Authorities in Minsk are close to obtaining sufficient grounds under Belarusian law to close down the charismatic New Life Church, after issuing it an official warning on 30 December against using a cowshed the church owns for worship.
Luis Alberto Vera was released last month from Bellavista National Jail, a maximum security prison in Medellín, Colombia, in time to spend Christmas with his young family. Vera, however, remains under house arrest at the Biblical Seminary of Medellín.
Christian leaders in northern Nigeria say a report released in December by the government of Kano state grossly underreports the number of Christians killed by Muslim militants in violent attacks last year. Estimates of the value of churches and homes destroyed in the clashes are also much too low, leaders claim.
Fresh violence broke out in the central Nigerian state of Plateau when Muslim militants attacked the village of Gana-Ropp in the Barakin Ladi local government area, killing Christian community leader Davou Bulle and injuring his wife and son, who remain in critical condition at the Plateau state Specialist Hospital in Jos.
The Egyptian Christian director of a home for troubled Coptic girls goes on trial January 16 on criminal charges before Cairo’s Abbassiya Criminal Court No. 15.
Anwer Masih was acquitted in Lahore last month by a Judicial Magistrate’s Court, making him the first Pakistani Christian ever acquitted of blasphemy in Pakistan’s lower courts.
China has announced a new law, which comes into effect on March 1, governing the freedom of religion.
Sources in Vietnam have informed Compass that the People’s Supreme Court in Ho Chi Minh City will hear the appeals of the Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang and evangelist Pham Ngoc Thach on February 2. This represents the final appeal option available to the defendants; however, the high court has virtually never reversed a lower court decision.
Representatives of the Paris Elim Church will be going to court in order to continue worshipping in their current location. Paris Elim church representatives are going to be in court on Wednesday, January 19 and Friday, January 28, 2005.
Stories are coming in to Christian Aid from missionaries in South Asia of how believers have been affected by-and in some cases miraculously spared from-the tsunami tragedy.
Sixty members of the Rema Charismatic Church in the Eritrean capital of Asmara have been arrested and jailed for holding a New Year’s Eve celebration in the home of one of their church leaders.