Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka have declared a “fast unto death” beginning December 12 if the government does not concede to a proposed constitutional amendment and the adoption of anti-conversion laws.
A brutal attack on a Christian book publisher in Ukraine has underscored the high stakes struggle over human rights and religious liberty in the former Soviet republic preparing for a re-run of a sharply contested presidential election.
Pastor Bradley Antolovich, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Jerusalem and father of five, watched helplessly as the horror at Beslan School #1 unfolded on television and various internet clips. The thought that these children could be his own welled up in him an unquenchable drive to reach out by going there.
Protestant ministers in the United States generally believe that religious persecution is a major problem in today’s world, and they believe the U.S. should impose sanctions against countries where this is occurring. These findings have just been released from a research study conducted among Protestant clergy in America.
It was back in 1999 that the Turkmenistan government declared its intention to “strangle minority faiths. All foreign Christians were expelled and the persecution of national believers, especially ethnic Turkmen, intensified intolerably.
KABUL/ISLAMABAD (ANS) — The trial of eight Western aid workers accused of spreading Christianity in mainly Moslim Afghanistan resumed in the Afghan Capital Kabul Sunday, September 30, as family members pleaded to United States President George W. Bush to postpone retaliatory action against the country.
Turkmenistan’s most prominent religious prisoner, the Baptist Shageldy Atakov, has been freed before the end of his four-year sentence, Keston News Service has learnt. The US-based Russian Evangelistic Ministries and the German-based Friedensstimme Mission, which maintain close ties with Baptists in the former Soviet republics, have both confirmed that Atakov was released from prison in the Caspian port city of Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk) early on 8 January and has now been reunited with his wife Artygul and five children in the town of Kaakhka close to Turkmenistan’s southern border with Iran. “Jesus has given me a Christmas gift,” Atakov was quoted as saying (many Christians in the region celebrate Christmas on 7 January).
Sary Mirzoyev, pastor of the Love Baptist Church in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, has told Keston News Service that he will fight attempts next week to liquidate his church as a legal entity. The hearing in the liquidation suit, brought by Rafik Aliev, chairman of the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations, begins on 23 January at the court of Baku’s Narimanov district. Aliev is alleging that Pastor Mirzoyev preached against Islam and that therefore the church has violated the country’s religion law and should be liquidated. “They have alleged that we are arousing religious hatred,” Pastor Mirzoyev told Keston from Baku on 18 January. “I said nothing against Islam or against Muslims.”
Part 1
by Berit Kjos
“I strongly urge the establishment of a Mission to Planet Earth, a worldwide monitoring system staffed by children…design to rescue the global environment.” -Al Gore
“…absolute behavior control is imminent…. The critical point of behavior control, in effect, is sneaking up on mankind without his self-conscious realization that a crisis is at hand. Man will… never self-consciously know that it has happened.” [1] Raymond Houghton, To Nurture Humaneness, ASCD (curriculum arm of the NEA), 1970
“The Protestant Ethic will atrophy as more and more enjoy varied leisure and guaranteed sustenance…. Most people will tend to be hedonistic…” [2] Feasibility Study, Behavioral Science Teacher Education Program (B-STEP), Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Bureau of Research, 1969
In mid-April four Protestant churches – the charismatic Cornerstone Church and Free Church, the Baptist Free Bible Church and an unregistered Pentecostal congregation – were all evicted from state premises which they had been renting for worship services in the capital of Tatarstan, Kazan.
he authorities in Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic in the north-west of Uzbekistan, are trying to halt the spread of Christianity among Karakalpakstan’s native peoples (Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Karakalpaks, who are historically Muslims),
WASHINGTON (BP)–The State Department’s second report on global religious liberty presents a challenge for the U.S. government to act against persecution, the chairman of a federal commission said.
New legislation awaiting agreement by the Kazakhstan authorities looks set to undermine religious freedom.
The Keston Institute reports that if adopted, the law will require all missionaries to be registered and allow unregistered religious groups to be banned.
Turkmenistan has moved to fifth place on the Open Doors World Watch List of worst persecutors of Christians, behind Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Laos and China, causing “great concern” to persecution watchers around the world.
The wife and children of Baptist prisoner Shageldy Atakov in Turkmenistan have been told by the local mullah, administration officials and officers of the country’s political police, the KNB (former KGB), that they may not believe in Jesus Christ and must convert to Islam. According to a statement from local Baptists — passed on to Keston News Service by the German-based Friedensstimme mission — officials in the town of Kaakhka, close to Turkmenistan’s southern border with Iran, also warned Atakov’s wife, Artygyul, that the family home would be confiscated if Christians continue to meet there.
A third New Year’s Eve attack against a Christian church in the Central Asian state of Tajikistan has been confirmed this past week by Korean Christians linked with Grace Sonmin Church in Dushanbe.
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA (January 11, 2001) – IRR-TV (INTERNATIONAL RUSSIAN RADIO/TV) has just made history by airing the first-ever Christmas marathon on secular television in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Turkmenistan’s political police evicted a Protestant Christian pastor with his wife and two children from their home near Ashgabad on December 9, confiscating their personal deed of ownership and sealing the gate to prevent their return.
MOSCOW, RUSSIA (November 9, 2000) — The “Moscow School of Broadcasting” is housed in an unassuming building about an hour south of Moscow. From the outside, it could be anything — an office building, a college dorm, or even an apartment complex. But inside, it’s a combination lecture hall and television studio, and the class is filled with 25 young Christians being trained to produce Christian programming for Russian television.
The director of a Russian drug-rehabilitation ministry assisted by Christian Aid was kidnapped nine days ago and has not been heard from since.