Following the March 29 sentencing of Father Nguyen Van Ly to eight years in prison for distributing “material harmful to the state,†two Protestant lawyers charged with the same “crime†are expected to face equally harsh sentences in what Human Rights Watch has called the harshest crackdown in 20 years.
Iraqi Christians fled their homes over the weekend after armed Sunni extremists threatened to kill them if they did not convert to Islam within 24 hours, Christian sources said.
Juan Mendez Mendez became a Christian in a village outside of this city in Chiapas state on April 7, and two days later local authorities put him in jail — for leaving their religious blend of Roman Catholicism and native custom.
Five Christians, including a 16-year-old boy, have been falsely accused of and charged with “blasphemy” against Muhammad on April 1 in Toba Tek Singh, Punjab, according to an April 6 report from Compass Direct.
Although elections in Madhya Pradesh are more than 18 months away, two Christian leaders there link the state’s ruling Hindu nationalist party to rising persecution ahead of the upcoming vote.
Global council of Indian Christians(GCIC) takes serious exceptions in the illegal detention of tourists by the Hyderabad police on the dictates of radical Hindus. The radicals have ganged up against the tourists as they came to know that the tourists are devout Christians.
Pakistani Muslim and Christian leaders are working to defuse tensions in a Punjab city after rumors of “blasphemy†sparked mob action against the Christian community this week.
More than 160 Christian prisoners ended a two-day hunger strike last week after authorities in Pakistan’s Punjab province permitted them to resume religious services, a non-governmental organization worker said.
China has sentenced a key house church leader “to one year re-education through labor” for explaining the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a Communist Party official, fellow believers confirmed Saturday, March 31.
The murder of two Christian women in their Kirkuk home this week highlights growing insecurity facing Christians, often targeted for money in war-torn Iraq.
Two days after the killing of a Christian teacher in this town in northern Nigeria, Muslim extremists set fire to a church building of the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) in the Chanchanya section.
An Ethiopian evangelist was beaten to death by militant Muslims as he and two young women were evangelizing in the Ethiopian city of of Jimma, and there were fears the incident could spark widespread violence against Christian believers, Christian rights investigators said Thursday, March 29.
There was concern Wednesday, March 28, about the plight of evangelical Christians in the Indian state of Kerala after reports that the local government for the first time shut down a church amid violent attacks against believers.
Christianah Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin, a teacher at Government Secondary School of Gandu in this northern Nigerian town, was in high spirits last Wednesday (March 21) as she made her way to school where she teaches government.
Pakistani Christians continue to bear the brunt of the country’s blasphemy laws as yet another Christian man has been booked for allegedly tearing and setting ablaze the pages of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
Tensions remained high Monday, March 26, in a Christian area of the Indian state of Orissa after Hindu militants threatened to set homes of Christians on fire while elsewhere in India evangelists and missionaries were attacked.
Police arrested Pastor Philip Abraham from Noida and Pastor Jacob Kunjumon from Mumbai in Ganga Nagar, Rajasthan on March 23, 2007 with the charges of alleged force conversion and insulting Hindu gods.
A 34-year-old pastor was shot dead while he was praying with others in his church on Wednesday, March 21 at the St. Mary’s Village of Gomaz Trace in Moruga, the southern sea town in Trinidad.
A Gospel for Asia missionary working in Assam, India, was badly beaten on March 21 during what appears to be a robbery attempt. GFA missionary Bansi Samoun, along with staff members from a GFA Bridge of Hope center and their driver, had traveled to a neighboring village with plans to distribute school supply bags to children when the incident occurred. Upon their arrival in the village, a group of known militants approached them, demanding the key to their vehicle.
Protestant pastor Dmitry Shestakov has appealed against the four-year sentence to one of Uzbekistan’s open labor camps which was imposed by authorities in retaliation for his Christian work, investigators and local Christians close to the case said Friday, March 23.