25 April 2000 (Newsroom) — Indonesia vice president Megawati Sukarnoputri is visiting the Molucca archipelago this week in a further attempt to diffuse tensions between Muslims and Christians that have resulted in an estimated 3,000 deaths since January 1999.
LAGOS, 24 April 2000 (Newsroom) – Religious and political leaders have soundly condemned the attempt by a controversial senator to launch impeachment proceedings against Nigeria President Olusegun Obasanjo, a move they say is meant to embarrass the country’s first elected president in nearly two decades.
Nigerian police authorities reported that 123 churches were burned and 55 mosques razed during the Kaduna religious riots in late February that involved violent clashes between Christians and Muslims over the implementation of sharia (Islamic legal system) in northern Nigeria.
A Christian-Muslim conflict in Damboa in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state resulted in the deaths of 15 Christians, and four churches were burned.
Two Christian women were abducted by Muslim youths enforcing Sharia (Islamic law) in the capital of Zamfara state in northern Nigeria, according to the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). The women managed to escape several hours later and reported their kidnapping to police.
19 April 2000 (Newsroom) — Russia’s newly elected president is displaying mixed signals in his approach to church-state relations, according to the Keston Institute, a British-based monitor of religious liberty. Though Vladimir Putin has not publicly discussed his policy initiatives in the run-up to his May 7 inauguration, two steps he has taken during his term as acting president point in “entirely different directions,” Keston says.
19 April 2000 (Newsroom) — The United Nations Commission on Human Rights on Tuesday approved resolutions that included condemnation of religious repression in Cuba, Burma, and Sudan.
18 April 2000 (Newsroom) – The Vermont Senate on Tuesday rejected a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. A bill permitting civil unions that would grant all of the rights and benefits of marriage to same-sex couples, the most comprehensive law of its kind in the United States, is scheduled for a vote today (April 19).
18 April 2000 (Newsroom) — Chinese evangelist Li Dexian has been kept in chains since his arrest April 11 in Guangdong province and is suffering physical pain, according to a Christian monitoring group. The house church leader, who has been arrested 13 times since October for his unauthorized church activities, is in the middle of a 15-day sentence.
Chinese evangelist Li Dexian has been kept in chains since his arrest April 11 in Guangdong province and is suffering physical pain, according to a Christian monitoring group. The house church leader, who has been arrested 13 times since October for his unauthorized church activities, is in the middle of a 15-day sentence.
17 April 2000 (Newsroom) — Jakarta police have disarmed and disbanded Muslims vowing to fight a holy war in the Molucca Islands where sectarian clashes in the past year have taken an estimated 3,000 lives.
Five house church leaders from the “Born Again” movement of Xu Yongze were arrested at their homes in China’s southern Henan province on December 27, 1999. Each was sentenced in February to two years hard labor, according to reliable sources inside the province. Another full-time evangelist — not with the same movement — was arrested in Guiyang and also given two years hard labor. Relatives asked that the names of those sentenced be withheld.
LAGOS, 13 April 2000 (Newsroom) – Churches throughout Nigeria continue to send relief supplies to help more than 50,000 people displaced by religious riots in the city of Kaduna in February. Many churches in the state of Kaduna have turned their compounds into rehabilitation centers as well and are assisting orphans and others left homeless by the fighting.
13 April 2000 (Newsroom) — Chinese evangelist Li Dexian has been sentenced to 15 days in prison following his arrest on Tuesday for holding an unauthorized religious meeting, according to the Christian advocacy organization Voice of the Marytrs Australia.
Chinese evangelist Li Dexian has been sentenced to 15 days in prison following his arrest on Tuesday for holding an unauthorized religious meeting, according to the Christian advocacy organization Voice of the Marytrs Australia.
Churches throughout Nigeria continue to send relief supplies to help more than 50,000 people displaced by religious riots in the city of Kaduna in February. Many churches in the state of Kaduna have turned their compounds into rehabilitation centers as well and are assisting orphans and others left homeless by the fighting.
A communist rebel group in India’s Bihar state beat to death two tribal Christians and severely injured four others on April 4, according to the Times of India.
Two Turkish Christians imprisoned near Izmir for a month on concocted charges of insulting Islam were ordered released March 30, after prosecution witnesses admitted that local gendarmarie officials pressured them to sign prepared complaints.
A Mongolian citizen of ethnic Kazakh descent has been sentenced to 13 years in a prison labor camp in western Mongolia on charges of propagating the Christian faith.
Totals for the number of Christians in China leaked from two Chinese government bodies reveal far larger estimates of the number of Protestants than official church leaders have previously admitted.