Persecuted Evangelical Christians and missionary workers in Kyrgyzstan were awaiting a new dawn late Thursday, March 24, as lawmakers of this former Soviet republic appointed a new interim president, news reports suggested.
Native Christian missionaries in rural Colombia are refusing to leave despite attacks from guerilla groups which they claim have “randomly confiscated multiple church buildings” and forced hundreds of villagers to flee to major cities, BosNewsLife learned Tuesday, March 22.
Native missionaries in Liberia are rebuilding damaged churches and evangelizing to help end ethnic and religious strife in the African nation, where two United Nations peacekeepers were injured Wednesday, March 23, UN and Christian officials said.
In early March, China adopted the new Regulations on Religious Affairs, first announced by the government in December 2004. The government claims the new regulations are a step towards religious freedom. However, some Christian leaders have expressed serious concerns, particularly with the issue of church registration.
A leading evangelical pastor disappeared off the streets of Asmara four days ago, presumably detained by Eritrean security forces and jailed at some unknown location.
Last Sunday evening, Eritrean security police arrested 16 Protestants for watching a Christian video together in a church member’s home in the town of Adi-Kibe.
An Iranian Colonel who, despite Western protests, was jailed last month for his alleged “illegal” conversion to Christianity is held at Tehran’s notorious maximum-security prison with well-known political and religious dissidents, a Christian news agency reported late Friday, March 11.
The criminal trial of Egyptian Christian Shafik Saleh Shafik, begun in mid January, has been ordered postponed until February 20 by the presiding judge, who accepted defense petitions to summon key witnesses and police reports related to the case.
Another 31 Eritrean Christians have been jailed by police in towns north of the capital Asmara over the past 10 days. The latest police sweeps brings the total to 187 arrests for “illegal” Christian activities in Eritrea since the beginning of January.
At least 10 foreign evangelical church leaders including eight Americans, one Taiwanese and an unknown number of South Koreans were detained and later deported by Chinese authorities, a Christian human rights watchdog said Thursday March 3.
Police in Indonesia pledged today to provide tighter security for churches during Christmas and New Year celebrations, after one of their own was arrested in connection with the murder of a Christian village chief on the island of Sulawesi.
Assailants simultaneously attacked two churches in the town of Palu, Central Sulawesi, during church services on Sunday night, injuring at least three people.
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.
Javier Segura, the 31-year-old pastor of a Mennonite church located in the La Victoria neighborhood of Bogotá, Colombia, died instantly Sunday night, November 28, when a bomb detonated outside a public building near downtown Bogotá. The minister was the only fatality in the 10 p.m. terrorist attack in which six other people suffered injuries.
Religious minorities and the Kosovo office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are seriously concerned by a draft religion law being discussed by Kosovo’s government.
New evidence has come to light, in secretly recorded tapes obtained by Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, of oppression of native Mennonite leaders in Vietnam.
Concern is growing among Iran’s evangelical community for the safety of a pastor arrested four weeks ago by the Iranian security police.
Eight days after his arrest, prominent Vietnamese house church leader Rev. Tran Mai walked back into his house in Ho Chi Minh City at 11 p.m. on September 6. However, he arrived home with orders to appear for further interrogation just nine hours later at the city headquarters of the Ministry of Public Security.
Amid international pressure well-known house church leader Zhao Wenquan has been released from custody, two weeks after his May 9 arrest in Hegou Town, Meng Cheng County, Anhui Province, a human rights groups said Friday May 28.
In spite of monumental efforts by Vietnam to minimize and cover up their brutal repression of demonstration attempts by the Montagnard ethnic minority this past Easter, consistent information is emerging that confirms atrocities.