Christian Persecution – Asia

Pakistan has released a psychiatrically disordered man who was accused of setting alight some pages of Quran, the Muslims holy book last year, ANS has learnt.

Leaders of Indonesia’s embattled Christian minority urged authorities Tuesday, October 17, to catch the killers of a Protestant pastor, whose church defended three Catholics before they were executed last month for alleged involvement in violence against Muslims.

News has just been received by ASSIST News Service that at around 9 am this morning (Monday, October 16, 2006), the acting head of the Protestant Church in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, was assassinated. He was shot in the head on a street in Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia — the same region where three Catholic Christians were recently executed.

A teenage girl was “mercilessly beaten and punished” by Muslim teachers at her school for “defending” her faith in Christ and wearing a cross, amid growing concern over violence against Christian women and girls in the Asian nation, Pakistani Christians said Friday, October 13.

A church in Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur district cancelled its weekly meeting yesterday (October 10) due to tensions in the region following false reports of conversions in newspapers. The reports led to two attacks in the past week.

One of Pakistan’s longest held Christian prisoners faced another uphill battle Saturday, October 7 as he “feels forgotten by the Church,” amid alleged pressure by fellow inmates to covert to Islam and health problems, friends and investigators told BosNewsLife.

There was concern about the Philippines’ security forces Wednesday, October 4, after a bishop of the Philippine Independent Church and a known human rights campaigner, was found dead with stab wounds at his office in a town north of the capital, Manila.

Growth in the incidence of violence against Christians in India this year is rooted largely in the political insecurity of Hindu nationalists, sources say.

Seven Christians working with the Indian Missionary Society (IMS) in India’s Gujarat state were released on bail this morning. The group was charged with attempted murder after Hindu extremists waylaid and assaulted them last week.

Christian investigators on Monday, October 2, urged the international community to pressure the government of the Indian state of Gujarat to respect religious freedom following the adoption of controversial legislation and attacks against missionaries there.

An influential Vietnamese evangelical pastor and evangelist has been beheaded after he refused to halt his massive church services, his friends said Saturday, September 30.

Hundreds of Montagnard Degar Christian prisoners in Vietnam were anxiously awaiting news Tuesday, September 26, whether an announced amnesty for at least hundreds of political dissidents would also apply to them.

Hindu extremists severely beat two pastors on September 24 in Madhya Pradesh, India, before dragging them to a police station and accusing them of ‘forcing’ conversions. Two days earlier, extremists had attacked and injured two evangelists in the same state, later accusing them of ‘hurting Hindu sentiments.’

A teenage Pakistani Christian spent Saturday, September 23, behind bars on suspicion of ripping book pages containing Quranic verses, the latest in a series of detentions raising concerns about Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws.