Sudan’s embattled Christian minority attended church services Sunday, January, 21, as the predominantly Muslim nation plunged further into renewed civil war, despite a peace agreement brokered by US Governor Bill Richardson and others this month.
Tensions remained high in the Sri Lankan city of Jaffna Wednesday, January 17, after a pastor was shot dead by government security forces, triggering fears of more ethnic and religious clashes in the volatile region, local Christians and investigators said.
At least nine Christians remained in police custody in China’s Henan province on Monday, January 15, more than a week after Chinese security forces raided a Christian gathering, fellow believers said.
Seven youths beat Pastor Robert Kennedy of Bangalore in Karnataka state on Sunday (January 7), after asking him to “pray for a sick friend.†The pastor required 16 stitches to his head and back after the assault.
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.
Police in the southern Indian state of Karnataka have ordered several Christian leaders not to hold Sunday worship services saying Hindu militants planned to attack their churches, an official told BosNewsLife Saturday, September 23.
Christians faced another tense night in Northern Nigeria late Friday, September 22, where authorities imposed a curfew after angry Muslim mobs burned 11 churches over what they called “blasphemy” against the Prophet Mohammad by a Christian woman, police and Christian investigators said.
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 Eritrean government demanded this month that the Kale Hiwot Church surrender all its property and physical assets to the government.
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.
Dozens of Hindu militants stormed a house church Saturday, September 16, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where several other Christian gatherings were attacked earlier in the week, a Christian official said.
Muslim militants in Somalia shot and killed a young Christian man who converted from Islam eleven months ago, Christian sources said Friday, September 15.
Vietnamese security forces have detained 24 house church Christians who support a religious rights group which investigates the reported persecution of members of the, predominantly Christian, Montagnard Degar ethnic minority, friends told BosNewsLife Monday, September 11.
The military government of Burma has launched a new violent campaign against a largely Christian ethnic group and its churches, BosNewsLife learned Friday, September 8.
Thousands of Dalits in India’s Tamil Nadu state faced a difficult Saturday, September 9, amid fresh reports that they may be deported from their homes. Elsewhere in India, pastors were attacked on charges of “forcibly converting” villagers.
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.
Nearly two thousand Christians spent another Sunday, behind bars in Eritrea where they are allegedly subjected to torture and forced labor because of their religious beliefs.
Dozens of Hindu militants stormed a Christian school in Lucknow, the capital of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh late Sunday, September 10, threatening nuns and vandalizing the complex, Indian Christians told BosNewsLife.
Hindu extremists investigating the activities of Varghese Thomas, an evangelist in Karnakata state, laid a trap for him on Sunday (September 3), before beating him and his wife. Thomas is 60 and his wife, Leelama, is 57.
Six Christian men who were arrested in Uzbekistan amid a reported government-led crackdown on Christians and churches across the former Soviet republic have been released, their supporters told BosNewsLife Friday, September 8.