(v. t.) To pursue in a manner to injure, grieve, or afflict; to beset with cruelty or malignity; to harass; especially, to afflict, harass, punish, or put to death, for adherence to a particular religious creed or mode of worship.
(v. t.) To harass with importunity; to pursue with persistent solicitations; to annoy.
Example Sentences:
(1) The UNHCR said in a statement: “International law prescribes that no individual can be returned involuntarily to a country in which he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution.” The Tamil Refugee Council said it had spoken with a relative of one of the asylum seekers on board the vessel from India.
(2) But a former Manus immigration caseworker, Liz Thompson, told Guardian Australia on Tuesday she was aware of at least three cases where asylum seekers on Manus had presented their sexuality as a reason for their persecution during protection interviews since September last year, indicating the department would be well aware there were gay asylum seekers on Manus.
(3) Members of the Ahmadiyya community, an Islamic sect, have faced persecution in other areas of Britain from some other Muslims who do not recognise them as fellow Muslims but Ahmedi said they had not had the same experience in Crawley – proof that it was a tolerant community.
(4) Of UK respondents: 84% agreed that “people should be able to take refuge in other countries to escape war or persecution”.
(5) It’s a very complicated picture, both in terms of how agencies view press freedoms and in terms of Iranian laws.” Iran has long been condemned for its ongoing persecution of journalists, which has been stepped up in recent months.
(6) The UN considers the Rohingya to be one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.
(7) But I think there’s also a huge learning curve for social workers in understanding the massive journeys that people are making and the situation they have come from – the fighting they’ve seen, the discrimination, the persecution.” Join the Social Care Network to read more pieces like this.
(8) • Detainees’ families have suffered further persecution: for example, the wives of Li Heping, Wang Quanzhang, Xie Yang and Xie Yanyi have been subjected to police monitoring and harassment; the children of Li Heping and Wang Quanzhang have been denied enrolment at state schools due to police pressure; and the authorities have put pressure on the landlords of Wang Quanzhang’s and Xie Yanyi’s families to evict them from their homes.
(9) "I do not believe it is acceptable to send people home and expect them to hide their sexuality to avoid persecution," said May.
(10) Nothing should diminish the reality that Eritrean victims of that persecution deserve our solidarity, and need to be supported by all of us who believe that conciliation and concession to regimes such as exists in Eritrea will surely fail.
(11) Najia Bounaim, deputy campaigns director at Amnesty International’s Tunis office, said the arrest was “the latest chilling example of the Egyptian authorities’ systematic persecution of independent human rights defenders.” “We believe she has been arrested for her legitimate human rights work and must be released immediately and unconditionally,” she said.
(12) Sure, he has been doing the chat-show circuit in the US this past week to promote his latest sitcom, Bent (no relation to the Nazi homosexual persecution play – it's an Amanda Peet vehicle in which she may or may not go to bed with her builder).
(13) Asylum seekers take perilous boat journeys with their children because they judge the risk of violence, persecution and death where they are to be greater than the risk of getting on that boat.
(14) The people who were persecuting him and his companions and his sympathizers.
(15) Children who after the war were born into families of previously persecuted people--19 persons.
(16) When Pope Francis came to visit … he didn’t just speak about Christians who were being persecuted,” Obama said.
(17) Habib, who had lived in Australia since 2000, was visiting relatives who are part of the Hazara community, which has been regularly persecuted by the Taliban.
(18) Just over a third said they were persecuted through fear or threats, saying their career was deliberately sabotaged.
(19) The international community must honour the dying wish of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo by taking immediate steps to protect his wife, the poet Liu Xia , who has endured years of government persecution, friends and supporters have said.
(20) Some gifted and canny writers have made a mint by appealing to teenagers’ sense of anguish and victimhood, the notion that they are forever embattled and persecuted by a rotten world run by authoritarian bozos.
Torment
Definition:
(n.) An engine for casting stones.
(n.) Extreme pain; anguish; torture; the utmost degree of misery, either of body or mind.
(n.) That which gives pain, vexation, or misery.
(v. t.) To put to extreme pain or anguish; to inflict excruciating misery upon, either of body or mind; to torture.
(v. t.) To pain; to distress; to afflict.
(v. t.) To tease; to vex; to harass; as, to be tormented with importunities, or with petty annoyances.
(v. t.) To put into great agitation.
Example Sentences:
(1) Her story is an incredible tale of triumph over tragedy: a tormented childhood during China's Cultural Revolution, detention and forced exile after exposing female infanticide – then glittering success as the head of a major US technology firm.
(2) "It is difficult to imagine the torment experienced by the vulnerable victims of crimes such as these.
(3) While his citizens were being beaten and tormented in illegal detention, spokesmen for the then prime minister, Tony Blair, declared: "The Italian police had a difficult job to do.
(4) Yet the removal of two in-form goalscorers who were tormenting West Ham – first Aaron Lennon and then Lukaku – afforded the visitors the initiative.
(5) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
(6) Corner to USA though... 1.33am BST 20 mins More tempo in the American play now, but Belgium intercept again, and Mirallas torments them down the Belgian right flank before hitting a low cross in that's hoofed safely clear.
(7) It cannot be right that anyone who has found the courage to escape their abusive or violent partner should be subjected to the stress and torment of being confronted and interrogated by them in any court.” Research by charity Women’s Aid suggests a quarter of women in family court proceedings have been cross-examined by an abusive former partner.
(8) Shin Dong-hyuk said he was tormented to see his father alive and speaking in the video released by Pyongyang in October.
(9) In a torment of frustration, Mohammed stood outside the governor's and threw a can of petrol over himself.
(10) More than a quarter of hospital beds are occupied by people with dementia (no surprise to anyone who has been in hospital recently, where wards are full of men and women in great anxiety and torment) and they tend to stay for longer-than-average periods of time.
(11) Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island whose bipartisan bill will ensure a three-month extension of the federal benefits program, told the Guardian the measure would stimulate the economy and alleviate what he called the “mental torment” suffered by those long-term unemployed who now feel abandoned.
(12) It was only his inflexible determination, the quality that had made him a great general, that mastered the torments of ill-health – sleepless nights, fear of dying – to articulate his account for a devoted American audience.
(13) The man who devised these torments has a passing resemblance to El Greco's emaciated saints.
(14) Arsenal had no riposte to the blue and white striped waves that tormented them all evening.
(15) Father Michael, so brilliantly played by Sean Bean , was tormented by one such moment: his decision not to answer the phone to Helen Oyenusi (Muna Otaru) when she called to ask that he calm down her son.
(16) Suárez played as through affronted by the suggestion he might have fitness issues, tormenting England’s defence on a night that finished as a personal ordeal for Steven Gerrard.
(17) So often did John torment his elder brother – because, grouchy alcoholic prick that he was, he hated to acknowledge a debt – one has to wonder if he cast Francis in a minor part in Young Mr Lincoln simply to let him witness, day after day, his own signature role being forever obliterated by Henry Fonda's entrancing new reading.
(18) Shawcross, however, maintains there was no bad intent and said for that reason he has not been tormenting himself about the moment he collided with Ramsey's right leg and left the teenager writhing in agony.
(19) Since his withdrawal from the music scene, Shields has earned a reputation as the latter-day Brian Wilson, a tormented genius unable to produce a successor to Loveless, the Pet Sounds of UK avant-rock.
(20) Adding to the torment for Rodgers was a 120-minute performance before hosting Manchester City in the Premier League on Sunday at noon.