Christians on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island were recently prevented from worshiping when mobs of Muslim extremists disrupted two separate services in Binjai, North Sumatra Province, and in Riau, Pekanbaru Province in southern Sumatra, Morning Star News (MSN) reports.
A two-year-old boy and his entire family in North Korea have been sentenced to life imprisonment after authorities found a Bible in the possession of the child’s parents, the US state department’s Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its annual report for 2022.
Police in Lahore, Pakistan, have charged and detained two Christian youths for allegedly committing blasphemy, a crime which carries the death penalty, Morning Star News (MSN) reports.
Sixty-four Christians have been killed, and 397 churches have been destroyed amid an ongoing wave of ethnic violence in India’s Manipur state, Christian Headlines reports.
An official on western Indonesia’s Sumatra Island has been criminally charged with “intrusion” after he entered a church service and illegally ordered the worship to cease, Morning Star News (MSN) reports.
Some 120,000 Armenian Christians remained trapped Saturday in the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh and struggled to survive as Azerbaijan continued to block the only land route from Armenia, Christian aid workers told Worthy News.
A Christian man is recovering from his injuries in Pakistan’s Punjab province after he was nearly killed by an angry crowd for “returning to Christianity” after he “accepted Islam” to marry a Muslim woman, Christians said.
At least six people were killed and 25 churches burned down during Hindu nationalist violence in India’s Manipur state this month, Christian Headlines (CH) reports.
Christian leaders in India’s Manipur state have accused the Hindu nationalist government of supporting the violent attacks carried out by ethnic Hindu Meitei rioters, which began last week, and which have now resulted in the destruction of 50 churches and the deaths of 58 people, many of whom were Christians, the Christian Post (CP) reports.
Indian troops are deployed to India’s north-eastern state of Manipur with orders to “shoot on sight” after thousands of people, mostly Christians, fled Hindu mobs, killing six people and burning at least 25 churches, officials said Friday.
A Christian aid group said Wednesday that it managed to free some 100 Christian families in Pakistan from brick kilns where they were effectively held as enslaved people by Muslim owners.
An illiterate Christian widow has been jailed in Pakistan’s Punjab province for accidentally burning verses of the Koran, deemed a holy book by Muslims, several Christian sources told Worthy News.
After 13 years of legal proceedings, a church in Indonesia has finally been granted a permit and allowed to reopen after being shut down by government authorities in 2010, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.
A Myanmar/Burma court has sentenced the former President of the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC), Reverend Dr. Hkalam Samson, to six years in prison for speaking out against human rights abuses perpetrated against the Kachin people by the ruling Burmese military junta Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reports.
In a case brought by the Catholic Archbishop of Bangalore, India’s Supreme Court will on Friday consider harsh anti-conversion laws passed in numerous Indian states and consider the church leader’s request to compel the disclosure of records of religious violations in those states, the Christian Post (CP) reports.
Indonesia’s government says it will facilitate a place of worship for Protestant Christians in West Java after the forced closure of their church by authorities provoked an international outcry.
Amid an ongoing spate of government-sponsored church closures in Indonesia, the Purwakarta Simalungun Protestant Christian Church (GKPS) was forced to give up worshiping and building a sanctuary in Cigelam Village because the Purwakarta Regency Government in West Java refused to issue the requisite permit and de facto shut the church down, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.
The former United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, has issued an urgent appeal for the international community, and the US in particular, to stand with India’s persecuted Christians by pressuring their government to protect them.
Many Christians in India face intense persecution from both their neighbors and communities and from government officials; ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party since 2014, India ranks 11th on the US Open Doors World Watch List 2023 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.
Despite their constitutional right to freedom of religion, Christians in Muslim-majority Indonesia face an uphill struggle in obtaining the required permits to build churches: both the government and local Muslims oppose them.