An Indonesian court has sentenced 41 Christian leaders to five years imprisonment on charges of blasphemy because they openly prayed that Muslims “come to know Christ,” local Christians and a well-informed human rights group told BosNewsLife Thursday, November 1.
Tensions remained high Wednesday, September 19, in an area of the Indonesian city of Tangerand on the island of Java, after several Christians were injured when a congregation of the Protestant Batak Church was attacked by an angry Muslim mob, investigators said.
An Islamic militant began serving a 20-year jail sentence Thursday, March 22, on charges of plotting the 2005 beheadings of three Christian girls on Indonesia’s volatile Sulawesi island. Two other militants involved in the crime were sentenced to 14 years.
Persecution of Christians in North Korea “is worse than ever”, amid fresh reports of torture and executions, Christian investigators said Friday, February 2.
Tensions are rising across the Horn of Africa – there is death and danger. Irredentist Somali Islamists have declared jihad against Ethiopia. Christians are being attacked and murdered by Muslims in Ethiopia. Eritrea, which is accused of arming the Somali Islamists, is exploiting an opportunity and has breached the 2000 cease-fire agreement by moving troops into the Eritrea-Ethiopia border buffer zone. Two Protestant Christians were recently tortured to death in Eritrea. The savagery of persecution appears to be escalating in proportion to regional tensions — and it could be about to get much worse.
Three Christian men who were suspected of involvement in killing Muslims have been executed despite international doubts about the evidence against them, both officials and Christians rights investigators said late Thursday, September 21.
The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) www.persecution.org has just become informed that the execution date has been re-scheduled for three Christians involved in the Poso conflict. The men are to be executed on Thursday, September 21, 2006. They were the only ones charged in a conflict in which massive numbers of Muslims participated.
Christians in Indonesia’s volatile province of Aceh on Saturday, September 9, were without their Indonesia Evangelical Mission Church Saturday, after an angry Muslim mob set fire to the complex because evangelicals planned, ‘revival’ meetings there, several sources said.
There was uncertainty Saturday, August 26, about the fate of three Catholics sentenced to death for their alleged role in massacring Muslims after reports that they received an “indefinite” stay of execution from Indonesian authorities.
An ailing Christian evangelist serving a four-year prison sentence in Indonesia’s West Java province for allegedly defaming Islam has been abused in jail by Muslim militants, Christian investigators said Thursday, August 17.
Amid international pressure, Indonesia postponed on Saturday, August 12, the execution of three Christians found guilty in 2001 of violence against Muslims in the province of Central Sulawesi, apparently minutes before they were to be shot by a firing squad.
About 30 local officials backed by Muslim militants closed down a Baptist church in Bandung, the capital of the tense Indonesian province of West Java, investigators confirmed Thursday, August 10.
Noviana Malewa, the only girl to escape the malicious beheadings that took place in Indonesia on October 29, 2005 in Central Sulawesi, will receive treatment from VOMedical. The surgery is to alleviate the constant pain she still endures from a sword slash to her face and neck by militant Muslims.
A local council in West Java has warned several congregations in the Rancaekek Kencana housing complex in Bandung to abandon their “nomadic” cell group system, which allows limited numbers of Christians to meet together in private homes.
Lebanon’s Interior Minister resigned late Sunday, February 5, after an estimated 20,000 angry Muslims not only torched the Danish Embassy but also attacked the Christian community in the capital Beirut over published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.
Judges at Indonesia’s Constitutional Court on January 17 ruled that the Child Protection Act is in line with the constitution and should not be amended. The Rev. Ruyandi Hutasoit had challenged Article 86 of the Act, used as the basis for sentencing Dr. Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti and Ratna Bangun to three years in prison on September 1, 2005. The Christian Sunday School teachers were arrested in May 2005 after members of a local Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI or Muslim Clerics Council) in West Java accused them of trying to convert Muslim children. Judge Jimly Asshiddique said Rev. Hutasoit had no right to contest the Child Protection Act, since he had not experienced any ‘direct losses’ under it.
Local government officials in Bandung, West Java, have ordered eight house churches in the Rancaekek Kencana housing complex to cease meeting in private homes starting last Sunday (January 15).
Masked gunmen shot and wounded a Christian couple in the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi in the latest in a series of attacks against Christians there, police and hospital sources confirmed Monday, November 21.
Denied permits and ordered not to worship in public or at home, churches in East Bekasi, West Java, have taken temporary refuge in a Social Affairs Agency office.
Two Indonesian Christian girls were fighting for their lives late Tuesday, November 8, after they were shot in the head in Indonesia’s tense Poso region where three other Christian girls were beheaded last week, an influential religious rights organization said.