Amid fears that Hindu extremists are persecuting Christians in greater numbers, Nepali church leaders launched the Forum for Human Concern in Nepal in January to safeguard religious freedom and garner international support for the release of four Christians jailed since October 29 on charges of proselytizing.
A growing body of evidence confirms reports that Christians in Indonesia’s Maluku Islands have been forced to convert to Islam under threat of death, although Muslim clerics deny the claims.
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.
Members of the radical Hindu group the Bajrang Dal beat two Christian workers, David Massey and Simon Sakria, for more than two hours on January 4 for showing a “Jesus” film in Jehra, a remote village on the Rajasthan-Gujarat border in western India. Church leaders said the two Christians had gone to visit the house of a local pastor when they were attacked.
A prominent Indian church leader is warning of a possible bloodbath against Christians by Hindu fundamentalists.
Indonesia’s Christian and political leaders are convinced that the widespread Christmas Eve church bombings were meant to provoke all-out war between the Muslim and Christian communities in the country.
Authorities Urged to Determine Whether Cults are ‘Harmful to Society’ by Alex Buchan LONDON (Compass) — The Chinese government sponsored an International Symposium on Evil Cults in Beijing November 8-10 that urged local authorities not to inquire too closely into the beliefs of accused cults. Instead, authorities were encouraged to assess whether they are “harmful to society” — a catch-all criterion that some house church leaders fear could lead to their own movements being classed as cults. Nearly 60 academics from all over the world attended the Beijing Symposium, and it was full of predictable denunciation of the Chinese folk … Read more
Turkmenistan’s political police evicted a Protestant Christian pastor with his wife and two children from their home near Ashgabad on December 9, confiscating their personal deed of ownership and sealing the gate to prevent their return.
Maluku’s head of police admitted that authorities cannot dislodge the hundreds of Muslim jihad fighters scattered throughout eastern Indonesia’s Maluku province and who have escalated the inter-religious conflict as Christmas approaches. More than 100 Christians were reported killed in November fighting.
“It is disappointing that the suffering of the Christians due to the conflict in the Malukus has been insufficiently exposed in various reports on a national and international level,” stated the U.S. Consul General Robert Pollard.
Dr. Paul Tran-Dinh-Ai, also known as Paul Ai, a leader of the Underground Church in Vietnam, has won some 30 Vietnamese to Christ is his new hometown of Hampton, Virginia. The much-persecuted leader has now urged American Christians to “wake up and see the mission field in their own back yard” and has shared lessons he has learned under persecution.
Dr. Benjamin Munthe, an Indonesian pastor who was involved in a September 17 brutal attempt on his life in which his driver Caleb was killed, has spoken about that fateful day.
If you become an evangelical Christian in Laos, the communist neighbor of Vietnam and Cambodia, you likely will be “asked” to sign a fill-in-the-blank form.
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA (October 30, 2000) — Sheryl Ramstad Hvass, the Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, recently praised “faith-based” organizations, such as Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship, in helping to reduce recidivism rates among the inmate population in the nation’s prisons.
Letters from Chinese Christians Detail Local Problems and Persecution ANHUI “Here we only have one registered church, which is packed out with people standing in the courtyard. However, since the church was opened, none of the accounts listing all the believers’ donations have ever been made public to them. The pastor has dismissed several Christians who originally were responsible for the finances. He also hands over the donations to the Religious Affairs Bureau to use. Not long ago, several elderly believers formed a church, but the Three Self pastor asked the Religious Affairs Bureau not to grant them a license … Read more
When millions of Chinese evangelicals gather for services in their homeland, the worship is rarely music to the ears. Forget the last minute sound checks, voice warm-ups, or instrument tuning. This worship is music to the heart.
Dozens of Christians have been killed in renewed attacks by extremist Muslim warriors in Indonesia’s eastern province of Maluku. At least 32 people died in an attack on the Ambon island village of Hative Besar, according to news reports.
Authorities in Vietnam are jamming Christian radio broadcasts in a desperate attempt to curb the rapid spread of Protestant Christianity among the Hmong minority in the country’s northwest provinces along the China border.
TYLER, Texas (BP)–“I’ve never seen this many churches come together,” said R.J. Holt, one of three Southern Baptist youth pastors in Tyler, Texas, whose initiative has yielded more than 1,000 professions of faith.
A Christian leader in western Uzbekistan’s autonomous Karakalpakstan region has been jailed since July 25, accused by local police of illegal drug possession.