STANBUL, October 8 (Compass) — A Sudanese student who converted from Islam to Christianity was severely beaten and tortured by security police in Khartoum two weeks ago, apparently at his own family’s instigation.
ISTANBUL, February 27 (Compass) — Sudanese security police have mounted a widening manhunt to track down a local convert to Christianity who went into hiding in Khartoum three weeks ago to escape arrest and possible death.
KAMPALA, UGANDA (ANS) — You can find them by following the sounds of the singing. The familiar tune of “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” carries over the crying of children, the honking of the horns, and the general confusion created by cramming 25,000 people into one run down slum.
Christians, including four clergymen, who were taking part in a prayer procession for peaceful elections were arrested in Zimbabwe.A total of 11 Christians were arrested in the city of Bulawayo on February 16 after taking part in the ecumenical procession.
MADA, Nigeria (Compass) — Two Nigerian Muslims who converted to the Christian faith in Mada village of northern Nigeria’s Zamfara state are missing, possibly at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists seeking to kill them for changing their faith.
HO CHI MINH CITY (Compass) — In April, 26 years after the communist takeover of Vietnam, authorities granted legal status to Protestants of the southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam (ECVN). Optimists felt this might signal a change in the oppressive religious policy that has long marked Vietnamese communism, especially with the rise of “moderate” Nong Duc Manh to general secretary of the Communist Party.
HO CHI MINH CITY, August 21 (Compass) — A pastor and lawyer who has been regularly harassed for exposing religious liberty abuses in Vietnam was arrested on August 17 along with his wife and another man in the capital city of this Southeast Asian country.
Christians in Vietnam face oppressive, often brutal, persecution from authorities. Despite official measures to kill Christianity, the church of Jesus Christ continues to grow.
ZAMBOANGA CITY, PHILIPPINES (ANS) — The American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham turns one year old today under the captive of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), a terrorist group operating in the Southern Philippines and believed to have links to the Al Qa’ida network in Afghanistan.
SANTA ANA, CA (ANS) — Christian prisoner Ayub Masih fled his native Pakistan and arrived in an undisclosed country in the West on Wednesday after being imprisoned for six years on blasphemy charges. Despite being acquitted and released on August 15 by Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Masih’s life remains under constant threat from Muslim extremists.
Three Gospel for Asia Bible school students in Bangladesh were sharing Christ in the village of Vasu during a six-month ministry assignment. Muslim extremists, angry to see a Gospel witness in their village, went to the police with false claims that the young men were terrorists.
Two well-known Baptist ministers from Dagon North Township were arrested by the military junta on 5th April. They are currently detained in Burma’s notorious Insein prison.
A three-day Baptist convention for 100,000 people, which was due to be held in Burma, has been cancelled on the orders of the junta.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–A $300,000 ransom payment has failed to free American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham from a militant Muslim group in the Philippines linked to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.
ISTANBUL, October 24 (Compass) — Forty-eight hours after Karachi police abducted Robin Peranditta from the grounds of the Sindh High Court, the traumatized survivor of last month’s deadly Christian massacre is now confirmed to be released from police custody.
NASHVILLE, TN (ANS) — The sheer volume of hard evidence presented at the press conference was staggering.
Names, addresses and photographs of 23,686 Chinese Christians recently arrested for their faith. Twenty thousand beaten. One hundred twenty-nine killed. More than 4,000 sentenced to labor and “re-education†camps. Homes and property confiscated or destroyed, leaving tens of thousands of children homeless orphans.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — An uncertain number of leaders of a major house church movement in China have disappeared in what at first was thought to be a massive government raid. Now cult activity is suspected.
In late April, reports filtered out from China that about 100 leaders of the evangelical China Gospel Fellowship — a major house church grouping that claims some four million members — had been arrested by the police. Soon after, contradictory but more reliable reports said these key leaders had almost certainly been kidnapped by the sinister Lightning from the East (LFE) cult in a carefully orchestrated strategy.
Leaders of the South China Church have had their sentences reduced by the same court that tried them the first time after a retrial was ordered by the Hubei Province Supreme Court.
Leaders from a mainstream house church in China have been released after being abducted.
The 34 senior leaders from the China Gospel Fellowship were abducted on April 16 by a group called Eastern Lightning (EL), which uses violence against church members.