Persecuted Christian minorities have requested that their plight not be singled out for special mention, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney has said [1].
He added that this is why the Government doesn’t specifically condemn the persecution of Christians.
While calling the persecution of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East and North Africa “a deeply disturbing matter”, he noted how Ireland “most often expresses these concerns in [terms] applicable to all minorities, rather than particular ones.”
This, he said, in many cases was at the request of “local Christian and other minority representatives.” It was the case that “explicit messages of support from western countries only expose them further to the (unjust) accusation that their communities are somehow legacies of or agents for western intervention in the region,” he said.
He was responding to a letter from Senator Neale Richmond about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa.