28 September 2000 (Newsroom) — Dozens of Christians have been killed in renewed attacks by extremist Muslim warriors in Indonesia’s eastern province of Maluku. At least 32 people died in an attack on the Ambon island village of Hative Besar, according to news reports.
The outbreak of religious conflicts between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria over the adoption of sharia (Islamic legal system) in some states has spread to the nation’s military ranks. Killings of Christian soldiers and non-military personnel have been reported in Lagos and Kaduna.
Some 2,000 survivors of an attack last week on a Christian village on Indonesia’s eastern island of Ambon are hiding under life-threatening conditions in a nearby jungle, according to the Missionary Service News Agency (MISNA).
Twenty-three Christians were massacred in Indonesia as they fled from their village in late July and early August, The Hindustan Times of India has reported. The report from Indonesia was relayed to U.S. media via Crosswalk.com, an Internet news and information site.
Reports of an “ethnic-cleaning” style religious war by Muslims against Christians on the Indonesian island of Ambon continue to be received from eyewitnesses on site.
Christians in Indonesia’s Maluku islands say their community remains under threat of extermination by thousands of trained Jihad troops that have entered the region since May.
A London-based pastor who has churches in Sri Lanka has issued an urgent prayer plea for Sri Lanka’s embattled evangelical Christian community.
Leaders of Christian communities who report they are under attack by jihad warriors in Indonesia’s Maluku islands are seeking emergency help from Europe.
Hindu militants in Orissa have announced that the man accused of masterminding the brutal killings last year of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons will be the chief minister candidate of their newly formed political party in the eastern state.
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.
Since October 1999 some 23 Christians have been killed in public by firing squads on falsified criminal charges in North Korea reports Open Doors, the ministry begun 45 years ago by Brother Andrew, the Dutch-born author of “God’s Smuggler.”
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.
An urgent plea for prayer for the Christians of Indonesia has come out of that nation from a recent visitor who has just returned from the Spice Islands.