In a unprecedented move, a Chinese court has agreed to hear a case filed by a pastor against government officials who prohibited worship services in his house church, observers familiar with the trial said Wednesday, December 31.
Minority Christians and other non-Muslims faced potential persecution Tuesday, December 30, as militants linked to Taliban and Al-Qaeda groups imposed Shariah, or Islamic law, in the Orakzai Agency tribal region of the restive Pakistani North West Frontier Province (NWFP), officials told BosNewsLife.
Several Christian volunteers and survivors of China’s worst earthquake in a generation remained missing Sunday, December 28, after Christmas Eve police raids on homes under construction in the devastated Sichuan province amid anger among authorities over the involvement of churches in relief efforts, an advocacy group said.
A major Christian rights group warned Tuesday, December 23, that many churches in the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan in 2009, if a new draft law requiring them to re-register under restrictive conditions is adopted by parliament.
A Pakistani Christian boy’s quarrel with a Muslim policeman’s son has led to his father’s imprisonment, torture, paralysis, and five-year prison sentence.
In a good turn of events, two Chinese pastors Wang Weiliang and Zhu Baoguo will be spending this year’s Christmas at home after their miraculous release from jail by the authorities in China for medical reasons.
Christians in several parts of China were behind bars on Christmas Day after a police crackdown on worship services and Bible study, a Christian advocacy group said Thursday, December 25.
Several churches in Eritrea were without their leaders or other believers Sunday, December 21, as a government-backed campaign of mass arrests reached the capital Asmara amid fears several detainees died of mistreatment, Christians said.
Over a dozen Christians will spend Christmas behind bars in China after police raided a Christian leaders gathering in Henan province, while in the capital Beijing two officials of the banned Chinese House Church Alliance were detained, an advocacy group and Chinese Christians confirmed Thursday, December 18.
Pakistani police ransacked run-down homes of Christians living in a slum of Pakistan’s 10th largest city and “severely tortured Christian women” leaving several of them “critically injured”, local residents told BosNewsLife.
Four Christians remained missing Friday, December 12, more than a month after they were detained in China’s Hubei province amid a police crackdown on believers, including missionaries, in the region, a house church network said.
A nation-wide alliance of Christian leaders, churches, mission agencies, and other Christian institutions in India has condemned widespread anti-Christian violence in the Indian state of Karnataka, which injured dozens, but “welcomed” the sentencing of those involved in church bombings.
Fearing violence, many Christians in India’s volatile state of Orissa will for the first time in their history not celebrate Christmas but instead mourn victims of recent anti-Christian attacks, which killed dozens, and those who died in shootings in Mumbai, a priest told BosNewsLife, Saturday, December 13.
Chinese authorities have sentenced Christian Mao Minzi to a forced labor camp for his involvement in organizing a worship service with other believers in a house church, an advocacy group confirmed late Thursday, December 11,
There were concerns Wednesday, December 10, that Chinese authorities would launch a nationwide crackdown on the growing ‘house churches, after the Ministry of Civil Affairs ordered the “abolishment” of a major umbrella group.
In recent months Chinese officials have attempted to build bridges with the Protestant house church movement even as police raided more unregistered congregations, arrested Christian leaders and forced at least 400 college students to swear they would stop attending such worship services.
Baptists in the Russian town of Lipetsk south-east of Moscow say local authorities are using “a bureaucratic way” to restrict their activities, BosNewsLife monitored Wednesday, December 3.
Christians in Orissa state are anticipating Christmas with fear as Hindu extremists have called for a state-wide bandh, or forced shut-down on all sectors of society, on Dec. 25 – a move that could provide Hindu extremists the pretext for attacking anyone publicly celebrating the birth of Christ.
As the number of evangelical Christians in southern Mexico has grown, hostilities from “traditionalist Catholics” have kept pace, according to published reports.
Thousands of Muslim protesters on Sunday (Nov. 23) attacked a Coptic church in a suburb of Cairo, Egypt, burning part of it, a nearby shop and two cars and leaving five people injured.