Buddhist clerics and local council officials are holding 13 newly converted Christians captive in a pagoda in a southeastern mountainous district of Bangladesh in an attempt to forcibly return them to Buddhism.
Several churches in Eritrea were without their leaders or other believers Sunday, December 21, as a government-backed campaign of mass arrests reached the capital Asmara amid fears several detainees died of mistreatment, Christians said.
Pakistani police ransacked run-down homes of Christians living in a slum of Pakistan’s 10th largest city and “severely tortured Christian women” leaving several of them “critically injured”, local residents told BosNewsLife.
Over a dozen Christians will spend Christmas behind bars in China after police raided a Christian leaders gathering in Henan province, while in the capital Beijing two officials of the banned Chinese House Church Alliance were detained, an advocacy group and Chinese Christians confirmed Thursday, December 18.
A tense calm returned to a village in Indonesia’s Central Maluku province, where angry Muslims torched churches, dozens of homes and other properties after a Christian teacher allegedly made comments insulting Islam, rights investigators said Wednesday, December 17.
Local government officials in Dak Lak Province this morning made good on their threat to destroy a new wooden church building erected in September by Hmong Christians in Cu Hat village.
A nation-wide alliance of Christian leaders, churches, mission agencies, and other Christian institutions in India has condemned widespread anti-Christian violence in the Indian state of Karnataka, which injured dozens, but “welcomed” the sentencing of those involved in church bombings.
Fearing violence, many Christians in India’s volatile state of Orissa will for the first time in their history not celebrate Christmas but instead mourn victims of recent anti-Christian attacks, which killed dozens, and those who died in shootings in Mumbai, a priest told BosNewsLife, Saturday, December 13.
Four Christians remained missing Friday, December 12, more than a month after they were detained in China’s Hubei province amid a police crackdown on believers, including missionaries, in the region, a house church network said.
A Somali Christian put in a refugee camp police cell here for defending his family against Islamic zealots has been released after Christians helped raise the 20,000 Kenya shilling fine (US$266) that a camp “court” demanded for his conversion dishonoring Islam and its prophet, Muhammad.
Some 500 suspects remained detained Thursday, December 11, for their alleged involvement in rioting sparked by Muslim attacks on Christians, that left at least six pastors dead and some 500 others killed.
A Christian politician in Pakistan’s Punjab province was recovering of his injuries Thursday, December 11, after he was apparently nearly killed by Muslim activists, amid growing religious tensions in the region.
Chinese authorities have sentenced Christian Mao Minzi to a forced labor camp for his involvement in organizing a worship service with other believers in a house church, an advocacy group confirmed late Thursday, December 11,
The harassment that Bangladeshi converts from Islam face from Muslim neighbors in this southeastern area near Cox’s Bazar can take serious turns — as it did last month, when an attack by about a dozen Muslims left a Christian family with machete wounds.
There were concerns Wednesday, December 10, that Chinese authorities would launch a nationwide crackdown on the growing ‘house churches, after the Ministry of Civil Affairs ordered the “abolishment” of a major umbrella group.
In recent months Chinese officials have attempted to build bridges with the Protestant house church movement even as police raided more unregistered congregations, arrested Christian leaders and forced at least 400 college students to swear they would stop attending such worship services.
Christians on the predominantly Muslim islands of Pemba and the Comoros archipelago are beaten, detained and banished for their faith, according to church leaders who travel regularly to the Indian Ocean isles off the east coast of Africa.
Christians in Orissa state are anticipating Christmas with fear as Hindu extremists have called for a state-wide bandh, or forced shut-down on all sectors of society, on Dec. 25 – a move that could provide Hindu extremists the pretext for attacking anyone publicly celebrating the birth of Christ.
Baptists in the Russian town of Lipetsk south-east of Moscow say local authorities are using “a bureaucratic way” to restrict their activities, BosNewsLife monitored Wednesday, December 3.
At least some 400 people have been killed and thousands forced to flee their homes in the central Nigerian city of Jos where Christians and Muslims clashed in the worst sectarian violence in Africa’s most populous nation in years. Fighting began Friday, November 28, amid a dispute over the result of a local election, witnesses said Saturday, November 29.