Three separate attacks on Christians in Madhya Pradesh, central India, have occurred within a period of four days, leaving a number of people needing hospital treatment. Latest reports suggest that yet more attacks on Christians have since taken place in the communally tense state.
Armed Islamic groups angered by cartoon drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammad in European media, threatened to attack churches and closed down the European Union Commission office in Gaza Thursday, February 2, as anger over the published caricatures spread across the Muslim world.
The British Government was considering its options Wednesday, February 1, after parliament voted against its version of a religious hatred bill, amid pressure from evangelical Christians and others who feared the law could lead to religious persecution.
Iraqi Christians have urged Westerners to be carefull with public comments on Iraq after three people were killed in apparently coordinated bomb attacks against churches over the weekend, a major religious rights group said Tuesday, January 31.
‘For your information, the state Governor, Alhaji Ahmed Sani, has ordered that your church should be demolished before his arrival in this town tomorrow. So, we shall carry out this directive tomorrow morning.’
In order to comply with a resolution ordering missionaries to leave tribal areas, New Tribes Mission of Venezuela has begun relocating personnel.
At least 18 Christians, including children, were injured when Hindu militants armed with sticks, rods and other sharp weapons broke up a Christian seminar in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, the fourth such incident in as many days, a Christian news agency reported Monday, January 30.
Two churches in Sri Lanka were attacked last weekend as threats from Buddhist monks continued amid tensions between the government and Tamil rebels.
A US-based religious rights group said Friday, January 27, that violence against the tiny Christian minority in India’s north-central state of Madhya Pradesh increased by 45 percent during the last two years.
The Washington, DC-based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) www.persecution.org, has recently been informed that the government of Azerbaijan has destroyed an irreplaceable medieval Armenian Christian cemetery in the Djulfa region of Nakhichevan.
A pastor and his cousin charged with attempted forced conversion in Matiapada village, Orissa state, were released on bail yesterday, while five Hindu villagers charged with assault and setting fire to the pastor’s house are still in custody.
The Evangelical Alliance United Kingdom (EAUK), an umbrella group representing one million evangelical Christians in the UK, prepared Tuesday, January 24, a major campaign to “alert” believers to “the dangers of the proposed religious hatred (law) and other legislation.”
Judges at Indonesia’s Constitutional Court on January 17 ruled that the Child Protection Act is in line with the constitution and should not be amended. The Rev. Ruyandi Hutasoit had challenged Article 86 of the Act, used as the basis for sentencing Dr. Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti and Ratna Bangun to three years in prison on September 1, 2005. The Christian Sunday School teachers were arrested in May 2005 after members of a local Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI or Muslim Clerics Council) in West Java accused them of trying to convert Muslim children. Judge Jimly Asshiddique said Rev. Hutasoit had no right to contest the Child Protection Act, since he had not experienced any ‘direct losses’ under it.
The government of India’s largest northwestern state, Rajasthan, has withdrawn criminal procedures against most militants of an influential Hindu nationalist organization involved in the massive distribution of ‘tridents’, three-sponged spears that have reportedly been used to intimidate the Christian minority, BosNewsLife learned Monday, January 23.
At this time last year, Noor Jehan Ahmed, 55, lived peacefully in the village of Nagaon, in the northeastern state of Assam. She and her extended household of 29 people formed their own Christian enclave within the majority-Muslim community.
Prosecuted Chinese house churches on Saturday, January 21, were expecting more legal support after a group of top Chinese lawyers and legal scholars announced the establishment of an association dedicated to defending Chinese Christians.
Hindu extremists attacked Christians in two incidents in the same district of Andhra Pradesh state on January 12 and 13, in one case dragging a pastor from a child’s birthday party and kicking him unconscious.
Local government officials in Bandung, West Java, have ordered eight house churches in the Rancaekek Kencana housing complex to cease meeting in private homes starting last Sunday (January 15).
Funeral preparations were underway Friday, January 20, where at least one Christian and a dozen others were injured when Muslim militants set fire to a Christian community center in Upper Egypt, church sources and news reports said.
Christians in several tense Indian states were weighing their options Tuesday, January 17, after churches were attacked and believers apparently pressured to return to Hinduism.