Hindu extremists have violently assaulted several Christians in Rajasthan, India, over the past two weeks. Local observers say the attacks are a strategy to push forward the enactment of anti-conversion laws in the state.
Last Sunday evening, Eritrean security police arrested 16 Protestants for watching a Christian video together in a church member’s home in the town of Adi-Kibe.
Correspondence reveals personal trials, challenges facing house church Christians in China.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to attend a church service for Palm Sunday in Beijing, aides said Saturday, March 19, just hours after a Christian news agency published letters of alleged persecuted Christians.
Indian insurgents who threatened to kill evangelical leaders and “totally destroy” the country’s leading mission organization backed down as Christian leaders urged the prime minister to help end anti Christian violence, officials said Saturday March 12.
An Iranian Colonel who, despite Western protests, was jailed last month for his alleged “illegal” conversion to Christianity is held at Tehran’s notorious maximum-security prison with well-known political and religious dissidents, a Christian news agency reported late Friday, March 11.
Muslim militants attacked the Christian community in Demsa village, Adamawa state, northern Nigeria, on Friday, February 4, killing 36 people, destroying property and displacing about 3,000 others. The surviving Christians have taken refuge in Mayolope village in the neighboring state of Taraba.
Two American Southern Baptist missionaries held under house arrest in Dubai for distributing Bibles and Christian literature are expected to be released this weekend, BosNewsLife learned Thursday, March 3.
At least 10 foreign evangelical church leaders including eight Americans, one Taiwanese and an unknown number of South Koreans were detained and later deported by Chinese authorities, a Christian human rights watchdog said Thursday March 3.
Eritrea’s controversial President Isaias Afwerki ended a three day official visit to Pakistan Sunday, February 27, pledging to respect “democratic values” amid pressure at home to release hundreds of Christians, including children.
Another 31 Eritrean Christians have been jailed by police in towns north of the capital Asmara over the past 10 days. The latest police sweeps brings the total to 187 arrests for “illegal” Christian activities in Eritrea since the beginning of January.
The criminal trial of Egyptian Christian Shafik Saleh Shafik, begun in mid January, has been ordered postponed until February 20 by the presiding judge, who accepted defense petitions to summon key witnesses and police reports related to the case.
Authorities in Minsk are close to obtaining sufficient grounds under Belarusian law to close down the charismatic New Life Church, after issuing it an official warning on 30 December against using a cowshed the church owns for worship.
Luis Alberto Vera was released last month from Bellavista National Jail, a maximum security prison in Medellín, Colombia, in time to spend Christmas with his young family. Vera, however, remains under house arrest at the Biblical Seminary of Medellín.
Christian leaders in northern Nigeria say a report released in December by the government of Kano state grossly underreports the number of Christians killed by Muslim militants in violent attacks last year. Estimates of the value of churches and homes destroyed in the clashes are also much too low, leaders claim.
Fresh violence broke out in the central Nigerian state of Plateau when Muslim militants attacked the village of Gana-Ropp in the Barakin Ladi local government area, killing Christian community leader Davou Bulle and injuring his wife and son, who remain in critical condition at the Plateau state Specialist Hospital in Jos.
The Egyptian Christian director of a home for troubled Coptic girls goes on trial January 16 on criminal charges before Cairo’s Abbassiya Criminal Court No. 15.
Anwer Masih was acquitted in Lahore last month by a Judicial Magistrate’s Court, making him the first Pakistani Christian ever acquitted of blasphemy in Pakistan’s lower courts.
China has announced a new law, which comes into effect on March 1, governing the freedom of religion.
Sources in Vietnam have informed Compass that the People’s Supreme Court in Ho Chi Minh City will hear the appeals of the Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang and evangelist Pham Ngoc Thach on February 2. This represents the final appeal option available to the defendants; however, the high court has virtually never reversed a lower court decision.