A pastor and his cousin charged with attempted forced conversion in Matiapada village, Orissa state, were released on bail yesterday, while five Hindu villagers charged with assault and setting fire to the pastor’s house are still in custody.
Judges at Indonesia’s Constitutional Court on January 17 ruled that the Child Protection Act is in line with the constitution and should not be amended. The Rev. Ruyandi Hutasoit had challenged Article 86 of the Act, used as the basis for sentencing Dr. Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti and Ratna Bangun to three years in prison on September 1, 2005. The Christian Sunday School teachers were arrested in May 2005 after members of a local Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI or Muslim Clerics Council) in West Java accused them of trying to convert Muslim children. Judge Jimly Asshiddique said Rev. Hutasoit had no right to contest the Child Protection Act, since he had not experienced any ‘direct losses’ under it.
The government of India’s largest northwestern state, Rajasthan, has withdrawn criminal procedures against most militants of an influential Hindu nationalist organization involved in the massive distribution of ‘tridents’, three-sponged spears that have reportedly been used to intimidate the Christian minority, BosNewsLife learned Monday, January 23.
At this time last year, Noor Jehan Ahmed, 55, lived peacefully in the village of Nagaon, in the northeastern state of Assam. She and her extended household of 29 people formed their own Christian enclave within the majority-Muslim community.
Hindu extremists attacked Christians in two incidents in the same district of Andhra Pradesh state on January 12 and 13, in one case dragging a pastor from a child’s birthday party and kicking him unconscious.
Local government officials in Bandung, West Java, have ordered eight house churches in the Rancaekek Kencana housing complex to cease meeting in private homes starting last Sunday (January 15).
Christians in several tense Indian states were weighing their options Tuesday, January 17, after churches were attacked and believers apparently pressured to return to Hinduism.
A Pakistani Muslim in the Punjabi town of Sangla Hill dropped formal charges last week against a Christian he had accused of setting fire to pages of the Quran.
Burmese government forces attacked villages of the Karen and Karenni people, displacing 1,200 villagers, as part of a “slow genocide” against these predominantly Christian ethnic groups, a religious rights group said late Thursday, January 5.
In a shocking display of brutality, Aroun Voraphorn, an itinerant evangelist, pastor and father of four children, was murdered in southern Laos the week before Christmas.
During Friday prayers last week in Pakistan’s Punjab province, Muslim clerics flanked by government officials demanded the public execution of a Christian accused of blasphemy.
Two militant Hindu groups struck churches in India’s Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh states and forced some believes to bow for Hindu idols states as violence against Christians spread across the country, news reports said Tuesday, December 6.
A major report has been published this weekend documenting for the first time the extent of the government backed torture in Burma’s jails, human rights investigators said.
The Rev. K.K. Alavi, called “one of the bravest Christians in India,” is the son of a staunch Islamic cleric.
A group of young people attacked three Christians as they distributed Christian literature in the western state of Maharashtra on Saturday (November 26). Two of the three injured were hospitalized.
Masked gunmen shot and wounded a Christian couple in the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi in the latest in a series of attacks against Christians there, police and hospital sources confirmed Monday, November 21.
Denied permits and ordered not to worship in public or at home, churches in East Bekasi, West Java, have taken temporary refuge in a Social Affairs Agency office.
Hindu extremists attacked 62-year-old Pastor Feroz Masih in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh on November 4, accusing him of “forcibly converting” Hindus and severely beating him.
Hindu extremists disrupted a large prayer gathering in the house of a Christian family in Pratapgarh district, Uttar Pradesh state, on Sunday (November 6).
Two Indonesian Christian girls were fighting for their lives late Tuesday, November 8, after they were shot in the head in Indonesia’s tense Poso region where three other Christian girls were beheaded last week, an influential religious rights organization said.