Iranian Christians are mourning the death of Ghorban Dordi Tourani, an Iranian believer assassinated two weeks ago by an unnamed group of fanatical Muslims and the first Turkmen in Iran known to have been martyred for his Christian faith.
For Ishaya Kpotun Shaba of Niger state in north-central Nigeria, the past four years have been a jumble of tears and pain. He has not set his eyes on his daughter, Saratu, since she was abducted in December 2001 at age 19 by extremists bent on converting and marrying her to a Muslim.
Pastor Cai was abducted from a bus stop and dragged into a van by three plain-clothed State Security officers on September 11 2004. According to a former fellow inmate, Pastor Cai was repeatedly tortured with electric shocks and forced to give false confessions to serious charges.
Shahjahan Mollah, 35, lives in the village of Butia about 120 miles north of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Shahjahan, a former Muslim, converted to Christianity in 1991. He currently pastors a church of some 27 Muslim converts to Christianity in Butia.
The Rev. Murtala Marti Dangora began his Christian life 25 years ago with a baptism of fire. While many people in Nigeria become Christians without difficulties, Rev. Dangora’s decision to convert from Islam brought an instant death sentence from Muslim authorities.
Former Muslim residents in a remote village of the ex-Soviet union republic of Uzbekistan are being beaten, publicly humiliated and forced from their homes and jobs for converting to Christianity, a news agency investigation religious persecution said Friday, October 21.
The China Aid Association learned that as of October 21, 2005 at 7:30am, following more than 25 hours of house arrest, all of the nearly 50 arrested house church leaders were released.
A Christian worker is in jail in Indore, in the north-central state of Madhya Pradesh, after authorities arrested him on October 7 for “converting young children from poor Hindu families to Christianity.”
A Christian businessman and friend of an evangelist in China’s Xinjiang province was rushed to hospital after being “tortured” by security agents amid an ongoing “comprehensive campaign” against Christians in the region, a US-based religious rights organization said Saturday, October 1.
Radical Hindus of Jamanya village, in Maharashtra state’s Jalgaon district, remain hostile to Christian families who were attacked on May 16 – threatening to beat them if they refuse to renounce their faith, detaining and beating a Christian visitor, and attacking the house of another believer.
Judges in Malaysia’s Court of Appeal announced on September 19 that Lina Joy, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity in the late 1980s, must apply to a sharia court for permission to legally renounce Islam.
Government regulations aimed at curbing the growth of Christian house churches in Cuba took force on September 22, sparking fears that evangelical Protestants on the island could face a period of heightened persecution.
Chinese Christian Zhang Yi-nan was released from the Ping Ding Shan City Bailou Labor Camp in Henan Province, China on Sunday morning. Zhang’s wife, Ding Guizhen, and their son, Zhang Kairi, were waiting for him at the steel gate of the prison camp, but were not immediately allowed to welcome him home.
A human rights group has expressed concern about reports of wide spread persecution of Christians in rural Ethiopia where at least one evangelist has been killed “for refusing” to abandon his Christian faith, BosNewsLife monitored Thursday, September 22.
The Israeli High Court on September 12 heard a petition by ultra-orthodox Jews to hold a 700-person demonstration in front of the house of a family of Messianic Jews. In the past, the group’s smaller protests consisted of shouting obscenities and slurs at the Christians.
His father sent him to Saudi Arabia from Nigeria when he was 3 years old to be trained as an Islamic cleric, but God had other plans for Ahmed Abdullahi.
Impoverished native missionaries in Mumbai, the capital of India’s Maharashtra state, were reportedly still homeless Friday, September 16, more than a month after their possessions were swept away in record flooding there, which killed over 1000 people.
Authorities in the Son Ha District of Quang Ngai Province incited a mob to burn down the home of evangelist Dinh Van Hoang on August 21 because he would not sign a paper denying his Christian faith.
The state government of Rajasthan, ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), plans to present an anti-conversion bill to the state assembly during its next session, beginning on September 26.
Vietnamese government forces reportedly burned down homes of Christian villagers for refusing to denounce their faith in Christ amid new concern about human rights violations in the Communist nation, BosNewsLife monitored Monday, September 12.