Christian communities in Indonesia’s Moluccas fear the onslaught of “religious cleansing” as some 3,000 extremist Muslim fighters prepare to converge on the archipelago, according to a British-based group that recently returned from a fact-finding mission. Many families already have fled to other islands as predominantly Christian villages have been razed, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) said.
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.
Two Turkish Christians imprisoned near Izmir for a month on concocted charges of insulting Islam were ordered released March 30, after prosecution witnesses admitted that local gendarmarie officials pressured them to sign prepared complaints.
Two Turkish Christians arrested March 1 while selling and distributing Christian literature near the southern port city of Izmir were refused bail today, pending a court hearing scheduled for March 30.
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.
Saudi Arabia released four Filipino Christians in Riyadh yesterday, 40 days after their arrest by the country’s strict Islamic police for conducting Christian worship services in a private home.
Saudi Arabia has once again taken the dubious distinction of being the country where Christians are more severely persecuted than any other in the world. This was revealed in the January 2001 release of the Open Doors “World Watch List” (WWL), which ranks countries according to their level of Christian persecution.
Four of the 16 Filipino Christians arrested three weeks ago by Saudi religious police remain jailed and under interrogation in the capital Riyadh, a Filipino diplomat confirmed Wednesday. The three wives and five children arrested with them for conducting Christian worship in a private home have been released during the past week. Four adults were released the previous week.