Christian Persecution – Americas

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.

As Haiti suffers through a series of national disasters, spokesmen for the Christian community in the island nation say believers are facing even greater risk.

Three people were killed and 14 seriously injured on September 4 when masked men opened fire on a church in southern Colombia during a prayer service, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reports.

AUSTIN, Texas, April 12 (Compass) — Fighting between paramilitaries and guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Chocó, Colombia, abated during Holy Week. But war-weary Christians there know they cannot count on even a few days of peace in this hostile department (state) near the border with Panama.

Sectors of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in Mexico are engaged in a tug-of-war over the fate of 74 Tzotzil peasant farmers imprisoned for perpetrating the “Acteal massacre” in December 1997. Among them are 34 evangelical Christians from Presbyterian, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal churches in Chiapas.

For over a decade, Cuba has endured shocking shortages of everything from food and clothing to jobs and transportation. Cubans do not lack a sense of humor, however, and can still joke about their poverty.

Eighteen families of the indigenous Huichol tribe in Tenzompa, Jalisco, Mexico, — more than 80 adults and children, in all — are threatened with expulsion from their homes for the “crime” of believing in the Christian gospel.

An angry mob of Quechua-speaking Indians destroyed the only evangelical church in the remote village of Chucarasi in the Bolivian Andes on February 28 after beating a congregational elder unconscious. Villagers apparently attacked their Christian neighbors because they blamed them for a hail storm that damaged local crops.

November 18, 2003 was to be a day of major celebration by Christians across the island of Haiti. However, the Haitian government, changed its tune at the last minute and barred evangelicals from joining hands across the nation.

Colonel David de Vinatea, a decorated officer in the Peruvian army and an evangelical Christian, regained his freedom Wednesday after serving eight years and 10 days in prison for alleged drug trafficking.

An evangelical Christian pastor was assassinated last Friday near the town of San Juan Chamula in Mexico’s troubled southern state of Chiapas, while on his way to a prayer service.

Attorneys of the Association of Christian Lawyers in Colombia have assumed the defense of a pastor and several church lay leaders arrested by security forces near the city of Sincelejo and accused of terrorism.

Terrorists now pose a serious threat in Peru, and one Peruvian mission leader is asking that Christians everywhere band together in prayer to protect God’s people from violence.