Persecuted Christians in Turkmenistan began an uncertain week Monday, March 15, after autocratic President Saparmurat Niyazov announced he would allow all religious communities “to gain official registration” regardless of how many members they have.
Three Christians will appear in a Chinese court on Monday, facing charges of “providing intelligence to overseas organizations.”
On the afternoon of March 4, public security police units surrounded the Quoc Thanh Theater at 271 Nguyen Trai Street in central Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, in an attempt to stop a joint worship celebration organized by evangelical Christian house churches, organizers reported.
On February 28, a Nigerian court sentenced three men to death for killing a Christian pastor and attacking worshippers at his the church seven years ago.
A recent upsurge in violence in southern Plateau State in Nigeria has claimed at least 100 lives and in the worst single incident so far, at least 48 people were murdered, many during an early morning prayer service on February 24.
Eighteen families of the indigenous Huichol tribe in Tenzompa, Jalisco, Mexico, — more than 80 adults and children, in all — are threatened with expulsion from their homes for the “crime” of believing in the Christian gospel.
An angry mob of Quechua-speaking Indians destroyed the only evangelical church in the remote village of Chucarasi in the Bolivian Andes on February 28 after beating a congregational elder unconscious. Villagers apparently attacked their Christian neighbors because they blamed them for a hail storm that damaged local crops.
Christians in Laos have been told they will be killed if they do not give up their faith or leave their village.
Law enforcement authorities in Vietnam are subjecting house church leaders who confront injustice to relentless harassment, according to sources in Ho Chi Minh City. The renewed pressure is thought to be retaliation for recent incidents where police have had to retreat from persecuting Christians because of effective local and international advocacy.
A leading human rights group investigating the plight of persecuted Christians in Islamic nations warned Friday, March 5, that Iraq’s interim constitution will not end Muslim violence and discrimination experienced by Iraq’s Christian minority.
Christian leaders in India have released a joint statement in response to allegations made by the weekly newspaper Tehelka against the Christian community. In its inaugural issue on January 30 and a second issue on February 8, Tehelka claimed Christians were carrying out “the conversion agenda of U.S. President George Bush,” and using the HIV/AIDS problem as “an opportunity for evangelism.”
A Chinese house church leader is on the run from Public Security Bureau officers after his church was raided February 9.
Police swooped down on a group of Protestant Christians worshiping in secret in the Eritrean capital of Asmara on Sunday, February 16, hauling off to jail the 51 evangelicals present.
In January 2004, top cadres of China’s Religious Affairs Bureau and the policy-making United Front Work Department met for the annual National Religious Working Conference.
Four Christian women were killed and five others injured when militants in a passing car raked their minibus with gunfire 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Baghdad, an informed human rights watchdog confirmed Monday, January 26.
In an apparent attempt to settle an old grudge, a Pakistani man who converted to Islam several months ago has implicated a Christian acquaintance for alleged blasphemy.
Christian leaders in northern Nigeria report that enforcement of the Islamic legal code known as sharia is continuing despite protests and drastically impinges on the religious liberty of Christians and other non-Muslims in that part of the country.
Muslim protestors have attacked at least five Protestant churches over the past three weeks in the regions of East Java, West Java and North Sumatra.
Christians suffered further violence in the Buddhist-majority country of Sri Lanka on January 20, when a Catholic church was attacked near the capital, Colombo, despite the presence of a heavily armed police guard.
Pakistani police arrested one suspect and seized a “huge” cache of powerful explosives in Karachi over the weekend, declaring both were linked to grenade and car bomb explosions at a local Bible Society shop on January 15.