MADA, Nigeria (Compass) — Two Nigerian Muslims who converted to the Christian faith in Mada village of northern Nigeria’s Zamfara state are missing, possibly at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists seeking to kill them for changing their faith.
JIDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA (ANS) — A further six Christian men have been arrested in the coastal city of Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, as the crackdown on believers in the city escalates, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
Six members of a Baptist congregation in the town of Khazar (formerly Cheleken) were fined in mid-January for holding “illegal services”, Keston News Service has learned. The instruction to fine them came from the political police, the KNB (former KGB), the six were told. The Turkmen authorities routinely fine members of unregistered religious congregations for holding religious meetings, even if such meetings take place in private homes.
Support for persecuted religious minorities around the world has received new impetus this month following the inauguration of a strategic new network of UK Christian agencies. The Christian Forum in Support of Persecuted Religious Minorities Worldwide was launched at a London conference on 20th July 2002, which attracted nearly 200 participants. Agency backing for the group has come from a range of mission and human rights groups who are keen that membership is now widened to maximise the impact that the forum can have.
HO CHI MINH CITY (Compass) — In April, 26 years after the communist takeover of Vietnam, authorities granted legal status to Protestants of the southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam (ECVN). Optimists felt this might signal a change in the oppressive religious policy that has long marked Vietnamese communism, especially with the rise of “moderate” Nong Duc Manh to general secretary of the Communist Party.
LOS ANGELES, January 3 (Compass) — Saudi Arabian authorities transferred the last five of 14 foreign Christians from their Jeddah prison cell to a deportation center yesterday, according to nine other Christian prisoners already moved there on December 22 and 23.
HO CHI MINH CITY, August 21 (Compass) — A pastor and lawyer who has been regularly harassed for exposing religious liberty abuses in Vietnam was arrested on August 17 along with his wife and another man in the capital city of this Southeast Asian country.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — An uncertain number of leaders of a major house church movement in China have disappeared in what at first was thought to be a massive government raid. Now cult activity is suspected.
Just two days after a court in the capital Baku liquidated a Baptist congregation, a local policeman in the small town of Chukhuryurd near Shemakha in central Azerbaijan tried to ban a small Baptist church from meeting, Baptist sources told Keston News Service. “He had heard the news of the Baku church’s liquidation on ANS television and came to the local elder last Friday [5 April] and told him the church could not meet on Sunday for worship,” Ilya Zenchenko, head of the Baptist Union in Azerbaijan, told Keston from Baku on 10 April. “We told the church elder on Saturday the policeman had been overzealous and exceeded his powers and that his demands for the church not to meet had no legal basis.”
Christians in Vietnam face oppressive, often brutal, persecution from authorities. Despite official measures to kill Christianity, the church of Jesus Christ continues to grow.
by Felix Corley, Keston News Service As believers who claim their rights have been violated by the state authorities debate and argue over the best way to resolve such violations, Keston News Service has discovered that Rafik Aliev, chairman of the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations, has repeatedly warned believers not to take their complaints to foreigners. “Come to us with your problems and we will sort them out,” he has told religious minority leaders, despite the fact that his office is often the cause of the violations or – in cases where other agencies have violated believers’ … Read more
ZAMBOANGA CITY, PHILIPPINES (ANS) — The American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham turns one year old today under the captive of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), a terrorist group operating in the Southern Philippines and believed to have links to the Al Qa’ida network in Afghanistan.
In late April, reports filtered out from China that about 100 leaders of the evangelical China Gospel Fellowship — a major house church grouping that claims some four million members — had been arrested by the police. Soon after, contradictory but more reliable reports said these key leaders had almost certainly been kidnapped by the sinister Lightning from the East (LFE) cult in a carefully orchestrated strategy.
by Felix Corley, Keston News Service As believers who claim their rights have been violated by the state authorities debate and argue over the best way to resolve such violations, Keston News Service has discovered that Rafik Aliev, chairman of the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations, has repeatedly warned believers not to take their complaints to foreigners. “Come to us with your problems and we will sort them out,” he has told religious minority leaders, despite the fact that his office is often the cause of the violations or – in cases where other agencies have violated believers’ … Read more
The Malawi Council of Churches – a mother body of prostestant churches in the country – has issued a statement asking the ruling party United Democratic Front (UDF) and the government at large, to curb acts of violence committed against the clergy.
The leader of a group of churches in Laos notified Christian Aid today that Lao authorities confiscated the Saybangnoun Church Saturday after Christians refused to surrender the facility to them Saturday noon. The church was located in Songkorn district, Savannakhet Province. The Christians gathered and worshiped in tears outside their confiscated church building Sunday.
A Church building belonging to the Mountain of Fire Ministries in Gusau, capital of Zamfara State, northern Nigeria was set ablaze by suspected Islamic fanatics.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (BP)–Thousands of extremist Muslim fighters armed with automatic weapons are attacking Christian villages in Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi province, burning churches and thousands of homes and sending residents fleeing.
ISTANBUL, November 5 (Compass) — Security was at an all-time high yesterday as solemn memorial services were held in every Christian church in Pakistan, mourning the 16 victims massacred by Muslim extremists during a Sunday morning worship service last week.
Pervez Masih, a Pakistani Christian schoolmaster being accused of blasphemy against Muhammad, is scheduled to appear before the Lahore High Court on Monday, October 8 to appeal for bail. Since his arrest on April 1, 2001, Pervez has been tortured and imprisoned in a 6-ft X 4-ft cell in Sialkot jail. The daytime temperature in the cell exceeds 50 degrees centigrade. He is not allowed to come out of his room and walk. Once a week, he is taken out to meet his relatives. He sleeps on the hard floor on a mat next to the toilet. In May he told visitors that police beat him, demanding that he convert to Islam.