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 […]
HYDERABAD, India (Morning Star News) – Six Christians facing false charges, two of them beaten by police, were jailed for a month for praying for a sick woman in eastern India, they said. After tribal Gondi villagers in Simdega District, Jharkhand state, attacked the Christians on Sept. 16, officers at the local police station refused to listen […]
(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 […]
JIANGMEN, Guangdong (China Aid) — 13 Christians in China’s southern Guangdong province were interrogated at the police station on Nov. 5 after police broke into their church service, ChinaAid learned recently. During a Sunday morning worship service at Qingcaodi Church on Nov. 5, a team of police officers and religious affairs bureau personnel invaded a […]
(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 […]
HYDERABAD, India (Morning Star News) – Weeks after a pastor led a southern village’s first five families to faith in Christ, masked men on motorbikes intercepted him on his way home from worship and tried to kill him. Pastor Banothu Sevya, 26, was in a coma for 48 hours after the drunken Hindu extremists beat him in […]
NEW DELHI (Morning Star News) – Officials and police in Tamil Nadu state, India have ordered 10 churches to discontinue worship services, sources said. Hindu extremists compelled state officials and police to issue orders to the churches in Coimbatore District to stop worship unless they obtain permission from the collector’s office, and the extremists intend to […]
(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 […]
GUIYANG, Guizhou (China Aid) — An imprisoned house church pastor filed a lawsuit against local government departments in China’s southern Guizhou province on Oct. 10, claiming his religious freedom had been violated and that a fine was wrongly imposed on him, ChinaAid learned recently. Li Guozhi, who is known by his alias, Yang Hua, pastored […]