On December 5 officials of Eritrea arrested 30 Christian women in Asmara, the capital city of the country. The mostly elderly women were praying together at a house when security forces rounded them up and hauled them off to police station one in Asmara. Most of the detainees are members of Faith Mission Church, an Evangelical Church with a Methodist background. The church has been carrying out evangelistic and development activities in Eritrea for over five decades and was forced to go underground in 2002 after Eritrean officials required all religious groups to register. Since 2002, officials of Eritrea have been cracking down on members of both registered and unregistered churches. They have imprisoned more than 3000 Christians keeping them in underground dungeons, metal shipping containers, and military barracks. Several Christians have died inside prisons due to torture and lack of medical attention.
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A recent raid by Muslims on a Christian worship service near the capital city of Kampala, Uganda – where several members were injured and their building was damaged – is prompting concern among missions agencies that a new and more violent form of Islam is taking root in the region. The attack, carried out by a 40-member mob wielding machetes and clubs, surprised many in a nation where conflicts between Christians and Muslims have not reached the level of other nations. Most of Uganda’s Muslims are in the northern part of the country in the Bunyoro province. It’s in those regions where most of the persecution takes place. “When Muslims become a majority even in one part of a country where Christians are the majority, they become very vocal, extremist and radicalized,” said Jonathan Racho of International Christian Concern.
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On August 9 two Christian women appeared before an Iranian judge who asked them to deny their faith and return to Islam. Maryam Rostampour, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad, 30, have been held in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran since March 5. When both women refused to recant their faith, the judge sent them back to their prison cells “to think about it”. “When they said, ‘Think about it,’ it means you are going back to jail,” said the source, according to Compass. “This is something we say in Iran. It means: ‘Since you’re not sorry, you’ll stay in jail for a long time, and maybe you’ll change your mind.” They share a cell with over 20 other women and both have deteriorating health. Marzieh suffers from spinal pain, an infected tooth and intense headaches and is especially in need of medical attention, which has not been provided.
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Egyptian State Security arrested a Christian in the village of Deir Samalout, Samalout, Minia province, for praying “without a license.” He was held in prison for two days before being released on “compassionate grounds.” Maurice Salama Sharkawy, 37 years old, had invited Pastor Elia Shafik, to pray for his sick father, who had suffered a stroke. State Security broke into his house while the prayers were ongoing, handcuffed Maurice, put him into a police car and took him to a police station for interrogation. Youssef Sidhom, editor-in-chief of the Coptic Watani newspaper said. “They terrorize worshippers who dare conduct services outside a licensed church, treating them as law violators, despite the fact that the root problem lies in the authorities’ reluctance to permit the erection of new churches or restore existing ones.”
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Pastor Paasu Ninama a 35-year-old resident of Pipal Kutta village said he was on his way back from his regular Sunday service in Malphalia at 4 p.m. when six men sitting outside a house invited him in for a glass of water. When he saw a picture of Jesus Christ in the house, he knew they had set a trap for him. “I immediately turned to escape when they all jumped on me and started to beat me, accusing me of luring people to convert,” he said. They beat him unconscious and chewed off part of his ear, after fainting from the pain the attackers started pelting the unconscious pastor with stones until villagers intervened. No stranger to persecution Paasu has been attacked and threatened many times for his work as a pastor. Pastor Ninama said he works as a day laborer in farm fields to sustain his wife and six children, and that he would continue to do the work of the Lord.
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JAKARTA, Indonesia, October 13 (CDN) — Two churches in the greater Jakarta area have received bomb threats.
In East Jakarta, the pastor of a Batak Protestant Christian Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan, or HKBP) on Bogor Street received a threatening phone call before Sunday services on Oct. 4. The church building is located near the headquarters of an elite police corps.
The unknown caller to the Rev. Abidan Simanungkalit’s cell phone said the bomb would explode during the morning worship service, the pastor told Compass.
“I was startled to receive the short message,” he said. “I immediately phoned some church leaders and then called police.”
Scores of police and bomb squad officers came to the site and combed the area for a bomb, discovering a black package in a garbage container near the front of the church building. It contained four large batteries, a small wall clock and a tin can, and after a two hours police determined that it was not a bomb.
Officers speculated that the caller was unable to construct a real bomb but wanted to publicize a threat. Pastor Simanungkalit said congregation members were alarmed over the threat and that the morning worship was uneasy.
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On September 30, 2009, Myrna called her father and begged him to save her from her Muslim husband. Just ten months ago Myrna had been abducted by Osama Hefnawy, who forced her to convert to Islam and marry his son. According to Egyptian civil law, a woman under the age of 21 has to have approval of her father or another male member of her family if the father is deceased. In Myrna Gamal Hanna’s case, no such approval was given. Without looking back, Myrna’s father, an Egyptian Christian, drove into the city and rescued his daughter. Just days later, Egyptian state security forces began to arrest and assault groups of innocent Christians in an effort to find Myrna’s father. Once Myrna’s father found out that faithful believers were being imprisoned, he promptly turned himself into the police.
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Barnabas Aid Prayer Focus Update October 2009
A Bangladeshi woman, Khainur, and her daughter Arifa have been brutally beaten by her husband following their conversion to Christianity. The beatings began when it emerged that their son, Jahirul, had became a Christian. Jahirul had moved to Sydney, Australia, in 2006 to attend university. In June 2009, his father started to pressure him to marry a Muslim woman, a plan the son rejected because of his Christian faith.
When the husband heard this, he became very angry and began to beat Khainur, accusing her of allowing their son to study abroad. She was also forbidden to talk to their son. Neither her relatives nor the police would help her, but Jahirul urged his mother to contact the Bangladeshi pastor who had first set him on the path to knowing Christ. The pastor became her only support. Before long, Khainur and her eldest daughter Arifa had also “found the love of Christ”.
In September, Khainur told her husband that she too had converted to Christianity. Enraged, he tied his wife and daughter up and brutally beat them in front of the younger daughters. He also burned a copy of the Bible, threatening to give them “similar treatment”. Arifa says, “We pray regularly that one day my father might find the love of Christ. I forgive him even if he beat me like a dog. I am not afraid to be burnt by my father as he did with the Bible.”
Christian 17-year-old girl, Rifqa Bary, ran away from her Muslim family in Columbus, Ohio, in July and took refuge in the home of the Rev. Blake Lorenz with the Global Revolution Church in Orlando, Florida.
The teenager, in a sworn affidavit, claims her father, 47, was pressured by the mosque the family attends in Ohio to “deal with the situation.” In the court filing, Rifqa Bary stated her father said, “If you have this Jesus in your heart, you are dead to me!” The teenager claims her father added, “I will kill you!” She said “There is great honor in that, because if they love Allah more than me, they have to do it. It’s in the Koran,”
At the hearing, Judge Daniel Dawson of the Orange County Juvenile Court ordered the girl and her parents to seek the mediation within 30 days. Another hearing is scheduled for September 29 if the family is not able to resolve the conflict through mediation.
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Compass Direct News reports that church members are on their toes as police raids are on the rise. In Hanoi, four police officers and two government officials interrupted a Sunday worship service in Tran Phu Commune. One officer told the members that if he found them meeting next Sunday, “I will kill you like I’d kill a dog.” Yet, this is just one instance of Christian persecution that has taken place over the summer.
When asked what they think of the recent flare-up of attacks on Christians, Vietnamese leaders agreed that it must have been approved by the top levels of government because it is so widespread. They believe that though it is unwritten, it is a policy of the government to stop the expansion of Christianity.
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On December 5 officials of Eritrea arrested 30 Christian women in Asmara, the capital city of the country. The mostly elderly women were praying together at a house when security forces rounded them up and hauled them off to police station one in Asmara. Most of the detainees are members of Faith Mission Church, an Evangelical Church with a Methodist background. The church has been carrying out evangelistic and development activities in Eritrea for over five decades and was forced to go underground in 2002 after Eritrean officials required all religious groups to register. Since 2002, officials of Eritrea have been cracking down on members of both registered and unregistered churches. They have imprisoned more than 3000 Christians keeping them in underground dungeons, metal shipping containers, and military barracks. Several Christians have died inside prisons due to torture and lack of medical attention.
