12/5/2024 Algeria (International Christian Concern) — Suleiman Bouhafs, an Algerian Christian convert, gained his freedom from prison on Sept. 1 after serving three years for blasphemy against Islam and alleged ties to terrorism. Bouhafs has denied the terrorism allegations.  A judge remanded Bouhafs to prison on Sept. 1, 2021, based on several allegations, including “insulting […]

11/8/2024 Iran (International Christian Concern) — After serving more than one year of his 10-year prison sentence, an Armenian-Iranian pastor recently gained freedom from Tehran’s Evin Prison following public outcry. Pastor Anooshavan Avedian, imprisoned on Sept. 18, 2023, was acquitted of his crimes and released on Sept. 24, 2024. Before his release, International Christian Concern, The […]

10/18/2024 United Kingdom (International Christian Concern) — The University of Nottingham in England has issued a “trigger warning” to students studying various medieval literature, in part because of Christian themes in the texts. The Daily Mail on Sunday discovered the warning through a Freedom of Information Act request.  The British university warned students that the course […]

9/5/2024 Nicaragua (International Christian Concern) — After months of diplomatic negotiations between the United States and Nicaraguan governments, 13 Nicaraguan pastors and attorneys affiliated with Mountain Gateway, a Texas-based ministry, were released from prison today.  “This is the day we have prayed and believed God for,” Jon Britton Hancock, founder of Mountain Gateway, said in […]

9/4/2024 Washington, D.C. (International Christian Concern) — International Christian Concern released its latest report focusing on the challenges faced by non-governmental and Christian organizations due to financial laws and regulations in India, China, Algeria, and Libya. These organizations, crucial for humanitarian aid, struggle against stringent laws that target foreign funding, making it difficult to support local […]

8/9/2024 Washington, D.C. (International Christian Concern) — International Christian Concern (ICC) recently sent U.S. government officials a formal sanctions request against Azerbaijan and prisons where Armenian prisoners of war and Christians were allegedly tortured.  ICC filed the sanctions request with the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of the Treasury under the Global Magnitsky Human […]

6/17/2024 Pakistan (International Christian Concern) — Sunny Mushtaq and Noman Asghar, both Christians, were arrested on June 29, 2019, in Pakistan on blasphemy charges for receiving cartoon drawings of the Prophet Muhammad on the popular messaging app WhatsApp.  Five years on, the two cousins, both teenagers at the time of their arrests, remain imprisoned on […]

6/14/2024 Türkiye (International Christian Concern) — Türkiye’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, recently ruled that the government’s expulsion of nine foreign Christian leaders based on secret service reports does not violate their freedom of religion. Six of the court’s 13 judges dissented. Although the nine believers had legally obtained residency permits, their perceived missionary activities […]

5/25/2024 Pakistan (International Christian Concern) — Around 7 a.m., an angry mob attacked an elderly Christian man after claims that he had burned pages from a Quran circulated throughout the Mujahid colony in Gillwala, a predominantly Christian community in Sargodha, Pakistan. Members of the large mob, which quickly filled the street, brutally beat Nazir Masih, […]

5/8/2024 China (International Christian Concern) — Since two leaders of Ganquan Church in Hefei, Anhui, were arrested last fall, their wives and members of their church family have pleaded for their release. Those pleas have grown more urgent after the two leaders developed serious health problems while in prison.  In November 2023, Communist authorities detained […]