Bhatti Urges West as Christian Persecution Worsens

At a reception in Portcullis House in London on October 27, 2026, Peter Bhatti, elder brother of the slain Pakistani minister Shahbaz Bhatti, spoke at the launch of the 10th edition of Aid to the Church in Need’s report Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report into Christians oppressed for their Faith 2024–2026.

“Neither the U.K. nor any other Western government is doing enough for the persecuted Christians of Pakistan,” he said. “The West needs to promote interfaith harmony in Pakistan so everyone can live together. Unless the West talks seriously with the Pakistani government that won’t happen.” He called on the United Kingdom to work with the United States, the European Union, Canada and other nations on a common strategy against the oppression of faith minorities.

Bhatti wrote the report’s foreword because 2026 marks the 15th anniversary of his brother’s assassination. Shahbaz Bhatti, federal minister for minorities affairs, was shot in an ambush outside his mother’s home in 2011 for seeking reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman falsely accused and sentenced to death. Bibi was later reprieved and now lives in exile in Canada. The Diocese of Rawalpindi-Islamabad opened Shahbaz Bhatti’s cause for canonization in 2016.

No Country Improved

Peter Bhatti said the situation of religious minorities in Pakistan had not improved, that many rights and religious-freedom advocates had fallen silent out of fear of extremists, and that “the situation of religious minorities continues to go from bad to worse.”

Report editor John Newton said the lack of religious literacy in the West means anti-Christian animus is often downplayed or omitted in favor of other factors. The 42-page report covers 18 countries over the past two years. None showed improvement: persecution worsened in 10 and stayed the same in eight, with Pakistan among those where it increased. United Nations experts expressed “serious concern” in April 2026 about the abduction, forced conversion and marriage of women and girls, estimating up to 2,000 kidnapping cases a year in 2025.

The report also cites rampant Islamic terrorist violence in sub-Saharan Africa, which has displaced 3.5 million people in Nigeria alone; China’s Online Code of Conduct for Religious Personnel, introduced in 2025, which bans online liturgies, prayer meetings and religious instruction for children on unregistered websites; a fall of more than 80 percent in Syria’s Christian population since 2011; and a doubling of arrests of Christians in Iran.

In an October 27 statement, Aid to the Church in Need’s John Pontifex asked, “What will it take for the world to act?”