25 June 2000 (Newsroom) — Indonesia’s top military leader wants martial law imposed on the eastern province of Maluku to stem growing anarchy in the wake of last week’s slaughter of 156 Christians by Muslim militia, the Jakarta Post reported. Since Wednesday, at least 47 Muslims and Christians have been killed and hundreds have been injured in clashes in the provincial capital of Ambon.
A resurgence of violence between Muslims and Christians erupted on May 23 and 24 in Kaduna city of northern Nigeria, but sources dispute the extent of the carnage.
22 June 2000 (Newsroom) — Seventeen resolutions concerning gays and lesbians will confront delegates to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) when they gather for a week in Long Beach, California, beginning Saturday.
JERUSALEM, Israel, 22 June 2000 (Newsroom) — Maronite Christians are openly challenging Syria’s presence in Lebanon in protests that are unprecedented since their Arab neighbor crushed the Lebanese Forces Christian militia at the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1989.
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.
More than a year after Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, Timothy and Phillip, were brutally murdered in Orissa state, Christians in India continue to be harassed and persecuted. And according to church leaders, the Sangh Parivar (family of Hindu fundamentalist groups) sponsors much of it in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. These states have become the laboratory of “Hindutva” (cultural nationalism).
Christians in Laos continue to suffer persecution from a government crackdown on believers, and they cannot visit friends or travel freely because the secret police follow them every everywhere. Some have been forced to recant their faith.
5 June 2000 (Newsroom) — Two United States courts have upheld judicial orders to remove wall displays with the Ten Commandments from a public school district and two county courthouses in Kentucky. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and a U.S. District Court denied motions to stay the preliminary injunctions issued last month by federal judge Jennifer B. Coffman.
2 June 2000 (Newsroom) — A local official in Uzbekistan has denied registration to a Baptist church and barred its denomination from using a collective farm to hold a summer camp, the Keston News Service reported.