As coronavirus widens the renter-owner divide, housing policies will have to change

Rachel Ong ViforJ, Curtin University

What began as a global health crisis in the form of COVID-19 is now also an economic crisis of historic proportions. Much of the housing policy focus during the pandemic has rightly centred on the plight of people who are insecurely housed or homeless. Another strand of commentary has focused on a likely fall in property values.

But what does the pandemic mean for housing market inequalities in Australia? And what are the policy implications?

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The renter-owner gap will widen

Despite concerns about house prices plummeting, the spread of COVID-19 is exposing a widening gap in housing markets between those who own zero housing wealth (renters) and those with substantial housing wealth (owners).

Australians with little to no housing wealth were already experiencing at least three key types of vulnerabilities before the pandemic in the form of work insecurity, financial stress and ill-health.

The charts below show the comparisons between renters and home owners in these three categories of vulnerability, using data from the HILDA Survey. Owners are ranked in quintiles by housing equity, from the bottom 20% (Q1) to the top 20% (Q5).

Renters were much more likely to be unemployed or in casual jobs than people with high housing wealth.

Note: Sample includes all persons aged 25+ no longer living in their parents’ homes. Housing equity is defined as family home value minus mortgage debt. Population weights have been applied.
Author’s calculations from 2017 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Survey data, Author provided

Both renters and owners with low housing equity were more likely to have difficulty paying their rent, mortgage and utility bills on time. They were less likely to be able to raise emergency funds when needed.

Note: Sample includes all persons aged 25+ who are no longer living in their parents’ homes. Housing equity is defined as family home value minus mortgage debt. Population weights have been applied.
Author’s calculations from 2017 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Survey data, Author provided

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Rents can and should be reduced or suspended for the coronavirus pandemic

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Renters were also more likely to report poorer physical and mental health.

Note: Sample includes all persons aged 25+ who are no longer living in their parents’ homes. Housing equity is defined as family home value minus mortgage debt. Population weights have been applied.
Author’s calculations from 2017 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Survey data, Author provided

The spread of coronavirus has added to these existing vulnerabilities. Casual workers have been particularly vulnerable to job loss.

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Coronavirus puts casual workers at risk of homelessness unless they get more support

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The social gradient in health is well-known. People on the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder tend to be in poorer health. They are then more likely to develop serious health problems from the coronavirus.

Post-pandemic markets will add to inequalities

COVID-19 is making existing economic inequalities worse. And even in a post-pandemic world it can be expected to slow down wealth accumulation among renters.

Hysteresis is a term used to describe an economic event that persists into the future, after the factors that led to the event have disappeared. In labour markets, the long-term unemployed also suffer long-term damage to their job prospects as their skills deteriorate and they are regarded as less employable.

This hysteresis effect will likely spill over into housing markets. Any crisis-driven falls in house prices may be short-term as housing values remain relatively insulated by record low interest rates. People who are exposed to job loss, insecure work or ill-health during the crisis will face a greater struggle to regain their economic footing after the pandemic than those from more affluent backgrounds.

This means the wealth-accumulating capacity of people with little to no housing equity is further compromised during and after the pandemic. In short, renters could fall further behind in their ability to buy a home. The gap between the haves and have-nots will grow.

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Fall in ageing Australians’ home-ownership rates looms as seismic shock for housing policy

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3 principles for post-pandemic policy

An even more unequal housing future for Australia is undesirable. The post-crisis housing debate will need to be conducted with three key elements in mind: equity, solidarity and security.

Equity in access to housing opportunities must not slide off policymakers’ radar. It is not a debatable fact that governments have long provided generous concessions for property buyers. These measures include capital gains tax discounts, family home exemptions from land tax and income support means tests, and negative gearing for investors.

These preferential tax treatments have far exceeded government spending on renters. Notwithstanding the benefits commonly associated with home ownership, restoring some balance in the distribution of subsidies between owners and renters is essential to narrow the widening chasm between them.

Solidarity between generations will be more crucial than ever before to preserve Australia’s social and economic fabric. The surge in national debt created in response to the crisis will likely be a multi-generational burden.

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Some might be tempted to return to pitting the young against the old in housing debates. Policy thinking that encourages solidarity, rather than stoking tensions between generations, will be increasingly important. For instance, abolishing stamp duty together with levying land tax on all land will remove a key financial barrier to home purchases for both young first-time buyers and older downsizers.

The formation of the national cabinet to oversee the response to COVID-19 also provides a post-pandemic forum to forge federal-state cooperation on the required reforms. Federal support will be needed to help cover state revenue shortfalls in a gradual transition to land tax. On the other hand, the release of housing equity by older downsizers should ease pressures on the federal retirement incomes system.

Finally, it is time to reprioritise housing security as a foundation for fostering good health and economic participation. Critical public health measures to avoid the spread of disease, such as social distancing and staying at home, are inherently shelter-related. These measures are rarely achievable for people who are homeless or in overcrowded housing.

Rachel Ong ViforJ, Professor of Economics, School of Economics, Finance and Property, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

4 ways to be a good landlord in a time of coronavirus

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Emma Baker, University of Adelaide and Rebecca Bentley, University of Melbourne

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating major challenges for our residential rental system. The lockdown of businesses has meant an almost overnight loss of jobs or reduced hours for many Australian workers. Many tenants are struggling to pay their rent.

While the release of a government package to help residential renters has been mooted for weeks, the only concrete outcome so far has been a halt on evictions and some progress in individual states and territories. The rapid sequence of events has left renters – that’s about one in three Australian households – and landlords in uncharted territory; they must renegotiate their terms.

We asked stakeholders from across the rental market – landlords, tenants, advocacy groups, housing researchers – for ideas on what ethical landlords might do in these highly uncertain circumstances. We discuss some of these ideas later in this article.

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Rents can and should be reduced or suspended for the coronavirus pandemic

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Landlords are taking a hit too

But, first, it’s important to remember it isn’t just renters who are struggling. Some landlords are too. For many of Australia’s more than 1 million “mum and dad” landlords, COVID-19 has dealt a blow to their relatively safe bricks-and-mortar investment.

On the other hand, landlords may have access to mortgage holidays and low interest rates. Some are also calling for relief on rates and other costs associated with their investment properties so they can better support their tenants.

At the coalface, responses from landlords, letting agents and property managers have reportedly varied widely. The official position of the Real Estate Institute of Australia is that a “a moratorium on evictions during these challenging times is the correct thing to be doing”. However, there have been widespread reports of threatened evictions, suggestions renters draw on super or use savings to pay rent, or that rent reductions will only come in the form of deferred loans.

Pulling together in a crisis

Australians have rallied together in this crisis – checking up on older neighbors, for instance, or delivering groceries or home-baked bread to isolated friends and relatives. This is grassroots stuff, which has largely happened separately from, and in advance of, formal government responses. People see COVID-19 as a shared challenge, and there is a lot of goodwill.

In this environment, while landlords are rightly concerned to protect their investment and keep paying their mortgages, many also have a competing concern to help out their tenants.

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The problem is, in such a dispersed system of ownership, there is no template for how they might help, and no library of what other landlords are doing, so each mum and dad investor is responding in different ways. Anecdotal evidence suggests some letting agents have been contacting landlords for direction on how to respond to requests for rent reductions and gauging attitudes to eviction.

An added complication is that many of the responses that aim to help out tenants may be counter to the best interests of letting agents, who receive a percentage of rental income.

4 ways landlords can help

Here are some ideas in response to our questions of rental stakeholders:

1. Talk directly with tenants if you can, or at least ask to be included in the conversation.

2. Everyone will have different pressures. Work out what position you are in. Find out what concessions your bank may be offering, what inflexible costs (such as council rates) you have, what landlord insurance covers you for, and how much of the pain you are prepared to share – and for how long. Ask your tenants to do the same. This will form a good, and hopefully fair, basis on which to compromise.

3. Use letting agents who reflect your values as a landlord. You may wish to have a chat to your agent and ask that they notify you if tenants are having trouble. Some landlords have gone further and requested that all communication between agent and renter is cleared by them first.

4. Share success stories. One of the motivations for this article was the lack of information for mum and dad investors who are trying to be good landlords. Options to offer tenants as part of negotiations might include rent reductions, or deferred rent, but there aren’t many examples of what other landlords have done out there.

It would be helpful if landlords shared the solutions they have developed, what worked and what didn’t. Even though every case will be different, having positive case studies available for other landlords to emulate will be valuable.

The full extent of COVID-19 and its effect on employment, housing and the economy just isn’t known. And neither is the full detail of what government assistance may be provided – or the implications for landlords, tenants and agents.

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Rushed coronavirus tenancy laws raise as many questions as they answer

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Impacts are affecting everyone

It’s worth remembering that we’re all in this together. Everyone in the rental system – tenants, landlords and agents – will feel the effects of the pandemic.

Many households have already been tipped into post-COVID unemployment, many landlords will also have lost their jobs, many agents are overwhelmed by trying to keep businesses afloat while quickly mediating temporary solutions. And many want to do the right thing – tenants and landlords alike.

Everyone is waiting to know the shape and impact of any government response. Although it is difficult to adequately plan long-term responses to hardship, individual landlords can do a lot in advance of government help, and in addition to it.

Emma Baker, Professor of Housing Research, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Adelaide and Rebecca Bentley, Professor of Social Epidemiology, Centre for Health Equity, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coronavirus Update: Australia

Rushed coronavirus tenancy laws raise as many questions as they answer

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Dilan Thampapillai, Australian National University

The coronavirus and its attendant emergency measures are set to deliver a profound shock to the residential tenancy market.

How it will work out is anybody’s guess, but it is looking like a crisis.

Banks and governments have acted quickly.

The major banks are deferring mortgage payments for up to six months for customers whose income is hit by the coronavirus.

NSW and Tasmania have introduced bills that will make it difficult for landlords to evict tenants or terminate leases during the crisis.

The rushed laws are designed to prevent a raft of evictions and a spike in homelessness, but they raise almost as many questions as they answer.

Rent postponed rather than forgiven

Both laws put power in the hands of the minister, giving that person the power to make regulations during the coronavirus pandemic. Tasmania’s more closely prescribes what the minister can do.

And both are temporary. The NSW act has effect for six months and the Tasmanian bill for 120 days, although it can be extended by 90 days.

Neither law excuses tenants from their liability to pay rent. They merely prevent evictions during the emergency period.

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Why housing evictions must be suspended to defend us against coronavirus

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In effect they say that although tenants can stay, their landlords can later sue them for arrears.

While on paper, this suggests landlords will get their money, in practice they might not, and some will be tempted to issue notices of termination ahead of the minister taking action.

The minister’s regulations would most likely be prospective, meaning landlords would seem to be able to get away with it. But whether a tribunal would enforce the notices is another question.

The Tasmanian bill only permits landlords to apply for terminations where the landlord is in hardship. The NSW law has less detail, but would probably do the same.

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Lessons from the Great Depression: how to prevent evictions in an economic crisis

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In any event, most landlords who evicted would want to re-let, and that will prove difficult with inspections prohibited.

Sick tenants are unlikely to be evicted whatever the law. That is in nobody’s interests.

Cooperation in a crisis is desirable, but it is fraught in practice.

The law discourages communication

Representations made by landlords with the best of intentions can become binding under the equitable law of estoppel.

In essence, once landlords make representations they can be estopped (stopped) from going back on those representations.

In an environment where fortunes change quickly, this might become problematic.

Contract law is replete with cases of agreements varied or entered into with the best of intentions that ultimately turn sour.

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The case for a rent holiday for businesses on the coronavirus economic frontline

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Given there are tough and uncertain times ahead, a better approach than rushed laws might be a pragmatic one of exhorting both landlords and tenants to take the legitimate interests of each other into account.

If laws are to be made, there ought to be extensive consultation.

Even in the coronavirus pandemic this is doable and a good idea.

Dilan Thampapillai, Senior Lecturer, ANU College of Law, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Pakistani Islamists Keep Two Newlywed Couples from Home

Armed Muslims upset that Christians complained to police of false ‘blasphemy’ charge.

KARACHI, Pakistan, May 27 (CDN) — Islamists armed with pistols and rifles waited for two Christian couples to return to their rented home this week, seeking to kill them after the newlyweds complained to police that the radical Muslims had falsely accused them of desecrating the Quran, according to a local Christian legislator.

Christians Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William and their wives, who requested anonymity, went to an undisclosed location after Christians in Gulshan-e-Iqbal town, Karachi, warned them that the armed Muslims were stationed in front of their joint home on Friday (May 21), said Saleem Khurshid Khokhar, a representative of Sindh in the Punjab Provincial Assembly.

“These 10 unidentified, armed Muslim men were still patrolling in front of the houses of Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William, waiting for them to return and shoot them to death,” Khokhar told Compass earlier this week.

The Christians were returning from having tried to file a complaint against the Islamists at Peer Ilahi Bakhsh police station of Gulshan-e-Iqbal town – where Muslim police responded by shouting angry obscenities at the couples and began secretly planning to charge them under Pakistan’s widely condemned “blasphemy” laws, Khokhar said. Both couples were wed on April 2.

Earlier that day (May 21), about 20 Muslim extremists had threatened to kill the Christian couples after accusing them of desecrating the Quran, the legislator said. Having just moved into the joint home in a predominantly Christian slum, the previous day the couples had gathered a large pile of garbage after cleaning up debris, including pieces of old newspapers, left by the previous tenants.

On Friday (May 21), after Joseph and William had left for work, their wives threw the debris onto the pile of garbage, Khokhar said. An area resident, Bashir Pervezi, told Compass that a door of their home was open and anyone passing by could see the women at their household work.

“I was standing in front of the new Christian tenants’ house while 20 bearded, armed Muslim men arrived and started searching for something in the garbage,” Pervezi said. “After about 35 minutes of searching, they started shouting at the women and hurling threats of dire consequences, threats of killing family members for desecrating the holy pages of Quran and Hadith [words and deeds of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad] by dumping them onto waste.”   

The two housewives went out and read every scrap of paper, said Pervezi, but they found no pages of the Quran or the Hadith, said both Pervezi and Khokhar. 

The women did their best to reason with the armed Muslims, who only continued to insist that the new Christian tenants had desecrated the pages of the Quran and the Hadith, Khokhar said.

“The armed Muslim men who had arrived from an unknown place terrorized both Christian women by threatening that they should prepare to face death for desecration of the pages of the holy Quran and the holy Hadith,” Khokhar said.

Local Christian residents told Khokhar as well as Compass that they found no pages or excerpts of Quranic verses or of the Hadith. The area Christians confirmed Khokhar’s assertion that the armed Muslims went away hurling threats. The women immediately informed their husbands of the confrontation.

Joseph and William consulted with local residents and decided to go to the police station for justice and protection. When they and their wives submitted an application to register a case against the 20 Islamic extremists for threatening them and leveling false allegations of desecrating the Quran and Hadith, the station house officer (SHO) and other Muslim police officers became furious, the couples told Compass.

Police began to shout obscenities at them, they said. A sympathetic police officer aware of their innocence notified them that the SHO was secretly planning to register a First Information Report against them under Article 295-A of the blasphemy law – hurting religious feelings, which can bring life in prison – and would put them in jail, Khokhar said. The officer told them to hurry away. 

As the couples made their way home, Christian residents warned them that 10 Muslims armed with pistols, Kalashnikovs and long-range rifles were waiting for them and kept them from returning home, Khokhar said.

The two couples went to an undisclosed location to avoid danger.

The SHO at the Peer Ilahi Bakhsh police station was unavailable for comment; after Compass made repeated requests to speak with him, a police station registrar said that the SHO could not comment because he was ill in the hospital.

Khokhar called on the government to immediately repeal all discriminatory laws, including the controversial blasphemy laws – 295-A for injuring religious feelings, 295-B for defiling the Quran and 295-C for blaspheming Muhammad – as they have often been misused by fanatical Muslims against Christians.

Maximum punishment for violation of Section 295-A, as well as for Section 295-B (defiling the Quran), is life imprisonment; for violating Section 295-C the maximum punishment is death, though life imprisonment is also possible.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Messianic Jews in Israel Seek Public Apology for Attack

Christians await court decision on assaults on services by ultra-orthodox Jews.

ISTANBUL, April 23 (CDN) — After a final court hearing in Israel last week, a church of Messianic Jews awaits a judge’s decision that could force an ultra-orthodox Jewish  organization to publicly apologize to them for starting a riot and ransacking a baptismal service.

A ruling in favor of the Christian group would mark the first time an organization opposing Messianic Jews in Israel has had to apologize to its victims for religious persecution.

In 2006 Howard Bass, pastor of Yeshua’s Inheritance church, filed suit against Yehuda Deri, chief Sephardic rabbi in the city of Beer Sheva, and Yad L’Achim, an organization that fights against Messianic Jews, for allegedly inciting a riot at a December 2005 service that Bass was leading.

Bass has demanded either a public apology for the attack or 1.5 million shekels (US$401,040) from the rabbi and Yad L’Achim.

The case, Bass said, was ultimately about “defending the name of Yeshua [Jesus]” and making sure that Deri, the leadership of Yad L’Achim and those that support them know they have to obey the law and respect the right of people to worship.

“They are trying to get away from having any responsibility,” Bass said.

On Dec. 24, 2005, during a baptismal service in Beer Sheva, a group of about 200 men pushed their way into a small, covered structure being used to baptize two believers and tried to stop the service. Police were called to the scene but could not control the crowd.

Once inside the building, the assailants tossed patio chairs, damaged audiovisual equipment, threw a grill and other items into a baptismal pool, and then pushed Bass into the pool and broke his glasses.

“Their actions were violent actions without regard [for injury],” Bass said.

In the days before the riot, Yad L’Achim had issued notices to people about a “mass baptism” scheduled to take place at the facility in the sprawling city of 531,000 people 51 miles (83 kilometers) southwest of Jerusalem. In the days after the riot, Deri bragged about the incident on a radio talk show, including a boast that Bass had been “baptized” at the gathering.

The 2005 incident wasn’t the first time the church had to deal with a riotous attack after Yad L’Achim disseminated false information about their activities. On Nov. 28, 1998, a crowd of roughly 1,000 protestors broke up a Yeshua’s Inheritance service after the anti-Christian group spread a rumor that three busloads of kidnapped Jewish minors were being brought in for baptism. The assailants threw rocks, spit on parishioners and attempted to seize some of their children, Bass said.

In response to the 1998 attack and to what Bass described as a public, cavalier attitude about the 2005 attack, Bass and others in the Messianic community agreed that he needed to take legal action.

“What is happening here has happened to Jews throughout the centuries,” Bass said about persecution of Messianic Jews in Israel, adding that many in movements opposed to Messianic Jews in Israel are “arrogant.” He compared their attitudes to the attitudes that those in Hamas, a Palestinian group dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel, have toward Israelis in general.

“They say, ‘Recognize us, but we will never recognize you,’” Bass said.

Long Battle

Bass has fought against the leadership of Yad L’Achim and Deri for four years through his attorneys, Marvin Kramer and Kevork Nalbandian. But throughout the process, Kramer said, the two defendants have refused to offer a genuine apology for the misinformation that led to the 2005 riot or for the riot itself.

Kramer said Bass’s legal team would offer language for an acceptable public apology, and attorneys for the defendants in turn would offer language that amounted to no real apology at all.

“We made several attempts to make a compromise, but we couldn’t do it,” Kramer said.  “What we were really looking for was a public apology, and they weren’t ready to give a public apology. If we would have gotten the public apology, we would have dropped the lawsuit at any point.”

Despite several attempts to reach Yad L’Achim officials at both their U.S. and Israeli offices, no one would comment.

The hearing on April 15 was the final chance the parties had to come to an agreement; the judge has 30 days to give a ruling. His decision will be issued by mail.

Kramer declined to speculate on what the outcome of the case will be, but he said he had “proved what we needed to prove to be successful.”

Belief in Israel

Bass said he is a strong supporter of Israel but is critical of the way Messianic Jews are treated in the country.

“Israel opposes the gospel, and these events show this to be true,” he said. Referring to Israel, Bass paraphrased Stephen, one of Christianity’s early martyrs, “‘You always resist the Spirit of God.’ What Stephen said was true.”

Kramer said that the lawsuit is not against the State of Israel or the Jewish people, but rather for freedom of religion.

“It has to do with a violation of rights of individuals to worship in accordance with the basic tenants of their faith and to practice their faith in accordance with their beliefs in accordance with law,” he said.

Terrorist Organization?

Bass’ lawsuit is just one of many legal troubles Yad L’Achim is facing. In February, the Jerusalem Institute of Justice (JIJ), a civil rights advocacy group, filed a petition asking Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to declare Yad L’Achim a terrorist organization and order that it be dismantled.

In the 24-page document Caleb Myers, an attorney for JIJ, outlined numerous incidences in which Yad L’Achim or those linked with it had “incited hatred, racism, violence and terror.” The document cited instances of persecution against Christians, as well as kidnappings of Jewish women from their Arab partners.

“Israel is a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state, while the actions of Yad L’Achim are not consistent with either the noble values of Judaism or the values of democracy,” the petition read. “Not to mention the fact that it is a country that arose on the ashes of a people that was persecuted for its religion, and has resolved since its establishment to bear the standard of full equality, without discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion or nationality.”

According to the document, Yad L’Achim went after people it viewed as enemies of ultra-orthodox Judaism. The group particularly targeted Messianic Jews and other Christians.

“Yad L’Achim refers to ‘missionary activity’ as if it was the worst of criminal offenses and often arouses fear of this activity,” the document read. “It should be noted that in the State of Israel there is no prohibition against ‘missionary activity’ as the dissemination of religion and/or faith among members of other religions/faiths, unless such activity solicits religious conversion, as stated in various sections of the Penal Code, which bans the solicitation of religious conversion among minors, or among adults by offering bribes. Furthermore, the organization often presents anyone belonging to the Christian religion, in all its forms, as a ‘missionary,’ even if he does not work to spread his religion.”

Particularly damning in the document was reported testimony gleaned from Jack Teitel. Teitel, accused of planting a bomb on March 20, 2008 that almost killed the teenage son of a Messianic Jewish pastor, told authorities that he worked with Yad L’Achim.

“He was asked to talk about his activity in Yad L’Achim and related that for some five years he was active in the organization, and on average he helped to rescue about five women each year,” the document read, using the Yad L’Achim term “rescue” to refer to kidnapping.

The 2008 bombing severely injured Ami Ortiz, then 15, but after 20 months he had largely recovered.

Teitel, who said Ortiz family members were “missionaries trying to capture weak Jews,” has been indicted on two cases of pre-meditated murder, three cases of attempted murder, carrying a weapon, manufacturing a weapon, possession of illegal weapons and incitement to commit violence.

In interviews with the Israeli media, Yad L’Achim Chairman Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifshitz said his organization wasn’t connected with the attacks of the Ortiz family or with Teitel.

Report from Compass Direct News

Pakistani Christian Beaten for Refusing to Convert to Islam

Brothers converted by Muslim cleric who raised them leave him for dead.

KALLUR KOT, Pakistan, February 22 (CDN) — The four older Muslim brothers of a 26-year-old Christian beat him unconscious here earlier this month because he refused their enticements to convert to Islam, the victim told Compass.

Riaz Masih, whose Christian parents died when he was a boy, said his continual refusal to convert infuriated his siblings and the Muslim cleric who raised them, Moulvi Peer Akram-Ullah. On Feb. 8, he said, his brothers ransacked his house in this Punjab Province town 233 kilometers (145 miles) southwest of Islamabad.

“They threatened that it was the breaking point now, and that I must convert right now or face death,” Masih said. “They said killing an infidel is not a sin, instead it’s righteousness in the sight of Allah almighty.”

Masih begged them to give him a few minutes to consider converting and then tried to escape, but they grabbed him and beat him with bamboo clubs, leaving him for dead, he said.

“They vented their fury and left me, thinking that I was dead, but God Almighty resuscitated me to impart His good news of life,” he said.

Masih told Compass that his brothers and Akram-Ullah have been trying to coerce him to convert to Islam since his brothers converted.

“They had been coercing me to embrace Islam since the time of their recantation of Christianity,” Masih said, “but for the last one month they began to escalate immense pressure on me to convert.”

He grew up with no chance to attend church services because of his siblings’ conversion to Islam, he said, adding that in any event there was no church where he grew up. He knew two Christian families, however, and he said his love for the Christian faith in which he was originally raised grew as he persistently refused to convert to Islam.

He said Akram-Ullah and his brothers offered him 1 million rupees (US$11,790), a spacious residence and a woman of his choice to marry in order to lure him to Islam, but he declined. 

The Muslim cleric had converted Masih’s brothers and sisters in like manner, according to human rights organization Rays of Development (ROD), which has provided financial, medical and moral support to Masih. ROD began assisting Masih after a chapter of the Christian Welfare Organization (CWO) brought the injured Christian to ROD.

A spokesman for CWO who requested anonymity told Compass that Akram-Ullah had offered Masih’s brothers and sister a large plot of residential land, as well as 500,000 rupees (US$5,895) each, if they would recite the kalimah, the profession of faith for converting to Islam.

“He never accepted the Islamic cleric’s invitation to Islam, although his newly converted Muslim sister and four elder brothers escalated pressure on him to convert, as well, and live with them as a joint family,” the CWO spokesman said.

Adnan Saeed, an executive member of ROD, told Compass that when Masih’s parents, carpenter George Albert and his wife Stella Albert, passed away, Masih and his siblings were tenants of Akram-Ullah, who cared for them and inculcated them with Islamic ideology.

Saeed said that when they converted, Masih’s now 37-year-old sister, Kathryn Albert, adopted the Islamic name of Aysha Bibi; Masih’s brothers – Alliyas Masih, 35, Yaqoub Masih, 33, Nasir Masih, 31, and Gullfam Masih, 28 – adopted their new Islamic names of Muhammad Alliyas, Abdullah, Nasir Saeed and Gullfam Hassan respectively.

Masih’s family attempted to kill him, Saeed said. A ROD team visited Masih at an undisclosed location and, besides the support they have given him, they are searching for a way to provide him legal assistance as well, Saeed said.

Masih said that because of Islamist hostilities, it would be unsafe for him to go to a police station or even a hospital for treatment. A well-to-do Christian has given shelter to him at an undisclosed location.

In hiding, Masih said that his brothers and Akram-Ullah are still hunting for him.

“Since they have discovered that I was alive and hiding somewhere, they are on the hunt for me,” he said. “And if they found me, they would surely kill me.”

Report from Compass Direct News 

Christmas could be cancelled by British government

Christmas could be cancelled by a bill being put forward by the Labour government, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have said, reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

In a letter to MPs, Monsignor Andrew Summersgill, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said that Harriet Harmon’s Equality Bill will have a "chilling effect" on local councils, town halls and other organizations clamping down on Christmas festivities for fear of offending people of other religions.

The Equality Bill combines all previous equality legislation in the U.K., and includes a range of new provisions.

"Under existing legislation," Summersgill wrote, "we have seen the development of a risk-averse culture with outcomes as ridiculous as reports of a local authority instructing tenants to take down Christmas lights in case they might offend Muslim neighbours, or of authorities removing the word Christmas out of cultural sensitivity to everyone except Christians.

"If this bill is serious about equality, everything possible must be done to avoid it having a chilling effect on religious expression and practice."

The Christian Institute, Britain’s leading Christian political lobby group, has listed incidents where public displays of Christianity at Christmas have already come under attack. Councils around Britain are removing all references to the name "Christmas" from their 2009 events. Birmingham City Council has changed the name of this year’s light-switching-on event to the generic "Winterval." Last November an attempt by Oxford City Council to drop Christmas from the title of the city’s celebrations was condemned by both residents and religious leaders.

The Christian Institute complained about the bill, saying that councils "are already over-zealous in applying equality laws." The bill, they said, "will make this worse."

In fact, some of the Labour government’s closest advisors have already urged it to abolish public displays of a Christian origin at Christmas. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which has shaped many Labour party policies, said in 2007 that Christmas "should be downgraded to help race relations."

The equality legislation leads only to the law favoring aggrieved minority lobby groups over the existing Christian culture, the Christian Institute says. The group pointed to the closure and forced secularization of several of Britain’s Catholic adoption agencies under similar legislation, the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs) of the 2007 Equality Act.

Under the SORs, they said, "the rights of children have been trumped by the rights of homosexual adults. Any agency which refuses to do homosexual adoptions becomes a target for closure."

Report from the Christian Telegraph