Christian Persecution

The leader of a rebel group fighting for autonomy and more religious rights of Burma’s predominantly Christian Karen community has died, a Christian humanitarian group confirmed Friday May 23.

Police in the southern Iran city of Shiraz this month cracked down against known Muslim converts to Christianity, arresting members of three Christian families and confiscating their books and computers.

Nearly all Christian families in a village on Indonesia’s Seram island, in the religiously volatile Maluku province, were homeless Wednesday, May 21, after a Muslim mob burned their houses and other properties as well as killing four believers and injuring dozens others, investigators told BosNewsLife.

Local officials in Lao Cai province have confiscated the land and home of a former opium addict because of his phenomenal success as an evangelist, local Christian sources said.

Three men, one of them armed with a gun and wearing gloves, threatened a Protestant church and its pastor in the Turkish capital city of Ankara yesterday. The culprits fled in a car before police could be summoned.

Muslim extremists and local government authorities last week threatened to tear down a church building under construction in North Sumatra even though church leaders met requirements of Indonesia’s draconian law on worship places, the church’s pastor said.

Native missionaries in Maharashtra, India’s third largest state, continued their activities Wednesday, May 7, amid mounting opposition against Christianity in the area, BosNewsLife learned.

Christian missionaries in Bhutan, a predominately Buddhist nation, faced new challenges Thursday, May 8, nearly a month after villagers were reportedly expelled from their home for becoming Christians.

Villagers in India’s state of Madhya Pradesh on Saturday, May 3, recalled that exactly one month ago a local Christian leader was killed because his faith in Christ was wrongly understood, BosNewsLife monitored.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat state has implemented an "anti-conversion" law passed in 2003, increasing Christians’ fears that it will open the door to false accusations by Hindu extremists.

Former police and security officers in North Korea told a U.S. government body that their superiors had instructed them to play the role of Christians and infiltrate "underground" prayer meetings in order to incriminate, arrest, imprison and sometimes execute believers in North Korea.

Macedonia’s controversial new Religion Law was due to come into force Thursday, May 1, a move rights groups say is designed to prevent the Serbian Orthodox Church of gaining legal status and could target unregistered Christian groups and congregations.

Christians in several parts of Indonesia faced another difficult day Wednesday, April 23, amid reports that Islamic militant groups and local governments in Indonesia have closed at least 110 churches from 2004 to 2007.

There was uncertainty Monday, April 21, about the status of hundreds of Dalit Christians who church leaders said were likely forced to re-convert to Hinduism, in what organizers called the "first ever mass conversion" in India’s state of Tamil Nadu.