Shahjahan Mollah, 35, lives in the village of Butia about 120 miles north of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Shahjahan, a former Muslim, converted to Christianity in 1991. He currently pastors a church of some 27 Muslim converts to Christianity in Butia.
Former Muslim residents in a remote village of the ex-Soviet union republic of Uzbekistan are being beaten, publicly humiliated and forced from their homes and jobs for converting to Christianity, a news agency investigation religious persecution said Friday, October 21.
The China Aid Association learned that as of October 21, 2005 at 7:30am, following more than 25 hours of house arrest, all of the nearly 50 arrested house church leaders were released.
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.
Chinese police raided the house of a prominent Christian activist in Beijing shortly after other security forces first tortured and than expelled a Christian businessman from the hospital where he was treated for his wounds, church sources said Monday, September 10.
Mr. Ma Shulei, a full time house church evangelist, was arrested in Mianchi County, Sanmenxia City, Henan Province, along with his 58-year-old father, Mr. Ma Yinzhou, who is a house church pastor.
A Christian businessman and friend of an evangelist in China’s Xinjiang province was rushed to hospital after being “tortured” by security agents amid an ongoing “comprehensive campaign” against Christians in the region, a US-based religious rights organization said Saturday, October 1.
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.
Chinese Christian Zhang Yi-nan was released from the Ping Ding Shan City Bailou Labor Camp in Henan Province, China on Sunday morning. Zhang’s wife, Ding Guizhen, and their son, Zhang Kairi, were waiting for him at the steel gate of the prison camp, but were not immediately allowed to welcome him home.
Committed to a Vietnamese mental hospital for nearly a year after being diagnosed as “delusional” for believing in God, the Rev. Than Van Truong was released to his family on Saturday, September 17.
Three women accused of “Christianization” have appealed the conviction handed down by an Indonesian court on September 1.
A Christian advocacy group expressed concern Monday, September 12 over “an unprecedented” decision by the United States to “deny asylum to a “house-church” Christian from Communist China.”
The Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang was working at a labor camp machine used to extract cashew nuts on August 9 when he was approached by high prison officials. They told him he would be moved immediately to another prison.
In early March, China adopted the new Regulations on Religious Affairs, first announced by the government in December 2004. The government claims the new regulations are a step towards religious freedom. However, some Christian leaders have expressed serious concerns, particularly with the issue of church registration.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to attend a church service for Palm Sunday in Beijing, aides said Saturday, March 19, just hours after a Christian news agency published letters of alleged persecuted Christians.
Correspondence reveals personal trials, challenges facing house church Christians in China.
At least 10 foreign evangelical church leaders including eight Americans, one Taiwanese and an unknown number of South Koreans were detained and later deported by Chinese authorities, a Christian human rights watchdog said Thursday March 3.
New evidence has come to light, in secretly recorded tapes obtained by Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, of oppression of native Mennonite leaders in Vietnam.
Local authorities recently ordered 12 churches in the sub-district of Rancaekek, Bandung, Indonesia, to close their doors. The order came after Muslim clerics protested that the churches were meeting illegally.
Eight days after his arrest, prominent Vietnamese house church leader Rev. Tran Mai walked back into his house in Ho Chi Minh City at 11 p.m. on September 6. However, he arrived home with orders to appear for further interrogation just nine hours later at the city headquarters of the Ministry of Public Security.