A state prosecutor in western Algeria demanded two-year jail sentences and large fines for six Muslim converts to Christianity yesterday in one of two trials against Christians that have caught the north African nation’s attention in the past week.
In yet another savage attack on Christians in India, news has just come out that some thirty Christian preachers were beaten by Hindu activists belonging to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at Bainsa town in the Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh.
Unconfirmed reports emerged this month in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, indicating that the repressive regime plans to press formal charges of treason against several Protestant pastors jailed for the past four years.
The debate was urgent and often heated at the annual meeting of the Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA) earlier this month. The looming question: whether to obey or disobey government orders that have closed over half of the North African country’s 50 Protestant churches in the past six months.
Several members of Iran’s rapidly expanding underground church remained behind bars Sunday, May 25, as part of a police crackdown on Muslim converts to Christianity, several Christian sources said.
The leader of a rebel group fighting for autonomy and more religious rights of Burma’s predominantly Christian Karen community has died, a Christian humanitarian group confirmed Friday May 23.
Nearly all Christian families in a village on Indonesia’s Seram island, in the religiously volatile Maluku province, were homeless Wednesday, May 21, after a Muslim mob burned their houses and other properties as well as killing four believers and injuring dozens others, investigators told BosNewsLife.
Police in the southern Iran city of Shiraz this month cracked down against known Muslim converts to Christianity, arresting members of three Christian families and confiscating their books and computers.
As China mourned Monday, May 19, some 34,000 people killed in a massive earthquake, Chinese security forces, operating outside the international media attention, continued a crackdown on underground house churches, Christians said.
Algerian Christians have appealed for international "prayers and support" amid a government crackdown on churches and suspected evangelists, a rights group said Monday, May 19.
Local officials in Lao Cai province have confiscated the land and home of a former opium addict because of his phenomenal success as an evangelist, local Christian sources said.
Pakistani police have jailed a Christian doctor after "blasphemy" charges incited a mob attack on his home last week in Punjab province.
Christians in several areas of Zimbabwe faced more food shortages Wednesday, May 14, amid ongoing turmoil and reported persecution of churches in the country, once called ‘the breadbasket of Africa.’
An Algerian Christian detained five days for carrying a Bible and personal Bible study books was handed a 300-euro (US$460) fine and a one-year suspended prison sentence last week, an Algerian church leader said.
Muslim villagers in Mymensingh district eager to rid the area of the Christian work of a local pastor have gang-raped his 13-year-old daughter, the girl’s father said.
Christian missionaries in Bhutan, a predominately Buddhist nation, faced new challenges Thursday, May 8, nearly a month after villagers were reportedly expelled from their home for becoming Christians.
Native missionaries in Maharashtra, India’s third largest state, continued their activities Wednesday, May 7, amid mounting opposition against Christianity in the area, BosNewsLife learned.
Muslim extremists and local government authorities last week threatened to tear down a church building under construction in North Sumatra even though church leaders met requirements of Indonesia’s draconian law on worship places, the church’s pastor said.
Three men, one of them armed with a gun and wearing gloves, threatened a Protestant church and its pastor in the Turkish capital city of Ankara yesterday. The culprits fled in a car before police could be summoned.
Villagers in India’s state of Madhya Pradesh on Saturday, May 3, recalled that exactly one month ago a local Christian leader was killed because his faith in Christ was wrongly understood, BosNewsLife monitored.