Seventeen Liberian believers are being persecuted by their families after having converted from Islam to Christianity. They have been threatened, beaten and ordered to stop attending church and listening to Christian music. As a result of the persecution, many of them have fled to nearby villages for safety.
Chinese Christian Zhao Weiliang was sentenced to four years in prison after Chinese officials raided a choir practice on June 25, 2014. As the believers practiced hymns at a factory owned by a church member, about 50 uniformed and plainclothes policemen raided the practice in the village of Sanwuqi in Heze City, Shandong province. Twenty-two believers were arrested, including a pregnant woman and four children.
Zhao was taken separately from the police station to a hotel, where an intoxicated police captain abused him physically and verbally. The police told him, “You can go home as long as you admit what you believe in is a cult…” Zhao refused to give in.
The children, their parents and the pregnant woman were released immediately. The remaining believers were released on bail July 23, 2014, but Zhao and Cheng Hongpeng remained in custody.
On May 27, 2015, Zhao was sentenced to four years in prison under the charge of “using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement.”
According to VOM partners, Zhao’s Total Scope Church is a Bible-based house church centered on the teachings of Christ and is not a cult.
Zhao has a wife, Liu Cuiping, and two small children. He also supported his elderly parents. His wife currently depends on church members to maintain a few acres of farmland.
A 60-year-old Christian man died from injuries experienced during an attack, allegedly by Hindu radicals, in the Bastar District of India’s Chhattisgarh State. According to local believers, four members of the family, including a pregnant woman, were brutally beaten because they refused to denounce their Christian faith.
The Chinese government has shut down a quarterly Christian magazine that encourages the faith of up to 100,000 believers and provides information on recent incidents of persecution. The underground magazine, Ai Yan (which translates as Love Feast), benefits thousands of urban underground churches, as well as rural house churches.
On October 30th, militant Muslims of a village in eastern Uganda gutted the home of a Christian family for providing refuge to two boys who were threatened with violence for leaving Islam. Stephen Muganzi, 41, explained that the two teenaged boys sought refuge on October 16th after their parents began questioning them about their conversion to Christianity and subsequently threatened to kill them. The two boys, aged 16 and 17, had secretly become believers about seven months earlier.
Judges in the central Asian nation of Kazakhstan could be deprived of their rights to freedom of religion or belief if the proposed Code of Judges’ Ethics is adopted in its current form later this month. Judges could face disciplinary action for talking about their faith with others, being among the legal founders of a religious organization, attending a religious conference as a private individual or “providing support in any form” to a religious organization.
Blasphemy charges have been dropped against a young Christian boy in Quetta, Pakistan. The youngster and his mother were both accused of burning pages of the Quran, an incident that allegedly took place on October 20th.
Three young teenage Christian girls have been arrested following the distribution of a Christian book in the town of Babile. The three girls — Eden, 15, Gifti, 14, and Mihiret, 14 — first appeared in court on September 28th with an 18-year-old woman known to her friends as Deborah. Police and governing officials have continually asked for extensions in the case.
Asia Bibi’s agonizing wait has been prolonged as Pakistan’s Supreme Court adjourned her appeal hearing. A leading Supreme Court judge, who was due to hear Asia’s appeal last week stepped back from the case on the grounds that he had been a judge in the trial of Mumtaz Qadri. (Mumtaz was previously convicted and condemned to death for murdering Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, who had opposed the country’s blasphemy laws.)
In northern Nigeria, members of the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, have struck again. On September 26th, the terrorists took over three villages near the town of Chibok which is located within Borno state. It has been reported that at least eight people, including a village elder, have been tragically killed. The attackers have brazenly hoisted their flag around these villages.
The Central African Republic, with 76 percent of its population representing the Christian majority, remains divided with the north, which is largely under the control of foreign-backed local and foreign Islamic militants. Unfortunately, Christians residing in towns and villages within rebel-held territory are experiencing terrible insecurity. Hundreds of thousands of them are displaced and the “front line” is perpetually volatile.
Asia Bibi has been on death row since 2010 for telling her co-workers about Jesus. After testifying of Him, she was accused and convicted under Pakistan’s widely misused blasphemy laws. Her final appeal to the country’s Supreme Court is due next week. (Previous reports on Asia’s situation are