Real-time updates on incidents, legal cases, policy changes, and testimonies from the persecuted Church.
Turkmenistan Further Baptist Fines
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Six members of a Baptist congregation in the town of Khazar (formerly Cheleken) were fined in mid-January for holding "illegal services", Keston News Service has learned. The instruction to fine them came from the political police, the KNB…
No Positive Change For Vietnam’s Protestants
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
HO CHI MINH CITY (Compass) -- In April, 26 years after the communist takeover of Vietnam, authorities granted legal status to Protestants of the southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam (ECVN). Optimists felt this might signal a change in…
Saudis Move Christian Prisoners to Deportation Center
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
LOS ANGELES, January 3 (Compass) -- Saudi Arabian authorities transferred the last five of 14 foreign Christians from their Jeddah prison cell to a deportation center yesterday, according to nine other Christian prisoners already moved there on December…
Activist Christian Pastor Arrested in Vietnam
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
HO CHI MINH CITY, August 21 (Compass) -- A pastor and lawyer who has been regularly harassed for exposing religious liberty abuses in Vietnam was arrested on August 17 along with his wife and another man in the…
30 Chinese Christian Leaders Abducted
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA -- An uncertain number of leaders of a major house church movement in China have disappeared in what at first was thought to be a massive government raid. Now cult activity is suspected.
Azerbaijan: “Overzealous” Police Try To Ban Baptist Service
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Just two days after a court in the capital Baku liquidated a Baptist congregation, a local policeman in the small town of Chukhuryurd near Shemakha in central Azerbaijan tried to ban a small Baptist church from meeting, Baptist…
American Missionaries Turn One Year in Captivity
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
ZAMBOANGA CITY, PHILIPPINES (ANS) -- The American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham turns one year old today under the captive of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), a terrorist group operating in the Southern Philippines and believed to…
China’s Anti-Cult Campaign in Context
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
In late April, reports filtered out from China that about 100 leaders of the evangelical China Gospel Fellowship -- a major house church grouping that claims some four million members -- had been arrested by the police. Soon…
South China Church Leaders Evade Execution
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Leaders of the South China Church have had their sentences reduced by the same court that tried them the first time after a retrial was ordered by the Hubei Province Supreme Court.
Two More Arrests In Saudi Arabia
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
WASHINGTON, DC (ANS) - - Two Filipino Christians were quietly whisked away from their homes near Jeddah early Wednesday morning, April 10, according to the Washington, DC based human rights organization, International Christian Concern (ICC).
Azerbaijan: Police Order Protestant’s Deportation
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
On the day Baku's Protestant Greater Grace church was celebrating Easter, police in the city's central Sabail district tried to forcibly deport a church member, alleging that she had been conducting religious "propaganda". One of the church's pastors,…
Ayub Masish Flees Pakistan
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
SANTA ANA, CA (ANS) -- Christian prisoner Ayub Masih fled his native Pakistan and arrived in an undisclosed country in the West on Wednesday after being imprisoned for six years on blasphemy charges. Despite being acquitted and released…
Chinese Church Leaders Freed After Being Abducted
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Leaders from a mainstream house church in China have been released after being abducted. The 34 senior leaders from the China Gospel Fellowship were abducted on April 16 by a group called Eastern Lightning (EL), which uses violence…
Breaking News: Belarus President Signs Anti Religion Legislation
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
MINSK, BELARUS (ANS) -- In a move expected to further isolate isolate the former Soviet Republic underground , Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko signed Europe's "most restrictive religious law," Thursday October 31, the Keston News Service (KNS) said.
They Sang in their Cells in Bangladesh Despite Persecution
Posted on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Three Gospel for Asia Bible school students in Bangladesh were sharing Christ in the village of Vasu during a six-month ministry assignment. Muslim extremists, angry to see a Gospel witness in their village, went to the police with…
