(World Watch Monitor) — Appeal hearings will take place on Sunday (Nov. 12) for an Iranian and three Azerbaijani Christians sentenced in May to 10 years in prison for “missionary activities” and “actions against national security” in Iran. The three Azerbaijanis – Eldar Gurbanov, Yusif Farhadov and Bahram Nasibov – were allowed to leave Iran in […]

(World Watch Monitor) — A court in northern Kazakhstan has given a Baptist man a one-year suspended prison sentence for refusing to pay fines for the state to give its “expert analysis” of Christian books he had with him at the time of his arrest. Yuri Bekker had also failed to pay outstanding fines for […]

(World Watch Monitor) — Pakistan should be designated a “country of particular concern” because of its violations of religious freedom, according to a group of influential US senators. Senators Bob Menendez, Marco Rubio, Chris Coons, Todd Young, Jeff Merkley and James Lankford wrote to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ahead of the Nov. 13 deadline […]

(World Watch Monitor) — A Tajik Protestant church leader serving a three-year sentence for “singing extremist songs in church and so inciting religious hatred” has been moved to a prison 350km from his home and placed in solitary confinement. Bakhrom Kholmatov, 42, was sentenced in July under the Tajik Criminal Code Article 189 (“inciting national, […]

(World Watch Monitor) — Churches in northern Algeria continue to clash with the authorities over permission to hold services in non-religious buildings. Authorities in Tizi Ouzou province—100km east of the capital, Algiers—have said a 2006 law that regulates non-Muslim worship is breached by churches meeting in houses meant only for accommodation or commercial purposes. But […]

(World Watch Monitor) — Police in the southwestern Indian state of Kerala have launched an investigation into a complaint by a woman in her twenties who says she was detained and harassed for 22 days at a yoga center because she had married a Christian, according to The Times of India. A case was registered […]

(World Watch Monitor) — Four Nepali Christians sentenced last year to five years in prison for “violence and witchcraft,” after praying for a mentally ill woman, have been released after their sentences were overturned. In a statement, the Federation of National Christian, Nepal (FNCN) thanked the court for “setting free our innocent people”, and said […]

(World Watch Monitor) — A 21-year-old Malaysian man has been arrested on suspicion of planning to attack non-Muslims and their places of worship, having reportedly been ordered to do so from Islamic State militants in Syria. The man, who was not named, “received instructions from a Malaysian Da’esh [IS] member in Syria to buy a […]

(World Watch Monitor) — After a period of relative calm, the Far North region of Cameroon, along the Nigerian border, has witnessed an upsurge of attacks by Boko Haram in recent days. On Aug. 17, a church elder was killed in a night raid carried out by the radical Islamist group on Moskota village. Adamu […]

(World Watch Monitor) — Three Kenyan Christians were hacked to death by Al-Shabaab militants on Friday night (Aug. 18) after they refused to recite the Islamic prayer of faith. A fourth Christian—the mentally challenged older brother of one of the three—was also killed. At around 9pm, Changawa Muthemba, who was in his forties, was dragged […]