Providing asylum

Providing a place of shelter and refuge where individuals persecuted by their enemies are safe. The right of asylum is the right of a specific place, person or object to afford protection to the hunted because of its inherent religious or political power. Nations and social groups today provide asylum. Asylum may be based on religious, moral cultural or political realities.

In ancient Greece all temples and altars were asylums. The right of asylum in churches continued in some countries through the 19th Century. Israel flew Ethiopian Jews to Israel, insisting that they were being maltreated in their homeland and offered asylum to Russian Jews on the same basis. Since the advent of the Cold War, those who flee either communist or non-communist regimes are offered political asylum by the other.