Sometimes, the punctuation may indicate a quotation.
Searching for use of the word "persecution" within the article led to this paragraph, which does not have any quotation marks, whether quoting or distancing or otherwise:
Christians have been targeted by Muslim hardliners in Iraq and Syria in recent years, with a violent campaign of persecution by Islamic State militants this summer when they captured the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Moreover, it's within a section titled
'Indifference of many'
in which the quotation marks refer to a clear quotation cited below (quotation marks in the original):
"Many of our brothers and sisters are being persecuted and have been forced violently from their homes. It even seems that the value of human life has been lost, that the human person no longer matters and may be sacrificed to other interests. And, tragically, all this is met by the indifference of many."
Sidebars lead to other articles that look stylistically similar, such as "Germans honour slain 'role model' Tugce Albayrak":
President Joachim Gauck has described the student as a "role model".