You can read this magazine every day for free. We can publish it every day only if you invest in it.
by Massimo Introvigne and Marco Respinti
Dear Bitter Winter readers:
Christmas time is about giving, and we are sure you are solicited to donate to a sizable number of charities. After difficult years with COVID-19, we understand you also plan to donate to yourselves and your families, and rightly so.
If you are reading this letter, you probably are a reader of other sections of Bitter Winter. You may read it more or less regularly, but we publish it daily, except on Sundays and certain holidays. And you may always read it for free.
Those who author articles for us do it for free. Some of them spend money for their research, and some, such as our Chinese correspondents, risk their liberty and even their life. In China, more than forty of our reporters were arrested; some are still in jail, and some “disappeared,” and we have no further news about them.
However, publishing a magazine like Bitter Winter every day is not free. We need an office, computers, advanced anti-hacking systems as we are attacked every month, professional web personnel, a full-time secretary.
We are a small group of volunteers with limited resources. We need help to continue bringing to you the magazine every day. We may ask you to donate, but we realize in these times there may be reasons for being reluctant to give.
So, we ask you not to “donate” to but to “invest” in religious liberty. Last week, a leading Japanese Christian magazine interviewed us on Bitter Winter. They asked what Japanese Christians and other friends of religious liberty may do to help the persecuted. We told them that there are some worthy organizations delivering material help directly to those persecuted. We certainly support them. They are not many, however, as help is often blocked by totalitarian regimes or directed to pro-government organizations.
However, China and other persecutors of religious liberty are even more afraid of independent media telling the truth and giving the lie to their propaganda. This is why they spare no resources in fighting Bitter Winter in many different ways. Nobody would help the persecuted if the truth about the persecution is not told.
Another comment by the Japanese reporters that impressed us is how they had the feeling that Chinese ideology is now being successfully exported in subtle ways to Japan through universities, media, and pro-Chinese politicians. The problem does not exist in Japan only, and similar trends were observed and documented in Italy and elsewhere. What the Japanese journalists were concerned about was that China and other non-democratic countries spread restrictive ideas about religious liberty, unbelievably with some success even in democratic countries.
It is for this reason that we ask you this Christmas to invest in religious liberty.
Invest in religious liberty to avoid that the persecutors’ propaganda silences those who denounce the persecutions. Invest in religious liberty to avoid that ideas hostile to freedom of religion or belief are exported to your own country. Invest in religious liberty so that your children and grandchildren can peacefully enjoy it for years to come.
One reason you may be reluctant to make this investment is that you are very busy. We are, too. This is the reason we devised a system allowing you to support Bitter Winter by spending less than three minutes. You can donate via PayPal, and you do not need a PayPal account. Having a credit card is enough. Less than three minutes to invest in independent information about religious liberty, in China and beyond.
And perhaps to save human lives as well. We recently covered in Bitter Winter the most recent of several cases where our articles were quoted in court decisions allowing refugees to remain in democratic countries rather than being deported back to their countries of origin, where they would have been arrested or killed for their faith.
You may have many reasons to invest in religious liberty. We know that, if you are a reader of Bitter Winter, the main reason is that you love religious liberty as we do, and you want to raise your voice when women, men, and children are discriminated, deported, detained, tortured because of their religion.
Let your voice be heard. It will be an investment you will never regret.
Merry Christmas, and may God bless you all.
December 24, 2021
Massimo Introvigne
Marco Respinti
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
