Christians are the victims in 85pc of ‘hate crimes’ in Europe according to a new report published yesterday.

The report, published by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, a European body established to record instances of anti-Christian bias, provides a series of examples of attacks on Christians in 2011. 

Launching the report, Dr Gudrun Kugler, the director of the Observatory, referred to research showing that “85pc of hate crimes in Europe are directed against Christians”.

Dr Kugler said that the examples cited in the report showed that it was “high time for the public debate to respond to this reality”.

She said that her organisation had also noticed increasing examples of professionial restrictions for Christians: “a restrictive application of freedom of conscience leads to professions such as magistrates, doctors, nurses and midwives as well as pharmacists”. 

Parents and teachers were also getting into trouble when they disagree with State-defined sexual ethics, Dr Kugler noted.

Among the examples cited in the report were:

• In Spain, students were prevented from attending weekly Mass on a Wednesday because of a protest by secular students until the university could guarantee the safety of the Mass-going students
• In Germany, a mother of 12 children, Irene Wiens, was jailed for 43 days for refusing to enroll her children in a State-run sex education class which she deemed to be too permissive
• In the UK, a Conservative MP, Mike Weatherley, has called for a ban on marriages in Christian churches if they continue to refuse to perform same-sex marriages
• In Jersey, postal workers refused to distribute CD copies of St Mark’s Gospel after deeming it offensive material
• In Spain, a Catholic GP was forced to refer women for abortions by a court in Malaga
• New guidelines in the Netherlands say that doctors who have ethical objections to euthanasia must refer patients to doctors who will carry out euthanasia

 The report also cites statistics which it says showed the extent of the problem. A study carried out by ComRes on behalf of Premier Christian media in the UK in 2011 showed that 74pc of people felt that there was “more negative discrimination against Christians than people of other faiths”.

It also referred to research showing that 84pc of the growing level of vandalism in France was being directed against Christian places of worship.