A family of Iranian converts to Christianity faces jail time, the death sentence and the forced marriage of their daughter if Turkish authorities forcibly deport them back to Iran next week after nearly three years of failed attempts to obtain U.N. refugee status.
Messianic Jews have called for international protests against violations of religious freedom in Israel. Orthodox Jews have harassed a congregation in the desert town of Arad in Southern Israel for more than 18 months.
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.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the Rev. Nguyen Hong Quang informed his wife last week that his appeal before the People’s Supreme Court of Vietnam has been rescheduled for April 12.
The Sri Lankan government will cast a deciding vote on anti-conversion legislation in April, despite sharp criticism of the “Act for the Protection of Religious Freedom.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (ANS) — Joni Eareckson Tada, well-known for her Christian disability ministry around the world, took on the case for re-inserting Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube before an audience of millions during a cable television program that aired March 24, 2005.
An Iranian Colonel who, despite Western protests, was jailed last month for his alleged “illegal” conversion to Christianity is held at Tehran’s notorious maximum-security prison with well-known political and religious dissidents, a Christian news agency reported late Friday, March 11.
Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka have declared a “fast unto death” beginning December 12 if the government does not concede to a proposed constitutional amendment and the adoption of anti-conversion laws.
A brutal attack on a Christian book publisher in Ukraine has underscored the high stakes struggle over human rights and religious liberty in the former Soviet republic preparing for a re-run of a sharply contested presidential election.
ISTANBUL, September 27 (Compass) — The Taliban Supreme Court announced it will resume trial proceedings on Saturday against eight Western aid workers who have been jailed in the Afghan capital for the past two months on charges of preaching Christianity.
ISTANBUL (Compass) — As aerial military strikes by U.S. forces continued to pound Afghanistan for the fourth consecutive day, the defense lawyer for eight Western relief workers imprisoned in Kabul left Pakistan this morning via the Khyber Pass to return to the Afghan capital.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (ANS) — Afghanistan’s Islamic Taliban regime threatened Wednesday, September 5, to execute eight foreign Christian relief workers, as Western diplomats and relatives desperately tried to meet them.
ISTANBUL, September 10 (Compass) — Taliban authorities arrested 35 more Afghan aid workers over the weekend, bringing the total to more than 50 Afghans jailed by the strict Islamist regime since early August on suspicion of aiding covert Christian missionary work.
JANUARY
Taliban leader Mohammed Omar declares on Radio Shariat that any Afghan caught professing Christianity or Judaism would be executed, and that any non-Muslim found “trying to win converts” would also be killed.
(Boston, MA) — The American Center for Law and Justice, an international public interest law firm, announced today it has filed a federal lawsuit charging religious discrimination against a school district in Massachusetts that has refused to permit a Christian organization to use its facilities after-hours – just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such discriminatory action is unconstitutional.
(Boston, MA) — The American Center for Law and Justice, an international public interest law firm, announced today it has filed a federal lawsuit charging religious discrimination against a school district in Massachusetts that has refused to permit a Christian organization to use its facilities after-hours – just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such discriminatory action is unconstitutional.
OKLAHOMA CITY (BP)–The Oklahoma House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill April 4 that includes an amendment requiring state-approved science textbooks to acknowledge “one God as the creator of human life in the universe.”
Following lengthy judicial delays, the United Arab Emirates allowed Rev. Fernando P. Alconga to be deported back to Manila on July 23, more than nine months after he was arrested in Dubai for illegal Christian activities.
The letter outlines inconsistencies between the way the retrial was handled by judges of the Jingmen City Middle Court and the mandates of China’s criminal court statutes. “The families of all the victims feel deeply sad and worried about the result,” the letter states. Complete text of the letter is available on the VOM web site at www.persecution.com.
WASHINGTON (BP)–The U.S. Supreme Court used the final day of its term to issue a quartet of decisions on moral and church-state issues, including deeply divided rulings upholding a private organization’s freedom to bar homosexuals from its leadership and striking down a state’s ban on an especially gruesome method of abortion.