HYDERABAD, India (Morning Star News) – A pastor in Uttar Pradesh, India has lost hearing in one ear after Hindu extremists tortured him, pressured police to falsely charge him and prevented doctors from treating him, sources said. Pastor Abhay Sagar, 37, of Biswan town in Sitapur District in the northern state, was about to begin preaching on Sept. […]
A North Korean man who escaped the country after being arrested, and was granted asylum in the United States, is telling his story of how he had to keep a church he founded underground and secret, else he possibly be put to death. “There were about nine people,” Choi Kwanghyuk told Fox News. “I couldn’t […]
(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 […]
India (Mission Network News) — In India, religious minorities are seeing their freedoms slowly erode. The northeastern state of Jharkhand recently became the ninth state to pass anti-conversion laws, which are often used to suppress any religion other than Hinduism. “I think in the little over three years that we’ve had this government in place, we’ve certainly […]
(Morning Star News) – The young man did not answer after his father asked him if he had ditched Islam to become a Christian. Magale (also called Mabala) Hamidu, 20, of Nanoko village in eastern Uganda, had become a Christian seven months before. He had been failing to attend mosque prayers, and his father had […]
(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 […]
(Fox News) — President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested Turkey could free an imprisoned American pastor if the Trump administration extradites a Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania—but the State Department says that won’t happen. American Pastor Andrew Brunson says he was jailed on bogus terrorism charges since his arrest last October. Erdoğan wants to put the […]
(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 […]
ZHUMADIAN, Henan (China Aid) — Elderly Christians, incapable of traveling the long distance to a state-run church, were forced to meet illegally in their homes after officials banned their gathering place in China’s central Henan province. Last May, authorities falsely accused a house church in a village in Zhumadian, Henan, of “heresy” and belonging to a […]