Human rights officials in Europe and the United States expressed concern Wednesday, May 3, over the persecution of Christians in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, nearly a year after hundreds of people died when security forces opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators.
Radical Muslims in mid-April forced three churches to cease services in North Jakarta and the provinces of West Java and Tangerang, claiming the meetings were disturbing Islamic communities.
Police officers from Uzbekistan’s criminal investigation department burst into the home of a Protestant pastor in northwest Uzbekistan last week, disrupting 12 people as they were having lunch together. The pastor and another believer were charged with “breaking the laws on teaching religion.”
Parliamentarians in the Netherlands have urged the government to investigate reports of death threats against former Muslims who converted to Christianity, a Dutch Christian daily newspaper reported Tuesday, May 2.
The president of one of India’s largest evangelical mission organizations will be released on bail after 47 days of imprisonment on charges related to alleged anti-Hindu activities, officials said Monday, May 1.
Sri Lanka’s Parliament has appointed a 19-member committee to review a bill that would outlaw “forcible” conversion, before it is presented for a final vote.
The health of a leading Christian Cuban prisoner of conscience has “significantly worsened,” amid abuse inside the detention facility where at least one person was killed in recent days, his wife said Monday, April 24.
Evangelical missionaries in East Timor warned Monday, April 24, of new bloodshed after troops dismissed from the armed forces threatened to wage a new guerrilla war in the troubled Southeast Asian nation.
Family members and human rights activists urged the international community Saturday, April 22, to pressure North Korea not to execute a Christian man who has been accused of “betrayal” and “espionage” by the Communist government.
Fanned by local media and a Muslim mufti, an anti-missionary witch-hunt targeting Christians in Turkey’s eastern city of Bingol left a Muslim woman beaten in her tailor shop last month while police allowed her attacker to walk free.
A native missionary in Guinea was without his wife Thursday, April 20, after she was kidnapped by her family, in a case that has come to symbolize tensions between minority Christians and members of other traditional religious groups in the West African nation.
Police backed by Hindu extremists arrested Avinash Lal, an independent Pentecostal pastor from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh state, and six other Christian leaders last night (April 18) on charges on ‘fraudulent conversion.’
Chinese security forces detained seven foreign evangelical church leaders, including five Americans and two Taiwanese pastors, as part of a government crackdown on China’s evangelical movement, friends and investigators said Wednesday, April 19.
Besides the jailing of another Protestant pastor in February, authorities have also jailed 70 Muslims over the past two years for opposing the government appointment of the chief mufti.
Egyptian authorities on Monday, April 17, ordered the detention of a Muslim who entered a Cairo church with a knife days after another Muslim stabbed six Christians, killing one, in Alexandria, news reports said.
India’s Supreme Court confirmed Monday, April 17, it granted the founder of a major evangelical mission organization “relief from an outstanding arrest warrant” for alleged anti-Hindu activities and ordered a hearing before a court in the tense state of Rajasthan Friday, April 21, officials said.
A local Christian leader in rural Laos who refuses to abandon his faith in Christ has been detained and shackled in hand and foot stocks as part of a fresh crackdown by Communist authorities on Christian villagers, missionaries said Thursday, April 13.
An anti-conversion bill passed by the Rajasthan state assembly last Friday (April 7) is unconstitutional and could lead to an “explosive situation” in the state, Christians say.
The court judging house church leader Zhang Rongliang, acknowledging that “there are insufficient evidence and ambiguous facts,” this week submitted the case to the Zhengzhou City Intermediate People’s Court asking for legal advice.
Samuel Thomas, the leader of one of India’s main evangelical mission organizations, remained jailed Thursday, April 13, on charges of anti-Hindu activities, after a court denied him bail, but his wife told BosNewsLife she is not giving up hope, yet.