The ECLJ Holds Critical Meetings at the UN for Imprisoned Pastor Youssef Ourahmane and Persecuted Algerian Christians, Calling on World Leaders To Take Action

On July 2, 2024, the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), the ACLJ’s international affiliate in Strasbourg, France, organized a conference at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to plead the cause of Algerian Christians, who are persecuted for their faith by the Algerian government. Speakers at the conference included the former French Ambassador to Algeria, Xavier Driencourt, the U.N. Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Association, and the Vice President of the Église Protestante d’Algérie (EPA) (the Protestant Church of Algeria).

We also feature two exclusive interviews (in French), one with Ambassador Xavier Driencourt and the other with Pastor Youssef Ourahmane, on the situation of Christians in Algeria.

Several diplomatic missions to the U.N. showed particular interest in this cause, including representatives from Belgium, the U.S., the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. The conference was co-organized with the Jubilee Campaign, an NGO that also defends persecuted Christians.

In Algeria, restrictions on freedom of peaceful assembly and association deprive Christians of the freedom to express and exercise their faith.

Algeria has around 144,000 Christians out of a total population of 46 million. The majority of these Christians are of Algerian nationality and have converted to Christianity in recent decades.

While the Algerian Constitution guarantees freedom of expression in principle, Algerian law criminally condemns anything that may tend to “convert a Muslim to another religion” or to “shake the faith of a Muslim.” As for freedom of conscience, this was removed from the Constitution in 2020.

Finally, legislation on associations and the exercise of non-Muslim religions is applied arbitrarily. The Algerian authorities no longer grant religious association status to evangelical churches. They no longer recognize their places of worship and close them down abusively.

As a result, today, 43 of the 47 churches of the Protestant Church of Algeria are closed, and at least 18 Christians are facing prison sentences because of their religion. One of these Christians is the Protestant Church of Algeria’s Vice President, Pastor Youssef Ourahmane, who was sentenced on appeal on May 2, 2024, to one year in prison, a six-month suspension, and 100,000 dinars in fines for having conducted an unauthorized worship service. The ECLJ rallied to his support. As his last resort, he is awaiting an appeal at the Supreme Court.

The Catholic Church, whose faithful are overwhelmingly foreign and of sub-Saharan origin, also suffers from these restrictions, which force it to maintain the utmost discretion and prevent it from openly proclaiming the Gospel. All Catholics who proselytize in any way are liable to criminal prosecution and deportation if they are not Algerian nationals. The Catholic Church was reduced to witnessing only through charity. However, since the Algerian government has imposed the closure of the Caritas Algeria organization on October 1, 2022, this is now also forbidden. Jean-Paul Vesco, Archbishop of Algiers, has said he does not want to “come into conflict with the authorities” and wants to “continue to do good without making noise.”

As a result, Algeria today ranks among the countries that least respect religious freedom. Algeria is ranked #15 on the World Christian Persecution Index 2024 and has been on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) list of countries to watch closely since 2021 “for severe violations of religious freedom.”

UN Experts Call on Algeria To Respect Freedom of Association and Religion for Algerian Christians

In view of the scale of the tragedy facing Christians in Algeria, we have mobilized two U.N. Special Rapporteurs. The Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Association, Gina Romero, presented the report of her predecessor, Clément Voule, who had visited Algeria in September 2023. This was the first visit by a Special Rapporteur since 2016 and since the start of the Hirak, the movement that brought hundreds of thousands of Algerians into the streets demanding political reforms in February 2019.

The report raises the major difficulty of restricting freedom of association for religious associations in Algeria, and, thus, for churches. The Protestant Church of Algeria – founded in 1972 by the union of several reformed churches already present in the country and officially approved in 1974 – has never been able to renew its approval since the 2012 law on associations. During her speech, Gina Romero insisted on the need to grant the EPA its approval and to keep the churches open, considering they provide essential spiritual and moral support to communities.

The Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion, Nazila Ghanea, spoke of the arbitrary judgments suffered by Christians such as Hamid Soudad, sentenced in January 2021 to five years’ imprisonment for posting a caricature of Mohammed on Facebook and finally pardoned in July 2023. Muslims themselves are not spared, and Nazila Ghanea highlighted the case of Islamologist Saïd Djabelkhir, who was sentenced in April 2021 to three years in prison for saying that certain Muslim practices predate Islam and are of pagan origin. He was finally acquitted by the Algiers Court of Appeal in February 2023 after an international mobilization in which the ECLJ participated.

Evangelicals and Catholics Alike Face Persecution From the Algerian Government

Algerian Pastor Youssef Ourahmane (whose poignant testimony the ECLJ has already collected) and his daughter Sarah explained the causes of these restrictions on Christians: The Algerian government takes a very dim view of Muslim conversions to Christianity, which have been multiplying since the early 2000s. These conversions are said to contradict the Algerian identity, which is defined as Arabic-speaking and Muslim. The government also equates Christians, the majority of whom live in Kabylia, with the region’s independence fighters. To counter the spread of Christianity, in 2006, the government adopted Ordinance No. 06-03. This ordinance lays down the conditions and rules for the exercise of non-Muslim religions, the provisions of which allow for specific discrimination against Christians.

The former French ambassador to Algeria, Xavier Driencourt, told us that during his more than seven years in Algiers, he had the opportunity to intervene to facilitate the granting of approval to associations, “without which you are nothing, you don’t exist.” He also denounced the false pretense of the situation in Algeria. His government invites Catholic bishops to official ceremonies and accepts the renovation of Catholic churches, thus giving the appearance of openness and inter-religious tolerance. But in reality, freedom of conscience, and therefore the freedom to change religion, is not guaranteed. Christians are subject to far more restrictive and bureaucratic provisions than Muslims, parish priests in isolated parishes and monks are particularly closely monitored, and proselytizing is forbidden. The government even goes as far as making it impossible for the Catholic Church to receive transfers from the Holy See.

The ECLJ joins with the Protestant Church of Algeria, as well as the Special Rapporteurs and the Human Rights Committee, in calling on Algeria to restore freedom of conscience, to repeal all provisions that undermine freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and to guarantee to all people the full exercise of their freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

We also call for all criminal proceedings against Christians because of their religion to be dropped, and we call for churches and Caritas to be reopened.

This article was written by Thibault van den Bossche, an Advocacy Officer for the persecuted Christians at the ECLJ.