Over one thousand Christians, including priests, nuns, women and children, have fled to the jungles of India’s Orissa State where deadly anti-Christian violence entered its seventh day, a church official told BosNewsLife Sunday, December 30.
Indian church leaders on Thursday, December 27, appealed to authorities to intervene after Hindu extremists attacked dozens of Christian institutions, including churches, in the religiously volatile eastern state of Orissa over Christmas, reportedly killing up to three people and injuring many others.
Several people were injured when a Hindu mob attacked a Christmas worship service in India’s religiously volatile eastern state of Orissa Monday, December 24, destroying a crib as well as light and sound equipment, Christians told BosNewsLife.
A Pakistani Christian couple said Tuesday, December 18, they have gone into hiding in Pakistan’s northeastern city of Sargodha because Muslim relatives threaten to kill them and their children for embracing Christianity.
Indonesian security forces have prevented an attack by about 50 Muslim militants on the troubled Pasundan Christian Church in West Java Province, the second act of violence against the Protestant congregation in two weeks, a well-informed Christian rights group said Thursday, December 13.
A search continued Thursday, December 13, for the General Secretary of the Churches of Pakistan, Dr. Rejinald Humayun, who was kidnapped last week following clashes in the country involving Islamic militants that killed at least three Christians.
An advocacy group representing churches and mission organizations says Hindu militants backed by political parties and groups have carried out at least 500 attacks against mainly Christian missionaries in the past 23 months, and urged the central government to halt the violence.
Attacking the house of a Baptist pastor and protesting the presence of a Catholic temple, radical Muslim groups got authorities to close down two churches in the past two weeks.
Pakistani Christians have played a prominent role in the struggle against harsh emergency laws established by the country’s president this month. And many of have paid the price.
A mob allegedly led by a Hindu extremist group demolished a house church and beat the pastor and believers on November 19 in Chhattisgarh state’s Bastar district. The following day, a young relative of the pastor allegedly kidnapped by the extremists was found dead in a nearby jungle.
Hundreds of Muslim militants stormed and destroyed a Protestant church in Indonesia’s province of West Java amid growing religious tensions in the region, a Netherlands-based Christian rights group reported Tuesday, November 27.
Two Indian evangelical pastors were free on bail Tuesday, November 27, after being detained over the weekend for allegedly “forcing” Hindus to accept Christianity, amid reports that India’s most influential Hindu organization has stepped up efforts to crackdown on devoted Christians.
Dozens of Islamic militants raided a house church in the Indonesian province of West Java on Monday, November 19, the latest in a series of attacks against perceived “illegal” places of worship, local Christians reportedly said.
In a highly unusual press conference in Pyongyang in September, the National Security Service of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced the arrest of “foreign spies” and “native citizens working for a foreign intelligence service.” The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), a ministry serving Christians in restricted nations who are persecuted for their faith, announced today that those arrested in North Korea were in fact Christian believers and not spies.
After reports emerged of a bloody crackdown on Christians and other activists, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf pledged Sunday, November 11, that he would organize elections before January 9, next year.
A rash of violence in Maharashtra state last weekend, Christian leaders say, is typical of a growing history of unchecked, Hindu extremist crimes against Christians in Thane district.
A young Indian evangelist and shepherd has been killed by Hindu priests seeking human sacrifices for a Hindu ‘goddess’, the latest in a series of violent attacks against Christians in India, BosNewsLife learned Wednesday, November 7.
Malatya’s Third Criminal Court has set November 23 to open the trial of the confessed murderers of Turkish convert Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and a German Christian, Tilmann Geske.
An Indonesian court has sentenced 41 Christian leaders to five years imprisonment on charges of blasphemy because they openly prayed that Muslims “come to know Christ,” local Christians and a well-informed human rights group told BosNewsLife Thursday, November 1.
Islamic militants threatened to bomb a Christian family for refusing to convert to Islam as fighting between militants and government troops resumed in northwestern Pakistan yesterday.