Following lengthy judicial delays, the United Arab Emirates allowed Rev. Fernando P. Alconga to be deported back to Manila on July 23, more than nine months after he was arrested in Dubai for illegal Christian activities.
Hindu extremists clubbed a Christian believer to death in Karnataka state recently, beat another pastor till he was unconscious, and then hindered relatives from conducting Christian burials.
Mobs attacked five churches in the southern district of Galle, Sri Lanka, on August 2. Initial information from the Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (EASL) suggests the organized attack on the churches is part of the government’s plan to introduce anti-conversion legislation.
On July 13, police raided a house church in Xiaoshan City, Zhejiang province, China, and arrested at least three church leaders. According to a China Aid Association press release dated July 24, the raid came at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning while the Christians were meeting for prayer and worship.
On 1 October 2001, as U.S. and coalition forces were assembling in Pakistan in preparation for the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, Bangladeshis were heading off to vote in their national elections.
Terrorists now pose a serious threat in Peru, and one Peruvian mission leader is asking that Christians everywhere band together in prayer to protect God’s people from violence.
Just over a month after he signed what critics call “Europe’s most restrictive religion law,” the president of Belarus has agreed to allow a Christian radio program to air daily in his ex-Soviet republic, an official said Tuesday, December 17.
Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Belarus have told Christians and other religious communities they can no longer hold meetings in their homes without prior permission, news reports said Friday, December 13.
The body of a Muslim convert to Christianity who went missing in mid-July, has been returned to his family, slaughtered and cut into four pieces by Islamic extremists, according to a report from the Barnabas Fund which monitored the incident.
Papua (Irian Jaya) is a former Dutch colony of Melanesian peoples on the western half of the island of New Guinea. Today, over 90% of all indigenous Papuans are officially reckoned as Christians. Papua was annexed by Indonesia in 1963. In December 2001 President Megawati Sukarnoputri signed a Special Autonomy law into effect. Church leaders were involved in writing the law, but Papuans in the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM) or Free Papua Movement, continue their low-level resistance to Indonesian rule, whilst the Papua Presidium Council seeks independence by peaceful means.
Given the climate of increasing violence against Christians and other religious minorities and recent laws that infringe their constitutional rights, church leaders in India have expressed regret over the United States government’s refusal to designate India a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), according to a report from Compass Direct.
The Thu Thiem congregation in District 2 of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) has persisted in finishing construction of its new church building despite a police order in early June halting work at the site. Pastor Truong Van Nganh and his congregation began worshipping in the attractive sanctuary in early July.
A Lao-American pastor and two European journalists have been freed by the Laos government less than two weeks after being sentenced to 15 years in jail amid international pressure.
The kidnapping of the Bengali evangelist known as “Moses” the last week of May confirms a worrying trend of violence against Christians in Bangladesh. An evangelist with Gospel for Asia (GFA), Moses was taken hostage by a Muslim terrorist group which then demanded a large ransom. GFA has not released the real names of the evangelist or the terrorist group for security reasons.
Judges have handed down a three-year sentence to Rev. Rinaldy Damanik, an Indonesian pastor accused of illegal weapons possession. Damanik and his defense team now have a week to decide whether they will accept the sentence or appeal the judge’s decision.
Pentecostal Christians in the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia are not allowed to gather for worship amid death threats, while a Baptist church was set on fire amid a government backed crack down against religious minorities, reports suggested Monday June 16.
The government of India’s Gujarat state has again started gathering community-based information in villages of the Patan district in northern Gujarat, heightening suspicions among local Christians that census information will be misused by fundamentalist Hindu organizations to stir up trouble in an area that suffered 443 major clashes between religious groups between 1970 and 2002.
Two and one-half weeks after an Ethiopian Christian was deported from Saudi Arabia for alleged “Christian activities,” a fellow Christian prisoner of Eritrean citizenship remains jailed in Jeddah.
Six weeks after a Sudanese court jailed an Episcopal priest for refusing to tear down his own church, the Rev. Samuel Dobai Amum has been set free, with the legal process set in motion for his Khartoum North parish to obtain official ownership of its land.
A heated debate over freedom of religion in Brazil has gone to court. Legal representatives of Umbanda and Candomble spiritist groups are pressing a lawsuit against Baptist pastor Joaquim de Andrade, 41, and Aldo dos Santos Menezes, 33, a deacon of the Anglican Church, in connection with an annual evangelistic outreach on the beaches of Sao Paulo state.