Local authorities recently ordered 12 churches in the sub-district of Rancaekek, Bandung, Indonesia, to close their doors. The order came after Muslim clerics protested that the churches were meeting illegally.
For the first time in history, Chinese Christians gave evidence of persecution in April at a special meeting called by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) in Geneva. Several speakers testified to beatings, imprisonment, torture and damage to church buildings in recent years.
Fighting between paramilitaries and guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Chocó, Colombia, abated during Holy Week. But war-weary Christians there know they cannot count on even a few days of peace in this hostile department (state) near the border with Panama.
Iraqi Christians who have become targets of attacks by Muslim extremists and bandits are risking their lives to attend church services, ASSIST News Service (ANS) has established.
BAGHDAD, IRAQ (ANS) — Iraqi Christians who have become targets of attacks by Muslim extremists and bandits are risking their lives to attend church services, ASSIST News Service (ANS) has established.
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia, May 15 (Compass) — In mid April, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) forced 11 evangelical Protestant churches in Arauquita, a town near Colombia’s border with Venezuela, to suspend public worship services.
Two lawyers known for defending Pakistani Christians and Muslims over alleged blasphemy charges received death threats over the weekend, part of a series of overt warnings dished out to perceived “enemies of Islam” by local extremists during the past two weeks.
Five weeks after Islamic extremists gunned down 15 Pakistani Christians in a Sunday morning worship service, church leaders across Pakistan admitted that their congregations remain “tense and fearful” as Christmas approaches.
For many Western Christians, the mention of “Iraq” gives rise to mental images of Saddam Hussein and the Gulf War. Few realize that there are Christians in Iraq and that those Christians have arguably suffered more from the U.N. sanctions imposed after the 1991 war than from government oppression.
ATLANTA (ABP) — Southern Baptist leaders have informed the Roman Catholic Church that they are cutting off official conversations between the two groups that have been going off and on for 30 years.
Indonesia’s Christian and political leaders are convinced that the widespread Christmas Eve church bombings were meant to provoke all-out war between the Muslim and Christian communities in the country.
Leaders of Christian communities who report they are under attack by jihad warriors in Indonesia’s Maluku islands are seeking emergency help from Europe.
Bomb blasts damaged two churches in India’s southern Karnataka state over the weekend as Christians across the nation staged marches and rallies to protest sectarian violence.
More than a year after Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, Timothy and Phillip, were brutally murdered in Orissa state, Christians in India continue to be harassed and persecuted. And according to church leaders, the Sangh Parivar (family of Hindu fundamentalist groups) sponsors much of it in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. These states have become the laboratory of “Hindutva” (cultural nationalism).