The following are excerpts of an open letter published Sunday by the Pakistan Christian Post from Ashraf Ramelah, founder and president of “Voice of the Copts,” to the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton.
For nearly nine months, an Algerian Christian convert from Islam still waits for a ruling on his appeal to the severe sentence handed him for allegedly proselytizing and defaming Islam and its prophet, according to Morning Star News.
A pastor’s daughter in Nigeria has been abducted by a Muslim leader who forced her to convert to Islam in a sharia court.
Eritrean authorities are punishing 39 Christian high school students by subjecting them to beatings and hard labor, according to Open Doors.
Egyptian security forces failed to intervene during a sectarian attack in Luxor that left four Copts dead and four others seriously injured, according to Amnesty International.
Mobs of Muslims enraged over the forceful removal of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi from office have retaliated against Christians across Egypt, according to Morning Star News.
Ethiopian officials have arbitrarily detained and arrested a Christian evangelist for terrorism and treason, according to International Christian Concern.
In the latest of a series of attacks this year in the Wase area of Plateau state, Nigeria, Fulani Muslims killed one Christian and destroyed church buildings in four villages Tuesday.
This month, members of the militant al-Shabaab sect publicly executed a young man to death in southern Somalia simply because he was a Christian.
Suspected members of Boko Haram attacked four settlements in Nigeria’s Borno State, killing a pastor and torching four churches, according to AllAfrica Global Media.
Human Rights Watch described it as “a giant prison” and Reporters without Borders called it “the most repressive nation on earth”.
International Christian Concern recently reported that two Christian men were arrested in separate incidents in Ethiopia.
Religious persecution in Eritrea is at its highest ever and getting even worse, according to World Watch Monitor, the news outlet of Open Doors, a Christian charity that ranked Eritrea 10th on its World Watch List.
Tanzania, whose population is almost entirely Muslim, has seen a sharp rise in the persecution of Christians, especially on Zanzibar, a small island off Tanzania’s east coast where Pastor Dickson’s church was attacked on May 26.
Islamic militants launched a “reign of terror” against Christians in the Central African Republic after Seleka rebels took control of the country in a March 24 coup.
At least one Christian died and dozens were injured in clashes between Muslims and Christians in Egypt’s Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, police and local media said Saturday, May 18.
A Nigerian Christian leader was killed Wednesday after armed militants burst into his home, according to BNL news service.
African Christians are divided over a proposal to grant amnesty to the militant members of Boko Haram, the violent Islamist sect whose bombings have killed thousands of believers and destroyed hundreds of their churches in northern Nigeria.
In yet another official slap to Sudan’s Christian minority, a government minister recently announced that no new licenses would be granted for church construction.
Since Nigeria’s government has proved itself incapable of protecting the country’s Christians, the militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has pledged to protect them by targeting Islamic institutions with retaliatory violence.