(Church in Chains) — Tajik pastor Bakhrom Kholmatov has been released from prison three months early. He was due for release in March 2020, but was freed at 10 a.m. on Dec. 18. Pastor Bakhrom (43) was arrested and imprisoned in April 2017 after secret police officers raided his church, the Sunmin Sunbogym (Good News […]
YANGON, Burma (Morning Star News) – Ethnic rebels who closed more than 100 churches in eastern Burma (Myanmar) in 2018 have allowed 51 Baptist churches to reopen, sources said. Ethnic Wa rebels of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) this week announced they had permitted 51 Baptist churches to reopen in northern Shan state after investigating the […]
VENEZUELA (International Lutheran Council) – The Lutheran Church of Venezuela (Iglesia Luterana de Venezuela – ILV) has announced that their former president, Luis Gregorio Coronado, has been murdered. Coronado was reported missing on December 12. He was found deceased, with his hands and feet bound, on December 16 in a vacant missionary residence building owned by […]
MEXICO (Christian Solidarity Worldwide) — A government secretary in the state of Hidalgo has made public claims that there are no cases of religious intolerance in the Huasteca region, despite evidence from Protestant Christians who were forcibly displaced in July and others who are currently under threat of forced displacement because of their religious beliefs. […]
(International Christian Concern) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that on Dec. 19, 2019, the United States issued financial sanctions against two Iranian judges complicit in violating the human rights of Iranians. One of these judges, Mohammad Moghisseh, has a long record of specifically violating the rights of Iran’s Christian minority. “Through their respective […]
HYDERABAD, India (Morning Star News) – Tribal animists in eastern India earlier this month surrounded a church building with axes, threatened to kill Christians within and later burned down the thatched-roof structure, sources said. Hard-line animists in Odisha state’s Perigaon village, Rayagada District, attacked on Dec. 1 after having raided Christians homes to seize and burn Bibles […]
(Barnabas Fund) — A distraught community is mourning and singing a new shared “lament” after Boko Haram violence claimed at least seven lives including Pastor David Mokoni and several Christian young people, in the latest spate of merciless Boko Haram attacks in Far North Cameroon. A local Christian leader says the repeated attacks in Moskota […]
SEBETA, Ethiopia — Two pastors in Ethiopia were recently beheaded at their homes in the midst of Islamic rioting that also killed over 60 others and wounded more than 200. According to reports, the incident occurred in October as a mob took to the streets of Sebeta to protest the actions of the Ethiopian government under […]
Nepal (Mission Network News) — It’s a challenging season for believers in Nepal. According to the American Center for Law and Justice, 17 Christians — both foreigners and locals — were arrested this year under the 2018 anti-conversion and blasphemy law. Bibles For The World’s John Pudaite just returned from an extended visit to the […]
(Bitter Winter) — As the CCP is stepping up its efforts to suppress Christianity, multiple house church venues across the country have been crushed for refusing to join the state-run Three-Self Church. One such venue was destroyed in late October in Gaoqiang village in Lin’an county, administered by Hangzhou city in the eastern province […]