As protesters demanding more freedom and fair elections prepared to demonstrate in freezing temperatures in Moscow Saturday, February 4, a major Russian mission group warned of more difficulties for evangelical Christians and other, religious, minorities in Russia and other former Soviet Union nations.
The leader of a hardline Hindu group wants India’s constitution to legalize the killing of Christian evangelists and, for instance, promoters of other non-Hindu religions.
Lawmakers in Kazakhstan have voted for controversial legislation that Christians and rights activists say will further limit religious freedom in the mainly Muslim Central Asian state.
Last Sunday five members of a house church in Fangshan tried to worship with members of the embattled Beijing Shouwang house church in a public square in Beijing.
For two consecutive Sundays, church service was disrupted in Karnataka while clergy were roughed-up and arrested on false forced conversion charges.
Three Christians imprisoned for the testimony of Christ have died during the past months in Eritrea, including a 42-year-old man in solitary confinement Friday, according to a Christian support organization.
Two pastors arrested six months ago on charges of holding a “secret meeting” during a Christmas celebration without government approval languish in prison without a trial. Officials continue to offer them the option of renouncing their faith and walking free.
Iran’s secretive supreme court has reportedly overturned a death sentence handed down to an evangelical pastor for leaving Islam, surprising trial observers who were earlier informed about an execution ruling.
At least four incidents of Christian persecution were reported from the former Soviet country of Uzbekistan this week. According to an analysis and report researched and written by Fernando Perez for the World Evangelical Alliance – Religious Liberty Commission, a Christian woman was beaten into concussion, another woman was fined $1,465 by a court for giving the New Testament to a child, a Christian man was threatened with axe attack by a police official and another man was assaulted by police.
Being a Christian in Uzbekistan can be costly. Just ask Galina Shemetova who was ordered to pay a fine of 2,486,750 som, 50 times the minimum monthly pay for giving a colleague a children’s Bible. This amounts to $60,320US, four times the yearly pre-tax salary of a 40 hour-a-week minimum wage earner. Miss Shemetova not only had to pay the fine, but she was also beaten physically by police, a fact known by the Tashkent Court of Appeals.
Police detained 16 more members of Beijing’s Shouwang House Church and placed others under house arrest: two were held in protective custody while the rest were sent to 10 different police stations; most were released by Sunday morning.
An international advocacy group urged the U.S. government Friday, June 17, to condemn Indian authorities for reportedly asking three American Christians to leave India because they allegedly participated in evangelism.
A prayer center complex, known as “Prayer Mountain”, was destroyed in China after several elderly Christians were forcibly removed, and then watched helplessly as their building was demolished according to ChinaAid, Worthy News has learned.
Christian rights activists marked the 65th birthday of detained Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Saturday, June 19, and her supporters gathered in the country’s main city Rangoon, amid renewed calls for her release from house arrest and an end to military rule.
Kyrgyz Christians were risking their lives Thursday, June 17, to help and shelter Uzbek believers in southern Kyrgystan, where ethnic clashes killed at least 190 people, injured 1,800 others and uprooted some 400,000 residents, Christian aid workers said.
Muslim extremists destroyed several churches and a pastor’s house in the latest religious violence to hit Nigeria’s northern Kano state, church representatives and rights activists said Friday, May 21.
Islamists burned and looted a Protestant church in northern Algeria in an attack that was fueled by violence against Christians elsewhere in the Muslim and Arab world, church officials said Monday, January 11.
Millions of Christians from Vancouver to Vladivostok were praying Sunday, November 8, for persecuted Christians, amid reports of increased repression in several countries around the world.
European ambassadors to Belarus have met with the leader of New Life Church in the capital Minsk to discuss “threats” by authorities to “destroy” one of the country’s largest evangelical churches by confiscating its building, a former cowshed, church officials said in a statement obtained by Worthy News Thursday, August 27.
A prominent Mennonite pastor and religious rights advocate has escaped from his besieged home in central Vietnam after “several months of police encirclement” to seek “help, food and medication” for his children and frail wife, who has been abused by police, dissidents said in messages obtained by BosNewsLife Monday, July 20.