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.”
(AgapePress) – Three conservative bishops in the Episcopal Church have been given an ultimatum. They have been ordered to start ordaining women into the priesthood or face disciplinary action.
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.
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.
by Alex Buchan LONDON (Compass) — Credible reports of seven Christians executed for their faith inside North Korea have reached reliable sources in China. The seven, all men ranging in age from 15 to 58 years of age, were executed in April. The circumstances surrounding their deaths cannot be revealed. North Korea, a fanatically communist state, continues to hound all religious believers. The U.S. Department of State’s 2000 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom said there were unconfirmed reports of 23 Christians executed between October 1999 and April 2000. Some say that a number of Christians were rounded up and … Read more
Chinese police have detained 47 members of a Protestant group in central Anhui province, according to the state press. The Jianghui Morning Daily said last week that six of the main leaders of the Quanfanwei (Holistic) Church face criminal charges for organizing an illegal sect and illegal gatherings.
Since October 1999 some 23 Christians have been killed in public by firing squads on falsified criminal charges in North Korea reports Open Doors, the ministry begun 45 years ago by Brother Andrew, the Dutch-born author of “God’s Smuggler.”
A Mongolian citizen of ethnic Kazakh descent has been sentenced to 13 years in a prison labor camp in western Mongolia on charges of propagating the Christian faith.
A Christian Uzbek pastor jailed since February 1999 on contrived fraud charges is being subjected to physical beatings for witnessing to his cellmates, church sources in the Central Asian republic reported in early March.
Pastor Li De Xian preached twice this week in his usual Tuesday meeting in Huadu near Guangzhou, China without interference from Chinese authorities. This marks four consecutive weeks without arrest or interference for Pastor Li’s ministry.
To observers of China’s Christian church scene the event was as sudden as it was unexpected. Just the day before the Chinese New Year celebrations of February 5, one of China’s most prominent house church leaders, Zhang Rongliang, was released quietly from prison in Fangcheng City, Henan Province, on grounds of poor health. The news was relayed quickly to journalists and China specialists outside of China by friends who had remained in close contact with Zhang for several weeks.
Baptist pastor Rahim Tashov and a colleague were hauled into police headquarters in their hometown of Turkmenabad (formerly Chardjou) last Thursday, February 3.