ISTANBUL, November 5 (Compass) — Security was at an all-time high yesterday as solemn memorial services were held in every Christian church in Pakistan, mourning the 16 victims massacred by Muslim extremists during a Sunday morning worship service last week.
Pervez Masih, a Pakistani Christian schoolmaster being accused of blasphemy against Muhammad, is scheduled to appear before the Lahore High Court on Monday, October 8 to appeal for bail. Since his arrest on April 1, 2001, Pervez has been tortured and imprisoned in a 6-ft X 4-ft cell in Sialkot jail. The daytime temperature in the cell exceeds 50 degrees centigrade. He is not allowed to come out of his room and walk. Once a week, he is taken out to meet his relatives. He sleeps on the hard floor on a mat next to the toilet. In May he told visitors that police beat him, demanding that he convert to Islam.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (ANS) — Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have visited in Kabul eight Western and Sixteen Afghan aid workers, who face possible execution for allegedly spreading Christianity in war ravaged Afghanistan. The Sunday visit was the first contact the prisoners had with the outside world, since being detained three weeks ago under the Taliban regime’s strict interpretation of Islamic law.
by Alex Buchan LONDON, January 31 (Compass)– In an attempt to ensure fair treatment of house church leader Gong Shengliang, six jailed female co-workers from the embattled South China Church authorized the release on January 29 of three letters detailing how they were tortured by police into providing false testimony against him. In a secret December trial, Gong was sentenced to death on charges of rape and arson, and of leading a cult. Although due to be executed on January 5, fifty-year-old Gong was granted permission to appeal his death sentence while on death row after international pressure was applied … Read more
BANGALORE, India (Compass) — Nineteen villagers who recently embraced Christianity have been forced to re-convert to Hinduism in the Korua village of Kendrapada district in India’s Orissa state after undergoing sustained social ostracism from their fellow villagers. They are also facing prosecution by the district administration for violating provisions of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA).
LONDON (Compass) — A “second Ambon” is brewing in Indonesia according to Christian leaders as a 3,000-strong Muslim jihad force closes in on 28,000 Christians in Tentena, Central Sulawesi. Ambon refers to an area in eastern Indonesia where thousands have died in Muslim-Christian conflicts.
Radical Islamic warriors are continuing their rain of terror on the Christians of Sulawesi Island, Indonesia. A VOM source has confirmed that 21 Christian villages in the Poso coastal area have been burned and destroyed and at least 7 people have been killed within the past week.
The events in Central Sulawesi are finally beginning to get the attention of major newspapers. An article in the New York Times December 1 said, “Thousands of Christian villagers on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are fleeing attacks by armed Muslim paramilitary forces.” The article quoted a Roman Catholic priest, “Thousands have fled…What could they do? Their houses have been burned. The police came yesterday, but it was too late.”
ULAWESI ISLAND, INDONESIA (ANS) — Over 50,000 Christians are in grave jeopardy as they are surrounded by jihad terrorists in central Sulawesi Island, Indonesia.
Jihad terrorists have mounted a campaign on Christians in Central Sulawesi, according to reports from Indonesia. For the past three months, jihad militants have been pouring into the area.
The gifts and prayers of Christians worldwide made quite a difference for Indonesian Christians under attack by Laskar Jihad extremists, says Jeff Hammond, Australian missionary directing a relief effort among 54,000 displaced believers in Sulawesi and Halmahera islands.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (ANS) — The German based Charity Shelter Now has warned the trial of its eight detained foreign Christian staff members in Afghanistan seems to have been put on hold. “No progress is being made,” the evangelical news agency Idea quoted Shelter Now’s Chairman, Joachim Jaeger, as saying.
Former Taliban prisoners Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry told more than 1,800 attendees at the 42nd annual Minnesota Prayer Breakfast how they coped with their three-month incarceration in an Afghan jail.
Christians in the Indonesian province of Papua (Irian Jaya) are fearful that a violent campaign could be unleashed against them later this year as Laskar Jihad Islamic militants continue to flood into the province with the apparent collusion of the authorities.
1 July 2002
Moderate Muslims, women’s groups, Christians and other non-Muslim minorities have all reacted with horror to plans by Muslim opposition party PAS to impose full Islamic Shari’ah law in Malaysia’s Terengganu State.
The injured but rescued US missionary worker Gracia Burnham, who lost her husband but not her faith in Christ, hugged their three children Monday in Kansas City Monday June 10, after a year-long hostage drama in the jungle of the Philippines.
A Pakistani Muslim convicted of alleged religious blasphemy was shot dead by a fellow prisoner yesterday afternoon in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Central Jail.
Two lawyers known for defending Pakistani Christians and Muslims over alleged blasphemy charges received death threats over the weekend, part of a series of overt warnings dished out to perceived “enemies of Islam” by local extremists during the past two weeks.
The American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham turns one year old today under the captive of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), a terrorist group operating in the Southern Philippines and believed to have links to the Al Qa’ida network in Afghanistan.
Kidnapped American missionary Martin Burnham was killed today in a Philippine military raid to rescue him, his wife, Gracia, and a Filipina nurse, New Tribes Mission (NTM) has confirmed.