The wife of jailed Cuban Pastor Omar Gude Perez faced a difficult weekend after authorities reportedly told her that the family home is to be confiscated. The family will be relocated to a significantly smaller apartment in poor conditions outside the city of Camaguey, said advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), which has closely monitored the case.
There was international disappointment Monday, February 1, that the leader of a growing network of independent churches in Cuba has been denied the right to appeal his six-year prison sentence by the Supreme Tribunal in Havana.
One of Cuba’s most prominent Christian prisoners, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, has said he has been forced to watch abuses “that threaten the decorous behavior of a civilized society” but stressed he trusts God to one day end his “unjust sentence,” in a letter published by BosNewsLife Saturday, March 3.
Prison authorities have “brutally beaten” Jorge Luis GarcÃa Perez (Antunez), an influential Christian dissident serving an 18-year prison sentence in Cuba on charges of “spreading propaganda”, he and fellow activists confirmed Friday, August 25.
After 126 days in prison, a Cuban pastor has been released without charge. Pastor Carlos Lamelas was unexpectedly freed without being charged on Monday and was allowed to return home to his family in Havana.
Church leaders trying to represent the exiled Cuban community in the United States have urged Cubans not to participate in ‘government-organized mobs’ which they claim increasingly harass human rights activists, including Christians, in Cuba.
Peruvian evangelical Christian Walter Wilmer Cubas Baltasar was spending another day in freedom Monday, February 13, after serving 13 years in prison for terrorist crimes he did not commit, human rights groups confirmed.
Cuba’s influential blind Christian dissident, Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, was facing another tense night Monday, January 16, after government backed crowds, armed with loudspeakers, reportedly threatened to storm his house and kill everyone inside.
Cuban police forces closed down a Christian printing press and detained a pastor for distributing “subversive” materials amid a nationwide government crackdown on house churches and pro-democracy activists on the Communist island, dissident sources and human rights investigators said Tuesday, October 18.
Government regulations aimed at curbing the growth of Christian house churches in Cuba took force on September 22, sparking fears that evangelical Protestants on the island could face a period of heightened persecution.
Protestant ministers in the United States generally believe that religious persecution is a major problem in today’s world, and they believe the U.S. should impose sanctions against countries where this is occurring. These findings have just been released from a research study conducted among Protestant clergy in America.
For the first time in history, Chinese Christians gave evidence of persecution in April at a special meeting called by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) in Geneva. Several speakers testified to beatings, imprisonment, torture and damage to church buildings in recent years.
Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, a blind Christian human rights lawyer, was given a four year sentence yesterday for his stand for human rights in Cuba.
LAKE FOREST, CA (ANS) — “Advent in Afghanistan†may have been the largest public outreach by Christians to students in the history of Afghanistan. It began when Norm and Cher Nelson, from the radio ministry, Compassion Radio, accepted an invitation to take the experience of Christmas to 30,000 school children in 49 schools in an historic region of Afghanistan during late November and early December 2002.
A prisoner who has spent nearly ten years behind bars in Peru for terrorist crimes he did not commit has now had to wait an additional three months for the result of his appeal.
WASHINGTON (BP)–The State Department’s second report on global religious liberty presents a challenge for the U.S. government to act against persecution, the chairman of a federal commission said.
LOS ANGELES (Compass) — Cuban government authorities closed a Baptist church in a Havana suburb on Easter Sunday. Members of the church must comply with the April 23 closure order or face fines or a court trial for contempt, said a pastor of another denomination who spoke on condition that his name not be used. He said that the closed church is affiliated with Cuba’s Western Baptist denomination, a sister denomination of the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States.