SANTA ANA, CA (ANS) – Turkmenistan has moved to fifth place on the Open Doors World Watch List of worst persecutors of Christians, behind Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Laos and China, causing “great concern” to persecution watchers around the world.
ISTANBUL, February 6 (Compass) — Instead of convicting the Muslim murder suspects accused of killing 21 Christians in last year’s El-Kosheh massacre, a judge in southern Egypt has accused the local Coptic clergy of responsibility for the three-day rampage.
ISTANBUL, April 11 (Compass) — Two Christians were sent to jail yesterday for seven days on charges of “disobeying the police” in the town of Ismailly, 120 miles west of the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.
Pastor Li De Xian preached twice this week in his usual Tuesday meeting in Huadu near Guangzhou, China without interference from Chinese authorities. This marks four consecutive weeks without arrest or interference for Pastor Li’s ministry.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)–Christians in America will face great persecution soon and they must be aggressors in the midst of it, Josef Tson said March 2 at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
The growing awareness of worldwide Christian persecution can hardly be explained by the actions of a few people or the dramatic events in a specific country. So the following list of “top” stories for 2000 should be viewed only as a representative sample of significant news stories that have taken place this year. The list is also limited to areas where Compass Direct correspondents were able to provide in-depth coverage. Some of the stories come from isolated events. Others describe the ongoing oppression Christians often face. All help give us a glimpse of the difficult situations faced by the church around the world.
LONDON (BP)–A sizeable Christian community is among the Karen people group in Myanmar (formerly Burma) facing abuse at the hands of the country’s military regime, according to Newsroom-Online, an Internet news service based in London.
Sixteen young people were arrested recently in Algeria for possessing Bibles and other Christian literature, according to a report by ZENIT (August 3, 2001). Ranging in age from 20 to 31 and members of a Christian denomination from central Algeria, the 16 were arrested on July 26 in Cap Falcon, 450 kilometers (280 miles) west of Algiers.
Last May, evangelical pastor Juan Carlos Villegas was kidnapped and held for 12 days by the National Liberation Army in war-torn Colombia. They forced him to walk for many hours each day so that neither the Colombian Army nor the paramilitaries could find them. Several times they threatened him with death.
AUSTIN, Texas, August 16 (Compass) — Colombian pastor Enrique Gómez was released unharmed on August 11 after being held hostage for six months by Colombian guerrillas.
A militant fundamentalist group from Idaho is spreading terror across the Midwest-and federal troops are siding with the attackers.
KABUL/BUDAPEST (ANS) — Four executions on Wednesday in Afghanistan have speed up diplomatic efforts to free 24 aid workers, including eight foreigners, who were arrested by the country’s Islamic “Taleban” rulers, on charges of spreading Christianity.
ISTANBUL, August 7 (Compass) — Canadian authorities issued written verification yesterday that its embassy in the Turkish capital of Ankara has begun the immigration application process for an Iranian Christian family stranded in eastern Turkey for more than two years.
LONDON, August 7 (Compass) — China’s most famous house church prisoner, Mr. Xu Yongze, is free. The 58-year-old founder of the Born Again movement was released on May 16, after serving a three-year “re-education through labor” sentence for establishing an illegal organization in China.
ISTANBUL, February 11 (Compass) — Five more jailed Christians caught in deportation wrangles in Jeddah since December have been released to their home countries during the past two weeks, leaving one Filipino and two Ethiopians still under detention by Saudi authorities.
GARFIELD, NJ (ANS) — The indiscriminate slaughter of more than two million people, mostly black Christians, but also Muslims and animists, in southern Sudan, has been brought about by the National Islamic Front (NIF) who long ago declared a jihad (holy war) on the south. Human rights observers say that NIF violates almost every provision of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Afghanistan’s ruling Taleban authorities have ruled out pardons for eight foreign aid workers detained for allegedly spreading the Christian faith, declaring that they and their 16 Afghan colleagues must stand trial on charges of promoting Christianity. Western diplomats have been unable to meet with the prisoners. Fifty-nine Afghan school children who were also taken into custody on the belief that they had been influenced by Christian teaching have been released, but their fathers were jailed for several days for failing to supervise their children.
Two founding members of the South China Church have been sentenced to death following a secret trial.
Gong Sheng Liang, 46, and his niece Li Ying, 36, were sentenced after a secret trial held on December 18 2001 at the Jing Men Court in Hubei Province.
ISTANBUL, January 21 (Compass) — Six of 14 foreign Christians slated for deportation from Saudi Arabia have been released for return to their home countries during the past 10 days. But another eight prisoners and their families remain entangled in a process that could take weeks to resolve.
Despite assurances from Muslim and government rulers in northern Nigeria that Sharia law would not be enforced on the Christian population living there, VOM sources in Nigeria report that several incidents point to the fact that this is not taking place.