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.’
Police in the southern Indian state of Karnataka have ordered several Christian leaders not to hold Sunday worship services saying Hindu militants planned to attack their churches, an official told BosNewsLife Saturday, September 23.
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.
Three Christian men who were suspected of involvement in killing Muslims have been executed despite international doubts about the evidence against them, both officials and Christians rights investigators said late Thursday, September 21.
The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) www.persecution.org has just become informed that the execution date has been re-scheduled for three Christians involved in the Poso conflict. The men are to be executed on Thursday, September 21, 2006. They were the only ones charged in a conflict in which massive numbers of Muslims participated.
Dozens of Hindu militants stormed a house church Saturday, September 16, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where several other Christian gatherings were attacked earlier in the week, a Christian official said.
Vietnamese security forces have detained 24 house church Christians who support a religious rights group which investigates the reported persecution of members of the, predominantly Christian, Montagnard Degar ethnic minority, friends told BosNewsLife Monday, September 11.
The military government of Burma has launched a new violent campaign against a largely Christian ethnic group and its churches, BosNewsLife learned Friday, September 8.
Thousands of Dalits in India’s Tamil Nadu state faced a difficult Saturday, September 9, amid fresh reports that they may be deported from their homes. Elsewhere in India, pastors were attacked on charges of “forcibly converting” villagers.
Christians in Indonesia’s volatile province of Aceh on Saturday, September 9, were without their Indonesia Evangelical Mission Church Saturday, after an angry Muslim mob set fire to the complex because evangelicals planned, ‘revival’ meetings there, several sources said.
Dozens of Hindu militants stormed a Christian school in Lucknow, the capital of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh late Sunday, September 10, threatening nuns and vandalizing the complex, Indian Christians told BosNewsLife.
Hindu extremists investigating the activities of Varghese Thomas, an evangelist in Karnakata state, laid a trap for him on Sunday (September 3), before beating him and his wife. Thomas is 60 and his wife, Leelama, is 57.
The demand for Bibles is rising in China and India, the most populous countries of the world.