37 citizens ... 33 of the 37 were from the country's minority Shia community and had been convicted following what they stated were unfair trials for various alleged crimes, including protest-related offenses... Authorities detained ... three Shia Muslims who have written in the past on the discrimination faced by Shia Muslims, with no official charges filed; they remained in detention at year's end... Instances of prejudice and discrimination against Shia Muslims continued to occur..."


title: Religious persecution

text: Islamophobia continues. In Finland, "A report by the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) said hate crimes and intolerant speech in public discourse, principally against Muslims and asylum seekers (many of whom belong to religious minorities), had increased in recent years... A Finns Party politician publicly compared Muslim asylum seekers to an invasive species." There were several demonstrations by neo-Nazis and nativist groups in 2019. One neo-Nazi group, the NRM (the Nordic Resistance Movement), "continued to post anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic statements online and demonstrated with the anti-immigrant group "Soldiers of Odin"."


title: Religious persecution

text: The ongoing Rohingya genocide has resulted in over 25,000 deaths from 2016 to present. Over 700,000 refugees have been sent abroad since 2017. Gang rapes and other acts of sexual violence, mainly against Rohingya women and girls, have also been committed by the Rakhine Buddhists and the Burmese military's soldiers, along with the arson of Rohingya homes and mosques, as well as many other human rights violations.