Christians in southern Sudan on Wednesday, October 3, continued mourning the death of five youngsters who were killed when a suicide bomber burst into an evening worship service in Khorfulus in the county’s Upper Nile State, United Nations officials and church leaders said.
The United Nations envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, arrived in the country Saturday, September 29, to urge the junta to end its violent crackdown on those opposing the regime, a day after satellite images confirmed that government-backed forces massively burn villages of predominantly Christian Karens.
A Degar Montagnard who worshipped in a house church in Vietnam’s Central Highlands was free Monday, May 7, after weeks of imprisonment and torture in March and April, fellow believers said.
The whereabouts of several predominantly Christian Karenni villagers in Burma were unknown Saturday, May 5, after government backed forces reportedly executed a humanitarian aid worker in Burma’s Karenni State.
More than 160 Christian prisoners ended a two-day hunger strike last week after authorities in Pakistan’s Punjab province permitted them to resume religious services, a non-governmental organization worker said.
There was mounting concern Tuesday, March 13, about the whereabouts of an evangelical Sri Lankan pastor, his two sons, and another Christian young man who disappeared this month amid intense fighting between Sri Lanka’s government forces and the independence seeking Tamil Tiger rebels, Christians said.
Following a renewed outbreak of civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), churches in the northeast are fast becoming another war casualty.
Tensions remained high in the Sri Lankan city of Jaffna Wednesday, January 17, after a pastor was shot dead by government security forces, triggering fears of more ethnic and religious clashes in the volatile region, local Christians and investigators said.
Tensions are rising across the Horn of Africa – there is death and danger. Irredentist Somali Islamists have declared jihad against Ethiopia. Christians are being attacked and murdered by Muslims in Ethiopia. Eritrea, which is accused of arming the Somali Islamists, is exploiting an opportunity and has breached the 2000 cease-fire agreement by moving troops into the Eritrea-Ethiopia border buffer zone. Two Protestant Christians were recently tortured to death in Eritrea. The savagery of persecution appears to be escalating in proportion to regional tensions — and it could be about to get much worse.
The military government of Burma has launched a new violent campaign against a largely Christian ethnic group and its churches, BosNewsLife learned Friday, September 8.
At least three Montagnard Degar Christians died and many more were injured in recent weeks because of torture carried out by Vietnamese police, friends and fellow prisoners confirmed Monday, July 3.
Six Evangelical Christians of Vietnam’s Montagnard Degar minority were facing another tense day Wednesday, June 28, after a court reportedly jailed them on charges of inciting religious unrest and organizing illegal border crossings to neighboring Cambodia.
A group of Christian men remained “in great danger” Monday, June 26, after escaping from a military prison camp in Eritrea, where they were held in metal containers for refusing to abandon their faith in Christ, investigators said.
Human rights officials in Europe and the United States expressed concern Wednesday, May 3, over the persecution of Christians in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, nearly a year after hundreds of people died when security forces opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators.
Lebanon’s Interior Minister resigned late Sunday, February 5, after an estimated 20,000 angry Muslims not only torched the Danish Embassy but also attacked the Christian community in the capital Beirut over published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.
Burmese government forces attacked villages of the Karen and Karenni people, displacing 1,200 villagers, as part of a “slow genocide” against these predominantly Christian ethnic groups, a religious rights group said late Thursday, January 5.
A major report has been published this weekend documenting for the first time the extent of the government backed torture in Burma’s jails, human rights investigators said.
Children of a United States missionary couple were spending their first Sunday worship service in freedom, November 6, after a turbulent week in which they were first snatched in a Haiti shanty town and later freed in a massive rescue operation.
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.
Christians in the West African nation of Burkina Faso have appealed for help as especially children are “beginning to be affected by diseases linked to malnutrition and deficiency,” a Christian aid group said Monday, October 3.