ZAMBOANGA CITY, PHILIPPINES – The once calm, peaceful and loving people of the City of Zamboanga will never be the same again after 200 heavily armed Muslim rebels held 81 Christian hostages last week and exchanged gunfire with the military forces that left two soldiers, four Muslim rebels and four civilians dead.
ISTANBUL, November 5 (Compass) — At least 12 foreign Christians jailed months ago in the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah remain under arrest in the Sharafia detention facility, despite verbal reports that investigations of their case were completed weeks ago.
ISTANBUL (Compass) — At least 13 foreign Christians have been arrested since mid July in Jeddah, where Saudi Arabia’s religious police are apparently trying to track down Saudi nationals thought to have contact with expatriate house churches in the city.
New legislation awaiting agreement by the Kazakhstan authorities looks set to undermine religious freedom.
The Keston Institute reports that if adopted, the law will require all missionaries to be registered and allow unregistered religious groups to be banned.
(Compass) – “This especially applies to Sokodé and the areas of mid and northern Togo. I know of four men and four women who keep their Bibles hidden and read them when no one else is around. They told me that since they have been reading the Bible, they have peace in their hearts,” he said.
A recent VOM report from Ghana tells of the needs faced by our Christian brothers and sisters who face persecution from animists and Muslims in the countryside. Recently VOM workers had to disguise themselves as they traveled into one region, as the local people view strangers with great suspicion. Believers there face being killed by their neighbours. They live in great poverty and have not nearly enough Bibles for the number of Christians. Bibles, Bible portions and Christian literature in the local language are smuggled into the area by Ghanaian believers at great risk. Recently 32 Christians were sent out of the region by pastoral leadership for fear that they might be killed because of their conversion to Christianity.
BANGALORE, India (Compass) — The Indian government has launched its own “war on terrorism” against two fronts: terrorists and missionaries. The Hindu fundamentalist government is planning to introduce two bills that are being condemned as “draconian” by religious minorities in India.
Members of the Word of Life Pentecostal Church, human rights activists and some politicians have complained about the failure of the police or prosecutor’s office to take any action so far in the wake of last month’s attack on a Word of Life service in a cinema in the centre of the Georgian capital Tbilisi. The mob raid – the latest in a long series of attacks on minority religious communities dating back to 1999 – was led by Basil Mkalavishvili, a defrocked priest of the Orthodox Church who enjoys de facto immunity from prosecution for his violent raids. (see KNS 26 September 2001) “We have not arrested Mkalavishvili,” the duty police officer at the Mtatsminda-Krtsanisi district police told Keston News Service on 11 January. “Why should we?” His boss, district police chief Togo Gogua, confirmed later in the day that his officers had not arrested anyone in the wake of the latest attack. “I’m not the procurator and I’m not the judge. An investigation is underway,” Gogua declared. “They must be arrested,” the church’s pastor insisted to Keston. “It’s not a question of religious freedom but of hooliganism. Such hooligan gangs should not be allowed to exist.”
A refugee camp on the Thailand/Burma border has been overrun by troops sent by the Burmese military junta.
Heavy shellfire preceded the attack on the Ler Per Hur camp just inside the Burma border which was later torched by the soldiers on December 29.
The military government of Myanmar (also known as Burma) has issued a degree banning Christians from worshipping in building less that 100 years old. Church buildings that are more than 100 years old are forbidden from ringing their church bells and crosses are not allowed to be placed on the buildings. Dozens of churches throughout the country have been forced to close. Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports that while believers have been allowed to worship in private homes in Hlaing Tai Yar, they have been ordered not to sing.
LOS ANGELES, CA (ANS) — Most Christians understand the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism around the world, but few are aware of a virulent strain of Hindu radicalism targeting believers in India.
WASHINGTON (BP)–Two Christians have been killed in the Chinese government’s crackdown on pastor Gong Shengliang and his South China Church in central Hubei Province, according to a letter from members of the underground church revealing graphic details and new information about the persecution.
Soon after winning the right to host the 2008 Olympics, China is showing the world that being a non-registered Christian is a most dangerous sport.
South China Church Pastor Gong Shengliang to be executed within days if his appeal is denied
The Voice of the Martyrs is making an urgent appeal to Christians around the world to pray for Pastor Gong Shengliang. Pastor Gong was reportedly sentenced to death last month after a court in Hubei Province declared him guilty of using an “evil cult” to “undermine the enforcement of the law” and of “complicity of rape.”
BUDAPEST/PRISTINA (ANS) — The NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo (K-FOR) has identified a British soldier who died while guarding a Serbian Orthodox Church in the regional Capital Pristina, ASSIST News Service learned Wednesday December 19.
ISTANBUL, November 27 (Compass) — More than a dozen foreign Christians remain jailed in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, where local authorities have for months ignored inquiries and notes of protest from consulates requesting diplomatic access to their imprisoned citizens.
Indian Christian, Prabhu Isaac, is due to be deported from Jiddah tonight after spending more than six months in Saudi prisons in connection with his Christian faith.
On Monday, an Egyptian appeals court overturned a controversial verdict that absolved most defendants in the country’s worst massacre of Christians in decades in early January 2001 and ordered a retrial. Over the weekend of December 31, 1999 – January 2, 2000, as the much of the world was concerned about Y2K, Egyptian Christians were being attacked and murdered by Muslim mobs in El-Kosheh, a small village 300 miles south of Cairo. One year later, an Egyptian court acquitted all of the defendants charged with the murders of 21 Christians.
Screams pierced the air as invaders forced their way onto the farm just outside Gweru, Zimbabwe.
Over this past weekend 17 more Christians were rescued from Islamic Jihad militants in Indonesia.