Hindu extremists in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh have raised the incidence of attacks on believers to an unprecedented high, including a slander campaign against the state’s chief minister, Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, a Christian.
An influential Christian politician was in hiding in Vietnam Tuesday, April 24, after being harassed by Vietnamese security forces who also attacked other dissidents planning to meet US officials, a leading human rights activist confirmed to BosNewsLife.
A 12 years old Christian girl, Shaheena Masih was kidnapped and gang raped by four Muslim men on Easter day at Lahore in the Province of Punjab.
Following the March 29 sentencing of Father Nguyen Van Ly to eight years in prison for distributing “material harmful to the state,†two Protestant lawyers charged with the same “crime†are expected to face equally harsh sentences in what Human Rights Watch has called the harshest crackdown in 20 years.
Five Christians, including a 16-year-old boy, have been falsely accused of and charged with “blasphemy” against Muhammad on April 1 in Toba Tek Singh, Punjab, according to an April 6 report from Compass Direct.
Although elections in Madhya Pradesh are more than 18 months away, two Christian leaders there link the state’s ruling Hindu nationalist party to rising persecution ahead of the upcoming vote.
Global council of Indian Christians(GCIC) takes serious exceptions in the illegal detention of tourists by the Hyderabad police on the dictates of radical Hindus. The radicals have ganged up against the tourists as they came to know that the tourists are devout Christians.
Pakistani Muslim and Christian leaders are working to defuse tensions in a Punjab city after rumors of “blasphemy†sparked mob action against the Christian community this week.
More than 160 Christian prisoners ended a two-day hunger strike last week after authorities in Pakistan’s Punjab province permitted them to resume religious services, a non-governmental organization worker said.
There was concern Wednesday, March 28, about the plight of evangelical Christians in the Indian state of Kerala after reports that the local government for the first time shut down a church amid violent attacks against believers.
Pakistani Christians continue to bear the brunt of the country’s blasphemy laws as yet another Christian man has been booked for allegedly tearing and setting ablaze the pages of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
Tensions remained high Monday, March 26, in a Christian area of the Indian state of Orissa after Hindu militants threatened to set homes of Christians on fire while elsewhere in India evangelists and missionaries were attacked.
Police arrested Pastor Philip Abraham from Noida and Pastor Jacob Kunjumon from Mumbai in Ganga Nagar, Rajasthan on March 23, 2007 with the charges of alleged force conversion and insulting Hindu gods.
A Gospel for Asia missionary working in Assam, India, was badly beaten on March 21 during what appears to be a robbery attempt. GFA missionary Bansi Samoun, along with staff members from a GFA Bridge of Hope center and their driver, had traveled to a neighboring village with plans to distribute school supply bags to children when the incident occurred. Upon their arrival in the village, a group of known militants approached them, demanding the key to their vehicle.
An Islamic militant began serving a 20-year jail sentence Thursday, March 22, on charges of plotting the 2005 beheadings of three Christian girls on Indonesia’s volatile Sulawesi island. Two other militants involved in the crime were sentenced to 14 years.
Christians in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday, March 14, were preparing to rebuild their church, hours after it was burnt down by Hindu militants, while elsewhere in the country several Christian leaders were recovering from injuries following violent attacks against them.
There was mounting concern Tuesday, March 13, about the whereabouts of an evangelical Sri Lankan pastor, his two sons, and another Christian young man who disappeared this month amid intense fighting between Sri Lanka’s government forces and the independence seeking Tamil Tiger rebels, Christians said.
A Christian pro-democracy activist was released by Vietnamese authorities Tuesday, March 13, after spending over 12 hours in police custody, but the whereabouts of a human rights lawyer remained unknown, dissidents told BosNewsLife.
Police officers and members of a Hindu extremist group in Andhra Pradesh on Sunday (March 11) lured a pastor into a remote forest, where the extremists tied his hands and feet and beat him with wooden clubs as they accused him of offering money for Hindus to convert to Christianity.
Hindu extremists have extended to the northern state of Himachal Pradesh a movement to bring Christian converts back to the Hindu fold through dubious “reconversion†events.