A leading Vietnamese human rights lawyer and pro-democracy activist has been forcefully injected with unknown drugs in a mental hospital where she has been confined since last year, fellow dissidents said Tuesday, January 9.
After launching several anti-Christian attacks during the last week of 2006, Hindu extremists went on to beat more Christians, vandalize vehicles and organize a protest rally against a church, dampening New Year celebrations.
Vietnamese security forces raided several prayer meetings of Montagnard Christians in the Central Highlands injuring dozens of believers, and at least one Montagnard Christian was fighting for his life Friday, January 5, following torture in prison, representatives said.
One of eight Iranian house church leaders arrested last month for “evangelization” and threatening security remained detained Thursday, January 4, on new charges that he must pay “an outstanding debt,” Iranian Christians reportedly said.
Iraq was named Wednesday, January 3, as the world’s “second-worst persecutor of Christians” after North Korea in an influential report expected to underscore concern about sectarian violence in the war-torn county.
There was concern Wednesday, January 3, about reports that at least nearly a million impoverished men, women and children, most of them Christians, have been “illegally enslaved” on the outskirts of Pakistan’s major cities and towns.
Devoted Christians in India’s northern state of Himachal Pradesh, including missionary workers and church leaders, ushered in the New Year Monday, January 1, amid fears of persecution after law makers introduced legislation banning “forced” religious conversions.