Christian believers in the Philippines on Sunday, February 5, mourned 6 Christians, including an infant, who were killed by Muslim militants shortly after a missionary couple died in an ambush.
Extremists encouraged Hindu residents of a village in Malkangiri district, Orissa state, to attack Christian residents on January 24. At least 10 Christians were injured and two were hospitalized.
Indian Hindu militants attacked a Christian orphanage of Hopegivers International (HI), one of India’s leading mission organizations, injuring orphans and three pastors, its president confirmed Thursday, February 2, following a weeklong investigation.
Three separate attacks on Christians in Madhya Pradesh, central India, have occurred within a period of four days, leaving a number of people needing hospital treatment. Latest reports suggest that yet more attacks on Christians have since taken place in the communally tense state.
At least 18 Christians, including children, were injured when Hindu militants armed with sticks, rods and other sharp weapons broke up a Christian seminar in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, the fourth such incident in as many days, a Christian news agency reported Monday, January 30.
Two churches in Sri Lanka were attacked last weekend as threats from Buddhist monks continued amid tensions between the government and Tamil rebels.
A US-based religious rights group said Friday, January 27, that violence against the tiny Christian minority in India’s north-central state of Madhya Pradesh increased by 45 percent during the last two years.
A pastor and his cousin charged with attempted forced conversion in Matiapada village, Orissa state, were released on bail yesterday, while five Hindu villagers charged with assault and setting fire to the pastor’s house are still in custody.
Judges at Indonesia’s Constitutional Court on January 17 ruled that the Child Protection Act is in line with the constitution and should not be amended. The Rev. Ruyandi Hutasoit had challenged Article 86 of the Act, used as the basis for sentencing Dr. Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti and Ratna Bangun to three years in prison on September 1, 2005. The Christian Sunday School teachers were arrested in May 2005 after members of a local Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI or Muslim Clerics Council) in West Java accused them of trying to convert Muslim children. Judge Jimly Asshiddique said Rev. Hutasoit had no right to contest the Child Protection Act, since he had not experienced any ‘direct losses’ under it.
The government of India’s largest northwestern state, Rajasthan, has withdrawn criminal procedures against most militants of an influential Hindu nationalist organization involved in the massive distribution of ‘tridents’, three-sponged spears that have reportedly been used to intimidate the Christian minority, BosNewsLife learned Monday, January 23.
At this time last year, Noor Jehan Ahmed, 55, lived peacefully in the village of Nagaon, in the northeastern state of Assam. She and her extended household of 29 people formed their own Christian enclave within the majority-Muslim community.
Hindu extremists attacked Christians in two incidents in the same district of Andhra Pradesh state on January 12 and 13, in one case dragging a pastor from a child’s birthday party and kicking him unconscious.
Local government officials in Bandung, West Java, have ordered eight house churches in the Rancaekek Kencana housing complex to cease meeting in private homes starting last Sunday (January 15).
Christians in several tense Indian states were weighing their options Tuesday, January 17, after churches were attacked and believers apparently pressured to return to Hinduism.
A Pakistani Muslim in the Punjabi town of Sangla Hill dropped formal charges last week against a Christian he had accused of setting fire to pages of the Quran.
Burmese government forces attacked villages of the Karen and Karenni people, displacing 1,200 villagers, as part of a “slow genocide” against these predominantly Christian ethnic groups, a religious rights group said late Thursday, January 5.
In a shocking display of brutality, Aroun Voraphorn, an itinerant evangelist, pastor and father of four children, was murdered in southern Laos the week before Christmas.
During Friday prayers last week in Pakistan’s Punjab province, Muslim clerics flanked by government officials demanded the public execution of a Christian accused of blasphemy.
Two militant Hindu groups struck churches in India’s Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh states and forced some believes to bow for Hindu idols states as violence against Christians spread across the country, news reports said Tuesday, December 6.
A major report has been published this weekend documenting for the first time the extent of the government backed torture in Burma’s jails, human rights investigators said.