In what the mass-circulation Hurriyet newspaper called a “jet acquittal,” a criminal court in southeastern Turkey dropped all charges yesterday against a Protestant pastor accused of opening an “illegal” church.
Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, a blind Christian human rights lawyer, was given a four year sentence yesterday for his stand for human rights in Cuba.
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.
A criminal court in southeast Turkey has for the second time pressed charges against a Turkish Protestant pastor in Diyarbakir, this time accusing him of “opening an illegal church.”
Persecuted Chinese House Church leaders, including tortured and sexually abused women, have for the first time testified at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights amid claims that the Beijing government is increasing pressure on unregistered churches and active believers, ASSIST News Service (ANS) learned Monday April 5.
In January 2004, top cadres of China’s Religious Affairs Bureau and the policy-making United Front Work Department met for the annual National Religious Working Conference.
A Coptic Christian secretly married to a woman convert from Islam was arrested for the second time last week while trying to leave Egypt for Canada.
Nigerian Christians were considering their options Tuesday, Nov 25, after local authorities in Kano reportedly banned Sunday services following Islamic attacks in which churches and dozens of Christian shops were destroyed.
It was back in 1999 that the Turkmenistan government declared its intention to “strangle minority faiths. All foreign Christians were expelled and the persecution of national believers, especially ethnic Turkmen, intensified intolerably.
“Numerous Christian individuals” in Egypt and their properties were attacked by nearby Muslims angry over plans to found a church, an organization representing Egyptian believers confirmed Tuesday Nov. 18.
U.S. Copts Association received several phone calls from the families and friends of over 20 Egyptian Muslim converts to Christianity who have been detained by the Egyptian police since October 20th.
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.
(Orlando, FL) – The American Center for Law and Justice, an international public interest law firm, announced today it has filed a lawsuit in Florida state court against Orange County on behalf of a Christian ministry that operates The Holy Land Experience in Orlando contending that county officials are discriminating against the ministry by denying a request for exemption of property taxes.
ISTANBUL, September 27 (Compass) — The Taliban Supreme Court announced it will resume trial proceedings on Saturday against eight Western aid workers who have been jailed in the Afghan capital for the past two months on charges of preaching Christianity.
KABUL/ISLAMABAD (ANS) — The trial of eight Western aid workers accused of spreading Christianity in mainly Moslim Afghanistan resumed in the Afghan Capital Kabul Sunday, September 30, as family members pleaded to United States President George W. Bush to postpone retaliatory action against the country.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (ANS) — As the United States began a second day of air and missile attacks against Afghanistan Monday October 8, round the clock prayers intensified for twenty-four Christian aid workers held in a prison of the country’s ruling Taliban regime.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (ANS)– Parents of two American women have seen their daughters for the first time since they and 22 other aid workers were arrested August 5th on charges of spreading Christianity in Islamic Afghanistan. The Bakhtar News Agency (BNA) described the visit as an “emotional reunion” between the mother of Dana Curry, and the father of the other woman, Heather Mercy.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (ANS) — The Foreign Minister of Afghanistan’s Islamic Taliban regime denied Thursday, September 6, that his hard-line movement was considering a prisoner swap with the United States to free eight detained Western Christian relief workers. Reports from the region said that relatives of blind Egyptian militant Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently serving a life term in the United States for terrorism, proposed the prison exchange.
ISTANBUL, September 10 (Compass) — Taliban authorities arrested 35 more Afghan aid workers over the weekend, bringing the total to more than 50 Afghans jailed by the strict Islamist regime since early August on suspicion of aiding covert Christian missionary work.
OKLAHOMA CITY (BP)–The Oklahoma House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill April 4 that includes an amendment requiring state-approved science textbooks to acknowledge “one God as the creator of human life in the universe.”