Christian Persecution – Europe

Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer has blocked a key piece of reform legislation passed last month to broaden religious freedoms in Turkey.

Unidentified assailants hurled six Molotov cocktails at a Protestant place of worship in western Turkey last Saturday (November 4), breaking windows and inflicting minor damages on the exterior of the building.

A Turkish prosecutor slapped criminal charges against two converts to Christianity earlier this month, accusing them of “insulting Turkishness,” inciting hatred against Islam and secretly compiling data on private citizens for a local Bible correspondence course.

Eight organizations supporting persecuted churches have urged Christians worldwide to pray for 200 million Christians who they claim suffer “interrogation, arrest and even death for their faith in Christ.”

Parliamentarians in the Netherlands have urged the government to investigate reports of death threats against former Muslims who converted to Christianity, a Dutch Christian daily newspaper reported Tuesday, May 2.

Fanned by local media and a Muslim mufti, an anti-missionary witch-hunt targeting Christians in Turkey’s eastern city of Bingol left a Muslim woman beaten in her tailor shop last month while police allowed her attacker to walk free.

In a country where media often portray the tiny Protestant community negatively, some news organizations here took notice when Muslims threatened Christians at a book fair last week.

A criminal court in northwestern Turkey will assess new medical reports next week on the condition of Turkish Christian Yakup Cindilli, still recovering from severe injuries inflicted by ultra-nationalists accusing him of “missionary propaganda.”