LAHORE, Pakistan (Morning Star News) – A Muslim mob in rural Punjab Province, Pakistan stormed a police station to continue beating a 16-year-old Christian boy accused of blaspheming the Koran, sources said. Asif Masih, illiterate and mildly mentally challenged according to his father, was so badly beaten by the mob in Punjab Province’s Gujranwala District on Aug. […]
JUBA, South Sudan (Morning Star News) – In further efforts to help a Muslim businessman take over church property, police in Omdurman, Sudan evicted two church leaders and their families from their houses, sources said. Police on Tuesday (Aug. 15) raided the two houses belonging to the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC), one near the Omdurman Evangelical Church […]
EZHOU, Hubei (ChinaAid) — After a raid chased a house church from its building out into the open on Jan. 10, authorities in China’s central Hubei province have been weekly attacking church services, firing fireworks at the Christians and drenching them with mud. For the past eight months, officials have arrived weekly at the outdoor […]
LAHORE, Pakistan (Morning Star News) – In an expanded order to remove “blasphemous” content from social media in Pakistan, a high court judge included a recommendation that Parliament include terrorism charges against those accused of blasphemy. Last Saturday’s (Aug. 12) recommendation by Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court is unlikely to result in action […]
TORONTO — A Canadian pastor who had been sentenced to hard labor for life but was released last week on “sick bail,” outlined to his church on Sunday that he prayed without ceasing during the ordeal and stayed close to the Scriptures. “While I was laboring, I prayed without ceasing,” Hyeon Soo Lim, 62, pastor […]
(World Watch Monitor) — The Indian state of Jharkhand passed an “anti-conversion bill” at its Assembly meeting on 12 August, despite demands that the bill should be sent to a select committee for further scrutiny. “This is not normal,” Indian journalist Anto Akkara told World Watch Monitor. “It shows the growing arrogance of the Hindu […]
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor released its annual International Religious Freedom Report on Tuesday, detailing the status of 199 countries and outlining particularly egregious examples of persecution. “Almost 80 percent of the global population live with restrictions on or hostilities to limit their freedom of religion,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson […]
Hong Kong (ChinaAid) — Chinese authorities drove staples into the limbs of a pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong on Aug. 11, forming cross shapes on his legs. According to The New York Times, Howard Lam, a member of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, displayed wounds he suffered after Chinese officials kidnapped him and stapled his legs […]
(World Watch Monitor) — The ongoing civil war in Yemen has claimed thousands of lives, but, away from the conflict, the country’s Christian minority has also faced targeted attacks by the insurgent Islamist group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation, with 26 million people, is “the last bastion on the Arabian […]
(Morning Star News) – After 19 long months of investigative detention following his Dec. 16, 2015 arrest, renowned human rights attorney Nguyen Van Dai was finally charged with a crime on July 30. Vietnamese authorities charged Dai, 35-year-old legal associate Le Thu Ha and four other human rights activists, including Pastor Nguyen Trung Ton, 45, […]