The outbreak of religious conflicts between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria over the adoption of sharia (Islamic legal system) in some states has spread to the nation’s military ranks. Killings of Christian soldiers and non-military personnel have been reported in Lagos and Kaduna.
Faith Shaw was born in Rwanda, a country that between 1959-64 saw more than 500,000 people killed and a similar number or more fled the country. She was horrified when in April of 1994, a further 800,000 were killed and 1,000,000 fled to the neighboring countries.
“The most severe persecution happened to us on Sunday, October 17, 1999. They detained 150 Christians and prepared to send some of them to ‘reform through education’ camps for three years. They fined some of us 2,000 RMB. They didn’t even give me a receipt. (Society here is now so corrupt!) But we did not cease to meet.”
In Anhui province in eastern China — a center of Christian house church activity — the provincial government is enforcing a repressive religious policy that has continued for many years and shows no sign of abatement. And reliable house church sources say control is being further tightened.
Zhang Rongliang, also known as David Zhang, is at large in China despite receiving a three-years’ hard labor sentence in December 1999. Reliable reports from central China say he was able to buy himself out of jail. But Born Again movement leader Xu Yongze remains incarcerated, despite having completed his three-year sentence on March 15, and 10 more house church leaders were arrested in southeast China in May.
Another day, another bombing. That’s the impression being created, at least, by a mounting wave of attacks on Christians and churches in India.
Some 2,000 survivors of an attack last week on a Christian village on Indonesia’s eastern island of Ambon are hiding under life-threatening conditions in a nearby jungle, according to the Missionary Service News Agency (MISNA).
Twenty-three Christians were massacred in Indonesia as they fled from their village in late July and early August, The Hindustan Times of India has reported. The report from Indonesia was relayed to U.S. media via Crosswalk.com, an Internet news and information site.
Reports of an “ethnic-cleaning” style religious war by Muslims against Christians on the Indonesian island of Ambon continue to be received from eyewitnesses on site.
China’s most famous house church prisoner, Mr. Xu Yongze, is free. The 58-year-old founder of the Born Again movement was released on May 16, after serving a three-year “re-education through labor” sentence for establishing an illegal organization in China.
Christians in Indonesia’s Maluku islands say their community remains under threat of extermination by thousands of trained Jihad troops that have entered the region since May.
A London-based pastor who has churches in Sri Lanka has issued an urgent prayer plea for Sri Lanka’s embattled evangelical Christian community.
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.
Hindu militants in Orissa have announced that the man accused of masterminding the brutal killings last year of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons will be the chief minister candidate of their newly formed political party in the eastern state.
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).
Christians in Laos continue to suffer persecution from a government crackdown on believers, and they cannot visit friends or travel freely because the secret police follow them every everywhere. Some have been forced to recant their faith.
Two Chinese Protestant pastors accused of organizing an unauthorized Christian meeting are being held in labor camps near Beijing, a London-based religious rights group reported Thursday. Wang Li Gong, 34, and Yang Jing Fu, 36, are in two separate camps in Tianjing serving administrative sentences of one year, and one and one-half years, respectively, Christian Solidarity Worldwide said.
Reports from Laos say the number of Christians held by the government has dropped in recent months. Although the Lao Constitution provides for freedom of religion, the government continues to restrict the right to practice religion.
Two colleagues of prominent Chinese evangelist Li Dexian have been sentenced to 15 days in prison, an Australian-based monitoring group reported. Ah Yung and Ah Kong are among 13 Protestant house church members who have been arrested in the southern province of Guangdong since the weekend, according to the Sydney office of Voice of the Martyrs (VOM).