DEBATE • It happens in the middle of a Christmas prayer in Al Hasaheisa, Sudan. A church filled with light, song, and quiet faith turns into an inferno. A paramilitary force storms in. Bullets tear through the air, screams cut through the hymns, children cling to their mothers, priests are forced down to the cold stone of the altar. The weapons scream louder than the prayers. The church is looted. A nearby monastery is seized as a military base. Five priests and five seminarians disappear, fourteen people are left maimed, broken, abandoned in a shattered sanctuary.

In Damascus, on June 22, the Mar Elias Church is struck by another darkness. A suicide bomber opens fire on the congregation, and when the smoke clears, twenty-two are dead and over fifty are injured amidst shattered glass and shattered icons. ISIS claims responsibility. But no one takes the blame.

These are not isolated incidents. They are stitches in a :censored:6:cdd6bbaa89: web of suffering. According to Open Doors statistics, over 365 million Christians live today under persecution. One in seven Christians is directly threatened for their faith. From Sudan and Syria to Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea, churches are turned into ruins, people into numbers, lives into statistics. Every attack, every silence, testifies to a pattern; a slow genocide that the world observes as if it were weather. When prayers turn to screams and churches become graves, it is not just faith that is being killed. It is the very conscience that is crumbling away.

We say one thing but do another

Sweden applauds peace. Sweden applauds democracy. But applause does not save lives.

We are fed daily with headlines that speak of justice, freedom, and solidarity. Same voices. Same angle. Same well-groomed language draped over a bloody reality. At the same time, billions of our tax money flow to weapons, to war, to death – decisions made behind closed doors, where morality is exchanged for strategy and guilt is washed in diplomatic words. It is not the people who applaud the walls; it is those who build them. Those who write the checks, dictate the narratives, applaud themselves. And we? We sit still, close our eyes, nod, and call our passivity neutrality.

Freedom of the press. A word that we taste with pride, as a mantra in our democratic self-image. But when critical voices are silenced and entire nations’ media are forbidden to operate in Europe, the word becomes hollow. What does democracy mean when our governments finance war but silence abuses against the world’s most persecuted? What does core values mean when the blood that cries out is ignored?

Sweden is increasing its defense budget for 2025 to between 138 and 143 billion SEK, equivalent to 2.4 percent of GDP, aiming for 3.5 percent. Arms exports amount to 29 billion SEK per year. Since 2022, Sweden has contributed approximately 90 billion SEK in military aid to Ukraine. Our leaders talk about responsibility, about solidarity, about peace through strength – but how can steel become security? How can more weapons lead to less violence? How can an export invoice be translated into human security? Or is it just another show, where the illusion of morality gets applause while the conscience is swept under the rug?

Persecuted and murdered in thousands

The world’s double standards are exposed in all its naked absurdity. In Nigeria, 3,100 Christians were killed and 2,830 were kidnapped in 2024, according to Open Doors. Since 2009, at least 52,250 Christians have been murdered, over 18,000 churches and 2,200 schools have been attacked. Yet the media speaks of “herder-farmer conflicts” and “resource struggles,” as if euphemisms could cleanse the blood from the ground.

In Sudan, where Christians make up between four and six percent of the population, the war since 2023 has cost 150,000 lives. Between 13 and 15 million have been displaced. 165 churches have been attacked or closed. The same paramilitary forces that stormed the service in Al Hasaheisa took over the monastery in Wad Madani, where five priests and five seminarians disappeared without a trace.

In Pakistan, Christians are forced to take down their crosses. Schoolchildren are ordered to remove their cross pendants. In Jaranwala, 26 churches were burned to the ground, homes were looted, all under the pretext of alleged blasphemy against the Quran. Death sentences are handed down on false charges, such as against Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar. These are not coincidences. They are not mistakes. It is systematic persecution – a methodical crushing of faith and identity.

Discriminated in millions

But the Western world talks about politics, ethnic tensions, about “complex situations.” Words that disarm morality. Words that turn blood into data. Words that protect the conscience from reality.

Over 365 million Christians live under threat and discrimination. One in seven. In North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Syria, the belief in Christ is a life-threatening act. And in the West? There, the silence is almost ritual.

I have seen how the cross is mocked, how Christian symbols are ridiculed, how faith is banished to the margins in the name of tolerance. This is not about diminishing others’ suffering. It is about making visible the suffering that has long been suffocated under the Western disinterest blanket.

A pattern of silent consent

British Airways forced Eweida to hide her cross. A Christian student at Robert Napier School was denied the right to wear her cross pendant, while other religious symbols were accepted. In France, anti-Christian attacks increased by 13 percent in the first half of 2025. In Turkey, Christians, especially foreign pastors, are labeled as “national security threats.” They are given special “security codes,” deported, banned from returning. Their congregations are left without a leader. On July 18, 2025, the European Parliament asked why discrimination against Christians is not covered by the EU’s EQUAL equality program. The answer was silence. A silence as heavy as guilt.

The pattern is crystal clear. Christian expressions are marginalized. Christian voices are ignored. Faith is silenced – not just through fire, but through forgetfulness and strategic ignorance.

Sweden bears responsibility. A responsibility measured in 90 billion SEK, in every billion that is turned over in war, in every decision that feeds violence, in every silence that allows genocide. We have the power to influence, to scrutinize, to speak. It is time to tear down the walls. To let the truth speak through the murmur of diplomatic lies. To give value again to human life over bloody alliances. For those who remain silent in the face of evil become its accomplice. Those who hide the truth become its guardian. And those who applaud the walls will one day find themselves trapped behind them. Silence is compliance.

Tijana Ivković
Opinion Maker