UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged governments, on Thursday, to take more adequate measures to protect places of worship, following a series of bloody extremist attacks on believers.
“Our world is plagued with a surge in anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hatred, attacks against Christians, and other religious groups,” Guterres reported, presenting the UN Plan of Action to support states’ efforts tosafeguard religious sites.
“In recent months alone, Jews have been murdered in synagogues, Muslims gunned down in mosques, Christians killed at prayer,” he recalled.
The head of the United Nations Secretariat at the same time condemned the fact that the rhetoric of hatred and dislike of the”other”, of the different, is also on a steady rise.
“This includes hate speech targeting not only religious groups but also migrants, minorities and refugees, venom directed at anyone considered the so-called ‘other’,” Guterres explained.
The UN Plan of Action also follows the jihadist bombings of Catholicson Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka, which claimed the lives of 262 people, as well as the attack of a white supremacist anti-Semite, on October 2018, in the Treeof Life Synagogue, in Pennsylvania, where 11 people lost their lives – this wasthe most lethal attack on the Jewish community in the country’s history.
Source: ANA-MPA
