Hundreds of hate crimes against Christians in Europe - OSCE report

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In recent years there have been numerous acts of hostility towards Christians in Poland and other countries. They are described in the latest report of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on hate crimes. It takes into account crimes reported by Ordo Iuris against Christians in Poland.

The report was created on the basis of data from 39 countries, including official police statistics from 23 countries and information provided by 124 non-governmental organizations. Acts meeting the criteria of crimes against Christians were reported by 8 countries, including Denmark, Greece, Finland, Poland, Georgia and Germany. On the other hand, all reported hate crimes against Christians concerned as many as 35 countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hungary, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy and Romania.

The data contained in the report lead to the conclusion that in 2017 there were 485 events recognised as hate crimes against Christians in Europe, 25 of which took place in Poland. Vast majority of them - 355 - are cases of vandalism and destruction of property. There were also 93 acts of physical violence and 37 criminal threats. Crimes of hatred against Christians in Poland were reported by the Ordo Iuris Institute, the Apostolic See and the Observatory on Discrimination and Intolerance against Christians, based in Vienna.

The issue of hate crimes has not yet been universally defined in a binding manner. For this reason, a provisional definition of this phenomenon has been adopted for the purposes of the report. It entails: requirement to meet the criteria of a crime contained in the Criminal Law of a given country and substantiation that a given event was caused by hostility or reluctance on account of a specific feature of the victim. All reported cases had to be additionally documented by a specific source in order to allow for verification of their truthfulness.

‘The Ordo Iuris Institute has submitted its report on hate crimes against Christians in Poland to the OSCE for the fourth time. Unfortunately, the scale of the phenomenon of Christianophobia is becoming a more and more serious subject, which is more and more often noticed not only in Poland, but also in other European countries. The number of acts of hatred against Christians is not decreasing and the system for monitoring them should be improved. This is what the Ordo Iuris Centre for Religious Freedom is to serve, through which we will receive reports of any incidents of hatred against Christians in Poland and intervene wherever it is necessary’, commented Karina Walinowicz, Director of the Ordo Iuris Centre for Religious Freedom.