World sees “groundswell of intolerance”, hate-based violence against various faiths: UN chief

The world is seeing a “groundswell of intolerance” and hate-based violence against people of various faiths, and this “venom” is directed at anyone considered “the other”, the UN chief has said, warning that parts of the internet were becoming “hothouses of hate”.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ remarks have come inthe wake of a series of attacks against mosques, synagogues and other places ofworship in the recent past, including the Easter Sunday bombings targetingthree churches in Sri Lanka that killed more than 250 people.

   

A gunman armed with a semiautomatic rifle on Sunday entereda synagogue in Poway in California, some 40 kilometres north of San Diego, yellinganti-Semitic slurs and opened fire, killing one woman, and wounding the rabbiand two others.

Six people, including a pastor, were killed in an attack on a church in Burkina Faso on Sunday. Last month, 50 worshippers were gunned down at two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand.

Around the world, we are seeing a disturbing groundswell of intolerance and hate-based violence targeting worshippers of many faiths. In recent days alone, a synagogue in the United States and a church in Burkina Faso have come under attack,” the UN Chief said on Monday.

“Such incidents have become all-too-familiar: Muslims gunned down in mosques, their religious sites vandalised, Jews murdered in synagogues, their gravestones defaced with swastikas, Christians killed at prayer, their churches often torched. Houses of worship, instead of the safe havens they should be, have become targets,” Guterres said.

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