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News
On Christian
Persecution
7/7/04 Cuba (BosNewsLife)
Fears for Life of Cuba's Most Prominent Christian Prisoner
The family of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, one
of Cuba's most prominent detained Christian dissidents, fears he may
become ill or die as prison officials have denied him food for nearly
three weeks, a human rights group claimed Wednesday July 7. Christian
Solidarity Worldwide said is had obtained a letter from Dr. Biscet, which
was smuggled out of prison, in which he expresses concern about his
situation. "Since June 17 I haven't had any food brought to me,
practically forcing me to be on a hunger strike. No one has given me an
explanation for this, not even the prison director," he was quoted as
saying in the letter. BosNewsLife did not see the original letter, but
CSW and other organizations are known to have close contacts with
persecuted Christians. His wife, Elsa Morejón Hernández, reportedly said
recently that Dr. Biscet joined other prisoners in shouting "Down with the
Castro-Communist dictatorship" during a recent act of civil disobedience
at the Kilo 8 prison in Pinar del Rio. Dr. Biscet was sentenced to 25
years following a recent arrest of over 70 dissidents accused of acts
against the government.
7/7/04 Jordan (Compass)
Islamic Court
Rejects Christian Orphan’s Case
An Islamic court in Jordan has rejected a
teenage Christian girl’s lawsuit to cancel her Muslim uncle’s legal
guardianship. The June 20 ruling was a setback for Christian widow Siham
Qandah, whose estranged brother Abdullah al-Muhtadi has been trying for
six years to take custody of her daughter Rawan, 15, and son Fadi, 14, to
raise as Muslims. Amman’s Al-Abdali Sharia Court had ordered an
investigation into allegations that al-Muhtadi had embezzled nearly
$20,000 of the children’s U.N.-allocated trust fund, which they received
after their father was killed while on a peacekeeping mission with the
Jordanian army. Judge Mahmud Zghul said he ruled in favor of the Muslim
guardian “because all withdrawals from the children’s trust account have
been duly authorized by a judge, as required.” “This judge knows that if
he rules against Siham’s brother, other judges will be in trouble,” a
source in Amman told Compass. “Now Siham is in real trouble.” Qandah and
her children have gone into several rounds of hiding while awaiting a
judicial solution to the custody battle. The courts have blacklisted the
children from leaving Jordan and international treaties prevent most
nations from offering them visas.
7/7/04 Sri Lanka (Compass)
Evangelical Alliance Suffers Break-In
Unidentified vandals broke into the office
of the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL)
over the weekend and ransacked filing cabinets and desks. Intruders
apparently forced open the back door of the building sometime during the
day on Saturday, July 3, and searched files in haste before strewing them
on the floor. NCEASL staff workers say the focus was clearly on documents
stored at the office. A small amount of money went missing from a cash
box, but expensive equipment such as a video projector, camera and
computer accessories were left untouched. The NCEASL believes the Saturday
break-in may have been an attempt to find documents relating to its public
awareness campaign against a proposed anti-conversion bill known as the
“Act for the Protection of Religious Freedom.” An NCEASL advertisement
appeared for the first time in the Sri Lanka Daily News on July 3
and could have triggered the raid.
7/7/04 Vietnam (ABC Radio Australia News)
UN Grants Asylum to 12 Vietnam Hill Tribe Refugees
The United Nations refugee agency has
granted asylum to 12 Montagnard minority hill tribe people who fled
Vietnam's Central Highlands, crossed Cambodia and ended up in Thailand. A
spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok, says the
12 will soon be sent to a third country. Human rights groups say
Montagnards are being persecuted by Vietnamese authorities. After mass
protests and a clampdown by authorities in 2001, some 1,000 Montagnards
fled through the jungle to Cambodia, where they were housed in refugee
camps before being granted asylum in the United States. After another
protest last April, a steady trickle of refugees has been entering
Cambodia.
7/7/04 Uzbekistan (Forum 18)
“Illegal” Baptists under More Pressure as Authorities Try to Stop
Christianity
In the latest twist to Uzbek authorities
campaign against Christianity in north-west Uzbekistan, the NSS secret
police have interrogated two Baptists, beating one up, and threatening
both with imprisonment saying that "we will put you away for years". One
secret police officer claimed to Forum 18 News Service that "The Baptists'
activity is illegal, and so we simply had a chat with them," and that the
Urgench Baptist church is a banned organization "because its registered
status was removed". Another NSS officer, Alisher Khasanov, jeered at
Baptist Sharovat Allamova for being a Christian and claimed that "you
Protestants rely on Western money, the humanitarian western missions who
support you are basically espionage organizations. So you yourselves are
agents for foreign intelligence services." Also, the local Khorezm branch
of the NSS has questioned Forum 18 about why a Norwegian organization is
interested in a "banned organization".
7/6/04 China (ANS)
Chinese Woman Beaten to Death After Distributing Bibles
A 34 year old woman has been beaten to death by police after she was
arrested for handing out Bibles in southwest China’s Guizhou province,
ASSIST News Service learned Monday, July 5. The French News Agency (AFP)
quoted China's state run Legal Daily newspaper as saying that police in
Guizhou’s Tongzi county arrested Jiang Zongxiu, a farmer, on June 18 on
suspicion of “spreading rumors and inciting to disturb social order." They
had planned to detain her for 15 days, the report said, alleging Jiang
died in police custody the afternoon she was arrested. Her mother-in-law,
Tan Dewei, who was arrested with Jiang but later released, told reporters
police kicked Jiang repeatedly during interrogation, AFP reported. Police
later informed Jiang’s family she had died of a sudden illness and turned
over her body to the family, but relatives saw she was covered with
bruises and blood stains, the report alleged. It is at least the second
published killing of a Christian by Chinese police in as many months,
although human rights watchdogs believe torture of Christians and
dissidents is wide spread in the Communist nation.
7/6/04
Phillipines (AFP/Borneo Bulletin)
Abu Sayyaf Fugitives Arrested for Kidnap and Murder of Several Christians
Soldiers have arrested two senior commanders of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu
Sayyaf kidnap gang in separate incidents, including one in the Philippine
capital Manila, officials said Monday. Ibno Alih Ordonez, wanted for
murder and several kidnappings, was arrested last Thursday in the
financial centre of Makati, where he ran a bus service for an exclusive
school, Defence Secretary Eduardo Ermita said. Ordonez was involved in
numerous kidnappings including the abductions of more than 50 Christian
students and teachers in the southern island of Basilan in 2001. Several
hostages were killed in that incident, including a Catholic priest who was
tortured and shot in the head. Ordonez is listed as the seventh most
wanted Abu Sayyaf leader with a bounty of one million pesos (18,000
dollars). He was formerly a guard at the Basilan provincial jail and was
believed to have scouted for potential victims. The suspect is also a
cousin of Abu Sabaya, the Abu Sayyaf's notorious spokesman killed in a
gunbattle with US-assisted Filipino commandos in 2002. In another
development, troops nabbed an aide of Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadaffy
Janjalani outside an Islamic library in the southern island of Jolo on
Sunday, the head of an anti-terror task force said. Joselito Nasara, also
known as Commander Abu Sophian, who is wanted for murder and kidnapping,
surrendered without a fight, Brigadier General Gabriel Habacon said. He
has been taken to the southern city of Zamboanga and is being questioned
over possible links to the Jemaah Islamiyah regional extremist group,
Habacon said without elaborating. The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of
self-styled Islamic militants blamed for a spate of kidnappings and bomb
attacks on foreigners and Christians in the south, including the murders
of two Americans kidnapped in 2001. It was tagged a terrorist organisation
by the US and Philippine governments who have linked the group to the
al-Qaeda network of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
7/6/04 India (Asia News)
Parish Area Remains Tense Following Catholic-Hindu Violence
A parish area in western India remains tense two weeks after a Hindu mob
attacked Catholics. Police continue to patrol Devbag, a fishing village in
the territory of Poona diocese. Several Catholics were beaten there after
a parishioner slapped a Hindu youth. Two of the Catholics injured in the
clash are still hospitalized, recovering from bone fractures. Police
arrested 13 Catholics and two Hindus soon after the fracas, but released
them a day later with a warning not to cause further trouble.
The village is near the town
of Malwan, about 1,850 kilometers southwest of New Delhi, in Maharashtra
state. Santosh Rastogi, local police superintenden, told that five
policemen have been posted at the compound of St. Peter's Parish in Devbag
to prevent trouble. Juze Fernandes, one of the hospitalized fishermen,
told that a group of Hindu men armed with wooden sticks beat him. "I
covered my head with both my hands," he said. Trouble started June 14 when
a member of the local parish council slapped the son of a member of Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (world Hindu council), a group that wants to make India a
Hindu nation. The parish council member, Simon Fernandes, says he slapped
the Hindu youth, whose family lives near the church, after the youth
"abused and threatened" a Catholic layman for not widening a footpath near
the church. "Soon a group of 20 Hindus attacked me, hitting me all over
and biting my finger till it bled," Fernandes said, adding that 15
Catholics who came to his rescue also were beaten. After a day of calm, he
continued, about 600 Hindus with wooden sticks gathered near the church on
June 16. Some Catholics who were on the road were attacked, two of them
"very badly," Fernandes said. He called the attack "well-planned" since it
happened two days after "the slapping event." Anant Tari, father of the
Hindu youth Fernandes slapped, counters that "there was no provocation"
for this action. When news of the incident spread, "naturally people were
angry and retaliated," Tari told on July 1. Tari held the parish priest
"responsible for the tension" in the village by not heeding requests to
widen the footpath for public use. Police escorted Capuchin Father Wilson
Rumao out of the village, leaving the parish of about 800 Catholics
without a priest. Father Rumao may not come back "till tempers calm down
and peace returns to the village," Father Philip Gonsalves said. The
Capuchin councilor is based in Mumbai, the state capital. Father Andrew De
Mello, in charge of another parish, said right-wing Hindu groups used the
issue to "whip up communal tension for the first time in the village." On
July 28, Narayan Rane, former chief minister of Maharashtra now opposition
leader in the state assembly, held a meeting in Malwan to appeal for
peace. Rane told that Hindus and Christians have coexisted peacefully in
Devbag for centuries. "This is the first time a minor clash broke out
between" them, and over a petty issue, he added.
7/5/04 Pakistan (Zenit)
Anti-Christian Bias Feared Rising in Pakistan
Muslim anger over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is leading to more
discrimination against Christians in Pakistan, an archbishop warns. "There
is a lot of anger among Muslims here because of the war in Iraq," said
Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha of Lahore, during a recent visit to the
Germany-based group Aid to the Church in Need. "The general discrimination
against Christians has also become stronger since the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq," he said. Pakistan has about 150 million inhabitants, 97% of
whom are Muslims and 1% Christians. About 1.2 million are Catholics.
Archbishop Saldanha described the country's Catholic community as "small,
but very active. Our faithful come from the lower class of Pakistani
society. Most of them are poor and even illiterate. … That is why they are
looked down upon." Hence, education is a priority for the Church in
Pakistan. "We have 111 Catholic schools in the Lahore Archdiocese. A good
number of the students are Muslims," Archbishop Saldanha said. He added:
"For the faith of our people, pilgrimages are very important. In my
archdiocese, there is the Marian shrine in Maryamabad. The annual
pilgrimage in September there attracts not only Catholics, but Muslims as
well."
7/3/04 Kyrgyzstan (WEA)
Authorities Consider Countering Christian Mission
Religious Liberty News & Analysis) - In
January 2004 Forum 18 (F18), which monitors religious freedom in Communist
and former Soviet states, published the results of its survey on religious
freedom in Kyrgyzstan. F18 reported, "Both registered and unregistered
religious communities appear to function freely, despite a 1996
presidential decree requiring religious communities to register.
...However, due to Muslim anger at conversions from Islam to Christianity,
Forum 18 has been told by some that an official campaign against Christian
proselytism may soon be launched." One diplomat confided to F18 that
authorities might soon launch a campaign against "proselytism" out of fear
that the conversion of Muslims to Christianity may lead to social tensions
and even conflict. An article that appeared on IslamOnline (IOL) on 26
June 2004 entitled "Proselytization Eats Away at Muslim Majority in
Kyrgyzstan" indicates that this threat may soon become a reality. IOL
correspondent Damir Ahmad reports that according to Russian media, "Five
percent of the majority Muslim population in Kyrgyzstan have converted to
Christianity due to the spreading missionary work in the former Soviet
republic." According to Omurzak Mamayusupov, the director of Kyrgyzstan's
religious affairs committee, "The percentage of Muslims declined from 84
percent of the total population in 2001 to 79.3 percent in 2004. In terms
of figures, he added, some 100,000 Muslims, of the country's five million
population, have converted to Christianity." Mamayusupov complains about
the "full swing" missionary activity that includes the distribution of
literature, books and videos, the building of churches, the establishment
of Christian mission organizations, and the way missionaries "entice
Muslim people away from their religion". IOL reports, "Mamayusupov warned
that such organizations endanger the national security and run the risk of
triggering an ethnic conflict. 'We must nip this phenomenon in the bud to
head off an ethnic conflict in Kyrgyzstan,' he said." Mamayusupov claims
that while Russian Orthodox and Muslims have lived peacefully for many
years, the Catholic and Protestant missions "might ignite a religious
war". According to IOL, Mamayusupov said that the Kyrgyzstan government is
therefore considering the option of establishing a religious police
department to counter Christian missionary work.
Mamayusupov's language is alarmist
and offensive. He appears content to take the easy road and blame social
tensions on the peaceful victims of persecution rather than on the
perpetrators who would unjustly deny them their basic and constitutional
right to freedom of religion. Kyrgyzstan has some 3,000 mosques, 2,000 of
which have been built since the year 2000. Some 40 percent of Kyrgyzstan's
Muslims are Wahhabi. According to the US State Department Report on
International Religious Freedom 2003, there are some 1,000 missionaries in
Kyrgyzstan. Around 800 of them are Christians, primarily from Sth Korea,
Germany and USA, while the others are Muslims from Saudi Arabia, Turkey
and Pakistan.
One of the most extreme cases of grassroots persecution against converts
occurred in the village of Kurkol in Djalalabad Oblast in January 2001.
The local Muslim Religious Board complained that some 130 Muslims had
recently converted to Christianity. More than one thousand locals convened
a meeting and demanded that four ethnic Uzbeks, all recent converts to
Christianity, leave the village. That incident was pre-war on terror. If
Islamic anti-Western, anti-Christian sentiment, solidarity and
identification are rising in Kyrgyzstan as much as they are rising
everywhere else across the Muslim world, then we can expect social
tensions to be increasing and the government to come under increasing
pressure to counter Christianity. It is to be hoped that the secular and
reform-minded government of President Askar Akayev will reject attempts to
curtail Kyrgyzstan's religious liberty.
7/2/04 India (Compass)
Pastor Brutally Attacked in Indian Village
An Indian pastor brutally
beaten in a night-time attack in West Tripura is still recovering from
serious knife wounds. Letthang Gangte, a missionary of the Evangelical
Congregational Church of India, received cuts to the head and back, and a
deep stab wound in the stomach. Witnesses say it was a miracle he survived
the attack from as many as 10 assailants who broke through the walls of
the family’s mud hut around 3 a.m. on April 19. Mrs. Gangte sustained
injuries to her head and one arm and the couple’s daughter Bebem, 7, and
son Bawilun, 10, suffered slashes on their calves and thighs. The family
had lived in the village of Rajghat since 1995. Sources think the attack
was inspired by the recent propaganda efforts of militant Hindu groups to
discourage local tribal peoples to convert to Christianity. The family’s
sending church requested law enforcement authorities to investigate the
crime, but the police refused, saying Gangte must first identify the men
who attacked him.
7/2/04 Afghanistan (Reuters)
Taliban Say Cut Throat of Afghan Christian
Afghanistan's Taliban guerrillas say they
cut the throat of a Muslim cleric after they discovered him propagating
Christianity and warned foreign aid workers they would face similar
treatment if they did the same. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi
telephoned Reuters on Thursday to say that the guerrillas killed Maulawi
Assadullah in the remote Awdand district of Ghazni province the previous
day. "A group of Taliban dragged out Maulawi Assadullah and slit his
throat with a knife because he was propagating Christianity," he said. "We
have enough evidence and local accounts to prove that he was involved in
the conversion of Muslims to Christianity." Provincial officials could not
immediately be reached for comment. Hakimi charged that a number of
foreign aid agencies were also involved in spreading Christianity in
Afghanistan, where the adherents to the religion are in a tiny minority.
"We warn them that they face the same destiny as Assadullah if they
continue to seduce people," he said.
7/2/04 Turkmenistan (Forum 18)
“Only Two Faiths are Allowed, Islam and Orthodoxy” Says Deputy Police
Chief
Abadan's deputy police chief has told
Baptist Svetlana Gurkina that "in Turkmenistan only two faiths are
allowed, Islam and Orthodoxy, while the rest are banned", local Baptists
have told Forum 18 News Service. She was also subjected to crude remarks
and threats to imprison her and confiscate her flat, if she continues to
meet her fellow-Christians. Although criminal penalties for unregistered
religious activity were formally lifted in May, unregistered Baptist
communities have been hard-hit by the government's continued refusal to
lift the ban on unregistered religious activity. Baptists in the capital
Ashgabad have appealed to President Saparmurat Niyazov and government
agencies to halt the ongoing persecution of Svetlana Gurkina.
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