A Vienna based NGO has called for separate asylum homes for Christians who they say are the victims of Muslim intimidation and violence.
The call for separate accommodation for Christians in Austria comes from the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe. The group states that Christians are routinely persecuted in asylum homes by Muslim migrants and run the risk of being victims of everything from threats to physical violence if they are forced to share lodgings with Muslims reports Vienna Online.
The NGO recently released an annual report covering instances of intolerance and violence toward Christians in Austria and Europe. Among the list of attacks includes such things as violent attacks on Christians, vandalism and desecration of both churches and grave sites, insults of a religious nature and discrimination in workplaces.
The group has stated that they have personally recorded and documented 180 examples of discrimination toward Christians across Europe in 2015 though many other groups such as Open Doors have claimed the numbers to be vastly higher.
Earlier this year Open Doors released a report claiming that they had documented over 230 cases of abuse and discrimination towards Christians at a single asylum home in the German capital of Berlin, while maintaining over 40,000 Christians were subject to persecution in Germany alone.
The Observatory has made it clear that they believe Christian asylum seekers to be the most vulnerable of all migrants because they are so at risk of violence from Muslims.
“Now they are faced in refugee camps with force, threats, harassment and discrimination because of their Christian faith,” said the managing director of the organization Ellen Kryger Fantini who noted that many of the perpetrators of violence are not only fellow migrants but also security guards and others who happen to also be Muslim.
Security guards at asylum homes in Germany have already come under fire after cases of abuse of Christians came to light earlier this year. It was revealed that many of the security agencies were so understaffed due to the migrant crisis they ended up hiring employees who were often under qualified and came from Muslim migrant backgrounds themselves. Some of the employees were shown to be hardly able to even speak German.
The Observatory advises that governments across Europe should look into separating the vulnerable Christian migrants into their own asylum homes in order to prevent conflict. The organization also said they would like to see European countries better train police and government workers on the topic of religiously motivated conflict as well as permit the anonymous reporting of incidents and protect whistle blowers from potential Muslim retaliation.