(World Watch Monitor) — The body of Gideon Periyaswamy, 43-year-old pastor of the church of Maknayeem in Adayachery village, in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state, was found hanging from the roof of his house on Jan. 20. Church congregation members who discovered his body described his knees bent to the floor and his body hanging […]

(World Watch Monitor) — A Pakistani Christian, who fell ill after inhaling poisonous gases at work, died on Saturday (Jan. 20) after three days on a life-support machine. Shahzad Masih, 24, who leaves a wife and two young children, worked as a sewer cleaner in the Korangi area of the southern city of Karachi, as […]

(World Watch Monitor) — Thousands took to the streets of Djibo, a northern town in Burkina Faso, on Monday (Jan. 15) to call for the government to secure the release of an Australian doctor, Ken Elliott, kidnapped two years ago. The abduction was claimed by the “Emirate of the Sahara,” a branch of Al-Qaeda in […]

(World Watch Monitor) — A Nigerian university student who converted from Islam to Christianity has been arrested by state security forces, as has the man who introduced her to Christianity. Nabila Umar Sanda, 19, is a student at Bingham University in Karu, in the central state of Nasarawa, which is owned by one of Nigeria’s […]

(World Watch Monitor) — Happy Saturday, a children’s worship service in Pulo Gebang flats, East Jakarta, turned frightening when it was interrupted by a man wielding an axe. The police investigation revealed that the culprit, Nasoem Sulaiman, commonly called Joker, said he had been irritated by the noise from the worship service and wanted to […]

(World Watch Monitor) — The European Court of Human Rights ruled last month that an Iranian who sought asylum in Switzerland based on religious grounds could be deported to his home country because his life was not in danger, despite various reports detailing how Iran persecutes religious minorities and converts to Christianity. Human Rights advocate […]

(World Watch Monitor) — Three-year-old Anita Sihotang is still too scared to leave her house. It has been just over a year since a terrorist threw a Molotov cocktail into the grounds of the church yard where she was playing in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province. The explosion killed one of her friends, two-year-old Intan Banjarnahor, […]

(World Watch Monitor) — The British optician kidnapped and killed last month in Nigeria died in a hail of bullets after singing the hymn “Amazing Grace” to lift the spirits of his fellow hostages, two of them said. Ian Squire, 57, was killed instantly by shots fired by one of four gang members who abducted […]

MALATYA, Turkey (World Watch Monitor) — A vandalism attack last week in Turkey’s south-eastern city of Malatya damaged a small Turkish Protestant church. The assault came just two days after the targeting of 13 minority Alevi families in a nearby neighbourhood. Rising sectarian tensions over the two incidents quickly prompted local police investigations, followed by […]

(World Watch Monitor) — A church in Algeria’s north-western town of Aïn Turk (15km from Oran city) has been closed down by local authorities. The church, affiliated to the Protestant Church of Algeria (known as EPA, its French acronym), was sealed off by police on Nov. 9. Authorities in Oran claimed the church had been […]