An advocacy group representing churches and mission organizations says Hindu militants backed by political parties and groups have carried out at least 500 attacks against mainly Christian missionaries in the past 23 months, and urged the central government to halt the violence.
Attacking the house of a Baptist pastor and protesting the presence of a Catholic temple, radical Muslim groups got authorities to close down two churches in the past two weeks.
Pakistani Christians have played a prominent role in the struggle against harsh emergency laws established by the country’s president this month. And many of have paid the price.
A mob allegedly led by a Hindu extremist group demolished a house church and beat the pastor and believers on November 19 in Chhattisgarh state’s Bastar district. The following day, a young relative of the pastor allegedly kidnapped by the extremists was found dead in a nearby jungle.
Hundreds of Muslim militants stormed and destroyed a Protestant church in Indonesia’s province of West Java amid growing religious tensions in the region, a Netherlands-based Christian rights group reported Tuesday, November 27.
Two Indian evangelical pastors were free on bail Tuesday, November 27, after being detained over the weekend for allegedly “forcing” Hindus to accept Christianity, amid reports that India’s most influential Hindu organization has stepped up efforts to crackdown on devoted Christians.
Dozens of Islamic militants raided a house church in the Indonesian province of West Java on Monday, November 19, the latest in a series of attacks against perceived “illegal” places of worship, local Christians reportedly said.
In a highly unusual press conference in Pyongyang in September, the National Security Service of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced the arrest of “foreign spies” and “native citizens working for a foreign intelligence service.” The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), a ministry serving Christians in restricted nations who are persecuted for their faith, announced today that those arrested in North Korea were in fact Christian believers and not spies.
After reports emerged of a bloody crackdown on Christians and other activists, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf pledged Sunday, November 11, that he would organize elections before January 9, next year.
A rash of violence in Maharashtra state last weekend, Christian leaders say, is typical of a growing history of unchecked, Hindu extremist crimes against Christians in Thane district.
A young Indian evangelist and shepherd has been killed by Hindu priests seeking human sacrifices for a Hindu ‘goddess’, the latest in a series of violent attacks against Christians in India, BosNewsLife learned Wednesday, November 7.
Malatya’s Third Criminal Court has set November 23 to open the trial of the confessed murderers of Turkish convert Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and a German Christian, Tilmann Geske.
An Indonesian court has sentenced 41 Christian leaders to five years imprisonment on charges of blasphemy because they openly prayed that Muslims “come to know Christ,” local Christians and a well-informed human rights group told BosNewsLife Thursday, November 1.
Islamic militants threatened to bomb a Christian family for refusing to convert to Islam as fighting between militants and government troops resumed in northwestern Pakistan yesterday.
Four pastors who have been preaching the gospel for many years in Orissa and nearby villages for many years were forcibly stopped from continuing their work.
Police forces and Hindu militants interrupted a major Christian convention in India’s state of Chhattisgarh and forced a pastor to hand over names of people who “accepted Christ”, a Christian official told BosNewsLife Sunday, October 21.
As Christianity spreads in this Muslim-majority country, an increasingly frequent refrain is heard in various quarters: “People become Christians after getting huge amounts of money as a reward for conversion.”
An uneasy calm returned Monday, October 15, to the village of Gowindhi, near Pakistan’s second largest city of Lahore, after a violent mob of Muslims “ransacked and desecrated” the local evangelical New Apostolic Faith church, rights investigators said.
Pastor Joseph Thadikka, 57, and his wife Ammini, 52, of New India Bible Church were severely beaten and admitted to the Mananthavadi district hospital with serious head and leg injuries.
A major advocacy group says that hundreds of Degar prisoners remain in prison for standing up for human rights, for spreading Christianity or for fleeing to Cambodia. Many have died from internal injuries caused by beatings. Indigenous rights are routinely violated, and racism and discrimination are serious problems in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.