Church in China to Risk Worshipping in Park

Evicted from one site and denied others, unregistered congregation resorts to open air.

LOS ANGELES, April 7 (CDN) — One of the largest unregistered Protestant churches in Beijing plans to risk arrest by worshipping in the open air this Sunday (April 10) after eviction from the restaurant where they have met for the past year.

The owner of the Old Story Club restaurant issued repeated requests for the Shouwang Church to find another worship venue, and authorities have pressured other prospective landlords to close their facilities to the 1,000-member congregation, sources said. Unwilling to subject themselves to the controls and restrictions of the official Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), the congregation has held three services each Sunday in the restaurant for more than a year.

Church members have said they are not opposed to the government and are not politically active, but they fear authorities could find their open-air worship threatening.

“Normal” (state-sanctioned) religious assembly outdoors is legal in China, and even unregistered church activity is usually tolerated if no more than 50 people gather, especially if the people are related and can cite the gathering as a family get-together, said a source in China who requested anonymity. Although the congregation technically risks arrest as an unregistered church, the primary danger is being viewed as politically active, the source said.

“For a larger group of Christians to meet in any ‘unregistered’ location led by an ‘unregistered’ leader is illegal,” he said. “The sensitivity of meeting in a park is not being illegal, but being so highly visible. Being ‘visible’ ends up giving an impression of being a political ‘protest.’”

The congregation believes China’s Department of Religious Affairs has overstepped its jurisdiction in issuing regulations limiting unregistered church activity, according to a statement church leaders issued this week.

“Out of respect for both the Chinese Constitution [whose Article 36 stipulates freedom of worship] and Christian conscience, we cannot actively endorse and submit to the regulations which bid us to cease all Sunday worship activities outside of [the] ‘Three-Self Patriotic Movement’ – the only state-sanctioned church,” according to the statement. “Of course, we still must follow the teachings of the Bible, which is for everyone to submit to and respect the governing authorities. We are willing to submit to the regulations with passivity and all the while shoulder all the consequences which . . . continuing to worship outside of what is sanctioned by these regulations will bring us.”

The church decided to resort to open-air worship after a prospective landlord backed out of a contractual agreement to allow the congregation to meet at the Xihua Business Hotel, the church said in its statement.

“They had signed another rental contract with another property facility and announced during the March 22 service that they were to move in two weeks,” the source said. “In spite of the fact that they had signed a formal contract, the new landlord suddenly called them on March 22 and refused to let them use the facility.”

The landlord offered various excuses for reneging on the contract, according to church leaders, and that disappointment came after 15 months of trying to obtain the key to another property the church had purchased.

“The space in Daheng New Epoch Technology building, which the church had spent over 27.5 million RMB [US$4.2 million] to purchase, has failed to hand the key over to the church for the past year and three months because of government intervention,” the church said in its statement. “For the past year, our church has not had a settled meeting place.”

Beginning as a house church in 1993, the Shouwang Church has been evicted from several rented locations. It also met outside after its last displacement in 2009. The congregation does not believe its calling is to split up into smaller units.

“For the past several years the church has been given a vision from God to be ‘the city on a hill,’” the source said. “Especially since 2009, when they officially began the church building purchase, they have been trying to become a more officially established status. At this point, they feel that they have not completed the journey in obedience to God.”

The number of Protestant house church Christians is estimated at between 45 and 60 million, according to Yu Jianrong, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Rural Development Institute. Yu and others have concluded that house churches are a positive influence on society, but the government is wary of such influence.

Yu estimated another 18 to 30 million people attend government-approved churches – potentially putting the number of Christians higher than that of Communist Party members, which number around 74 million.

The government-commissioned study by Yu and associates suggested that officials should seek to integrate house churches and no longer regard them as enemies of the state. The study employed a combination of interviews, field surveys and policy reviews to gather information on house churches in several provinces from October 2007 to November 2008.

Yu’s team found that most house or “family” churches fit into one of three broad categories: traditional house churches, open house churches or urban emerging churches. Traditional house churches were generally smaller, family-based churches, meeting in relative secrecy. Though not a Christian himself, Yu attended some of these meetings and noted that the focus was not on democracy or human rights but rather on spiritual life and community.

The “open” house churches were less secretive and had more members, sometimes advertising their services and holding public gatherings, he found. Urban emerging churches functioned openly but independently of TSPM churches. In some provinces such as Wenzhou, these churches had constructed their own buildings and operated without interference from local officials.

While some house churches actively seek registration with authorities to avoid arrests and harassment, they would like the option of registering outside the government-approved TSPM structure, as they disagree with TSPM beliefs and controls. Many unregistered evangelical Protestant groups refuse to register with TSPM due to theological differences, fear of adverse consequences if they reveal names and addresses of church leaders or members or fear that it will control sermon content.

Report from Compass Direct News
http://www.compassdirect.org

Victim of Orissa, India Violence Rescued from Trafficking Ring

Christians displaced by Kandhamal violence in 2008 sold for coerced labor or sex.

NEW DELHI, August 25 (CDN) — Nearly two years after large-scale anti-Christian violence broke out in India’s Kandhamal district, Orissa state, a team working against human trafficking on Aug. 9 rescued a 16-year-old Christian girl – one of at least 60 people sold into slavery after being displaced by the 2008 attacks.

The recovery in Delhi of the girl represented the cracking of a network that has trafficked Christian girls and women from Orissa to the national capital, sources said.

“Human trafficking agents operating in the tribal belt of Orissa have targeted the Christian girls who are displaced by the Kandhamal communal violence – we have been receiving complaints of missing girls from Kandhamal after the violence broke out in 2008,” said attorney Lansinglu Rongmei, one of the rescue team members. “Roughly 60 girls are estimated missing and have been trafficked to different states.”

The girl, whose name is withheld, is a tribal Christian who was sold into slavery along with her 19-year-old sister and two other girls, all victims of the 2008 violence; they were trafficked from the Daringbadi block of Kandhamal district to the capital in December 2009, according to the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN). Her sister and the other two girls remain missing.

The mother of the girl accompanied the rescue team the evening of Aug. 9 in the Rohini area of Delhi, said a source from the HRLN Anti-Human Trafficking department on condition of anonymity.

“It was only the joint efforts of the All India Christian Council [AICC], HRLN Anti-Human Trafficking and the area police that made this rescue possible,” the source said.

The rescue team took action after the minor’s mother approached the HRLN of Kandhamal for help, which in turn called the Delhi office. Team members said they were disappointed by the reaction of police, who were initially cooperative but later “just unwilling to help,” in the words of one member.

The girl was used only for labor, although she was sexually harassed, sources said.

Rongmei told Compass that police refused to file a First Information Report, telling rescue team members, “No rape of the victim took place as per the medical examination, and there was no need for a case registration against anyone.”

The rescue team was not given a copy of the report of a medical examination at Bhagwan Mahavir Hospital, Pitampura, in Delhi, but they were told it indicated no sign of rape.

“It is confirmed that she was not raped,” said Madhu Chandra, spokesperson of the AICC and part of the rescue team. “She was physically abused, with teeth bite marks and bruises on her body – her neck, leg and right hand.”

 

Tricked

The girl stated that a well-known woman from their village in Kandhamal district gave her and her sister a false promise of safe and secure work in Delhi as gardeners.

Instead, operatives brought the sisters and the two other girls to a placement agency in Ratala village in Delhi, Sakhi Maid Bureau, which was run by a man identified only as Montu.

The HRLN source told Compass that the girl was with the placement agency for six days as the owner, Montu, attempted to rape her on several occasions. She was threatened, beaten, drugged with alcohol and sexually molested, the source said.

The girl said her sister and the other two girls were treated the same way.

She was placed in a home in Rohini, Sector 11, as domestic help beginning in January. Until July, she said, she was treated relatively well there, except for a few instances of being slapped by the lady of the house. Then the family’s 10-year-old son began to hit her and their 14-year-old son tried to assault her sexually, and she tried to flee earlier this month.

The girl told the rescue team that she informed the lady of the house about the elder son’s misbehavior, but that the woman stated that she could do nothing about it.

“She bears marks from being beaten on her right hand by the younger boy,” said Chandra.

He told Compass that the owner of the placement agency collected the girl’s wages from the family who employed her, promising to send the money to her mother in Kandhamal district, but that he failed to do so.  

Compass was unable to meet with the girl as she was still traumatized and undergoing counseling sessions. The girl’s mother sobbed for her other daughter, grieved that no one knew what condition she was in.

Montu, the placement agency operator, has absconded, according to police.

 

Passive Police

Prasant Vihar Police Station House Officer Sudhir Kumar confirmed the rescue team’s accusation that he refused to register a complaint in the girl’s case.

“The victim is from Kandhamal, let her go back to Kandhamal and register her complaint there,” Kumar told Compass. “No rape of the victim took place as per the medical examination, and thus there is no need for registering a case against anyone.”

Assistant Commissioner of Police Sukhvir Singh told Compass he had no explanation why the girl’s complaint was not registered, but he insisted on having her and the rescue team return.

“We will file their complaint if they come back to us now,” he said.

Karuna Dayal, coordinator of Anti-Human Trafficking Initiatives at HRLN, led the rescue team, which also included AICC Legal Secretary Advocate Rongmei, Chandra and Ashis Kumar Subodh of the AICC, and three others from the HRLN – Afsar Ahmed, attorney Diviya Jyoti Jaipuria and one identified only as Sangram.

Dr. John Dayal, secretary general of the AICC, said large-scale human trafficking in Christian tribal and Dalit women of Kandhamal district is one of the worst problems in the aftermath of the Kandhamal violence.

“Police have made arrests in the nearby Andhra Pradesh and other states,” he said. “Because of the displacement due to the violence, they lost their future, and it is very easy for strangers to come and lure them. Community and family life has been disrupted; the children do not have the normal security that growing children must have. Trauma, unemployment and desperate measures have resulted in the loss of childhood, forcing many to grow up before their age.”

The AICC is calling on the National Commission for Women, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes to investigate, he added.

Report from Compass Direct News

Bomb Attack in Iraq Seriously Injures Christian Students

One person dead in explosions that end classes for students this semester.

ISTANBUL, May 5 (CDN) — At least 50 Iraqi Christian students are receiving hospital treatment following a bomb attack on Sunday (May 2) outside Mosul that killed at least one person and has forced nearly 1,000 students to drop classes for the rest of the semester.

Nearly 160 people were injured in the blasts targeting three buses full of Christians traveling to the University of Mosul for classes. The convoy of buses, which brings Christian students from villages east of Mosul, was making its daily route accompanied by two Iraqi army cars.

“This is the hardest attack, because they attacked not only one car, but the whole convoy and in an area that is heavily guarded by the army,” said Syrian Catholic Bishop of Mosul Georges Casmoussa.

The explosions happened east of Mosul between two checkpoints. A roadside bomb followed by a car bomb reportedly exploded as the buses were clearing the second checkpoint in the area of Kokjaly. The checkpoint was staffed by U.S., Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish soldiers.

The owner of a nearby car repair shop, Radeef Hashim Mahrook, was killed in one of the blasts as he tried to help the students, sources said.

Sources told Compass that lately there have been indications that Islamic extremists intend to increase attacks against Christians in more sophisticated and targeted ways. There were no warnings of the Sunday blasts.

Nearly 20 of the more seriously injured students are receiving treatment in Erbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Casmoussa said the Turkish Consulate and the Kurdish Regional Government have offered to transfer students needing more medical care to Turkey.

“Some of them were severely injured in the face, arms, necks or eyes,” said Casmoussa. “Now the Turkish consulate and the government of Kurdistan offer us to bring the most injured to Turkey to continue the care.”

Many of Mosul’s Christians have fled the city after repeated violence targeting them and live in the villages east of the city. The students on Sunday’s convoy were from Qaraqosh, Karamless and Bartella, located nearly 32 kilometers (20 miles) away.

Over 1,000 Christian students, most belonging to internally displaced families, and about 100 university faculty and staff members commute to Mosul every week in buses belonging to the Syrian Catholic Bishopric. About 15 buses served the internally displaced Christian community daily.

“The project of transportation of students will be stopped,” said Casmoussa. “We can’t continue now.” 

While the church has focused on dealing with immediate medical needs, the bishop said the church simply could not take the responsibility of transporting students after such a calculated and fierce attack.

“The chief of army offered to help us again, but it is impossible,” said Casmoussa. “They were with us every day…yet this is the result. We don’t have another solution now.”

Last February, after attacks against Christians left three university students dead, the Chaldo-Assyrian Student and Youth Union proposed that the Ministry of Education open a new university in a safer area on the Nineveh plains. Nearly 3,000 Christian undergraduate students and 250 graduate students are studying in Mosul.

Casmoussa said the Christian community is hoping the University of Mosul will help Christian students who are unwilling to commute to Mosul by sending faculty members to hold semester-end examinations in Qaraqosh.

“This is [an attack] against all the Christian people,” said Casmoussa. “Our culture is immense capital for the future to build our lives, not just to have bread to eat and continue life without any sense.”

Due to the violence against Christians in Mosul, Casmoussa relocated to the village of Qaraqosh three years ago, and commutes into the city to serve his diocese. On Jan. 17, 2005 gunmen abducted him and released him the next day.

Sunni Muslim insurgents have frequently targeted members of Iraq’s Christian minority, especially in Mosul. Iraq’s current government is Shiite-led.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Young Christian Woman Allegedly Abducted in Pakistan

Muslims said to employ various ruses; forced conversion, marriage feared.

LAHORE, Pakistan, April 13 (CDN) — A Muslim tricked a 19-year-old Christian woman into leaving her house here on April 1, and he and a car full of friends took her away, according to her family.

Sonia Mohan’s family said they fear the Muslim, Ali Raza, will force her to convert to Islam and marry him. Raza came to their home in Lahore’s Nishtar Colony claiming that her brother, Johnson Parvaiz, wanted to see her outside, Parvaiz said.

“Sonia would not have gone with them if he hadn’t told her that I wanted to see her,” Parvaiz said. “Ali Raza came to our home and told Sonia that I had asked for her, and she went out of the house with him. They had parked a vehicle outside and left, and afterwards we never heard from her.”

He said his sister’s cell phone remained off for two days. When it began to ring again they called repeatedly, and finally a man answered the phone and then handed it to Mohan. Parvaiz said she told him not to call her, that she was very happy and that they should not try to find her.

“It was obvious from her voice that she had been forced to say that,” Parvaiz said. “I fear that she will first be converted to Islam, and then married, and then it will become impossible for us to see her again.”

Initially police were unwilling to register the family’s complaint, he said. Only after the family enlisted the help of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) did police begin searching for Raza and Mohan.

Parvaiz added that Raza and his friends had previously told her to convert to Islam, saying that because she was beautiful she did not deserve to live as a lowly Christian. Raza and Mohan had no prior contact except that Raza had harassed his sister that one time, he said; her family complained to his parents, who live in the area.

Parvaiz added that Raza worked in a factory called Combined Fabrics, where he had a reputation of harassing Christian women. Since the alleged abduction he has been missing from work.

Nishtar Colony Station House Officer Munawar Doggar told Compass that it did not appear that Mohan, who along with the rest of her family belongs to the American Reformed Presbyterian Church, went with Raza willingly. He said he had delayed registering a case on behalf of Mohan’s family only because Raza’s family had filed a complaint that Raza himself had been abducted.

After speaking with Compass, however, Doggar said he would file a First Information Report imminently.

“I want to fully investigate the matter so that no injustice is done to any party,” he said. “But the family of the girl should now come to the police station and surely their FIR will be registered.”

On the day of the kidnapping, Raza’s uncle, Zaffar Jamil, filed a complaint that Raza himself had been abducted as a smokescreen to delay police in pursuing the abduction of Mohan, Parvaiz said.

“In this way, the police would reject my police complaint, saying, ‘Raza was abducted, so how could he abduct Sonia?’” Parvaiz said.

In his uncle Jamil’s complaint to police, Jamil had said that two men identified only as Fahad and Almas – friends of Raza present in the waiting car when Raza allegedly kidnapped Mohan – were the ones who likely abducted Raza.

Compass has obtained a copy of Jamil’s complaint. He crafted it in such a way that he can withdraw it at any point, and he says he had only a suspicion about the abduction of Raza and the identity of the supposed culprits. Otherwise police would quickly determine that Fahad and Almas had not abducted Raza, and the tactic to delay justice would be short-lived, Parvaiz said.

APMA Chief Organizer in Punjab Province Khalid Gill told Compass that previously Fahad had employed duplicitous tactics to marry a Christian woman in Youhanabad, Lahore, and that for that reason Raza had sought Fahad’s help in tricking Mohan into going with him.

Gill said that in such kidnapping cases, police often delay investigations until after abducted women get pregnant, after which legally it is nearly impossible for courts to return them to their families.

“That is the reason that APMA has been asking for revision of the family laws, and that in such cases where such tactics have been used, the marriage should be declared void so that the girl returns to the family and starts living her life from where it was interrupted,” Gill said.

Jamil and Raza’s brother, Nasir Dilawar, and Dilawar’s wife Majidan, along with Raza’s brother Muhammad Asif, have assured Mohan’s family that she will be returned soon, but that promise also was only at attempt to forestall legal action, Parvaiz said.

He added that the fact that Raza and his accomplices felt it necessary to employ the ruses to delay police investigations was further evidence that Mohan and Raza had no prior relationship.

The family fears that the longer her return is delayed, the more likely that she will become pregnant or get intimidated into giving a statement in court that she went willingly due to her captors’ threats that her father or brothers will be killed if she refuses, Parvaiz said.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Vietnamese Christian, Family, Forced into Hiding

Officials expel them from village; elsewhere, pastor dragged behind motorbike.

HO CHI MINH CITY, April 1 (CDN) — Suffering severe abuse from villagers and local Vietnamese officials, Hmong Christian Sung Cua Po fled into the forest with his family on March 19.

An expulsion order had been issued to his family, an area Christian leader said.

Since Compass reported on Jan. 18 that Po, who embraced Christianity in November, received some 70 blows to his head and back after local officials in northwest Vietnam’s Dien Bien Province arrested him on Dec. 1, 2009, he suffered physical attacks by police of Nam Son Commune on Feb. 10 and the confiscation of his motorbike.

The Christian leader said that police have threatened that if he did not recant they would beat him till only his tongue was intact.

Around the Lunar New Year in mid-February, Po had an altercation with his father over offerings to family ancestors. Hmong Christians see no continuity between the old worship of ancestral spirits and their new faith in Jesus; for them it a spiritual power encounter with no possibility of compromise, and Po held fast to his allegiance to Christ, refusing to sacrifice to his ancestors. 

On Feb. 20, Nam Son district police were authorized by Dien Bien Dong district authorities to demolish Po’s house if deemed necessary. On Feb. 21, community members backed by police confiscated 40 sacks of paddy rice, the family’s one-year supply. The villagers also took all cooking and eating utensils from the family.

Pressure against Po, a member of the Sung clan that has long been resistant to Christianity, comes both from traditionalists in his ethnic community and the government, though the government officials have tried to hide their involvement. Primarily hostile toward the Po family have been Officer Hang Giang Chen of the Dien Bien district police and Officer Sung Boua Long of the Nam Son Commune police.

A source close to Po reported that local authorities and villagers tore down the family’s house on March 14. On March 19 the dispossessed Po couple fled into forest with their three children. Their relatives and community members say they do not know where they are. If previous experience holds true, they were likely given refuge by some of the many Christians in the region.

The same source reported that a foreign delegation visited the village on March 25 asking about Sung Cua Po. No Christians were allowed to meet the delegation. The source added that police had been there earlier to coach all villagers to say there was no government involvement in the mistreatment of the Po family and had issued dire threats for non-compliance.

Such antagonism has continued even though several western governments have raised the issue of the persecution of the Po family with high central government officials.

“The only conclusion one can draw,” said one knowledgeable Vietnam source, “is that the central government is either unwilling or unable to intervene and enforce the published national standards for religious tolerance.”

A Christian leader in the area told Compass yesterday that earlier this week authorities had burned 14 houses of Christians in another commune in Dien Bien Dong district, and that he was trying to arrange shelter for the affected families. The leader said the authorities of Dien Bien Dong district completely exempt themselves from Vietnam’s laws on religion and suffer no reprimand from above. 

After Po was first detained on Dec. 1, Dien Bien Dong District and Na Son Commune police and soldiers led by policeman Hang A Senh took him and his wife to the Na Son Commune People’s Committee office after police earlier incited local residents to abuse and stone them and other Christian families. After Po and his wife were beaten at 1 a.m. that night, he was fined 8 million dong (US$430) and a pig of at least 16 kilos.

Abuses Elsewhere

In Phu Yen Province in the south of Vietnam, religious intolerance was also on display as local police dragged a pastor behind a motorbike, Christian leaders reported.

Village police summoned Y Du, a 55-year-old pastor also from the Ede ethnic group, to a police station for questioning on Jan. 27. While driving his motorbike to the station, Pastor Du was stopped by village police who chained his hands together and then attached the chain by rope to his motorbike.

Christian sources said they forced Pastor Du to run behind the motorbike that they had commandeered, and he fell over many times, dragged along the ground. He was beaten and forced to keep running.

Local villagers at Hai Rieng witnessed what was happening and, fearing for the pastor’s life, shouted to the police to stop, the Christian leaders said. Du was then carried to the police station and was incarcerated in Phu Lam prison, Phu Lam district, Phu Yen Province. No formal charges were brought against him.

Local police subsequently visited his wife at their home, looking for evidence of illegal activity, Christian leaders reported. The officers said they suspected ties with organizers of demonstrations against confiscation of minority land and lack of religious freedom that were held six years ago.

Christian leaders said the police officers tried to bribe Pastor Du’s wife to renounce her Christian faith, saying, “If you renounce your faith, we will build you a new house and give you rice.” The family is poor and lives in a bamboo house. She replied, “I would rather die than renounce my faith.”

In mid-February, local police told Pastor Du’s wife that they could not find anything with which to charge her husband. But they said they continued to hold him because he refused to denounce the leader of a Bible school in Dak Lak Province, Pastor Mai Hong Sanh. Pastor Du was regularly beaten, Christians leaders reported.

Another evangelist, Pastor Y Co also from the Ede ethnic group, had also been held at Phu Lam prison, Phu Lam district, Phu Yen Province in the same conditions, they said. Pastor Du and Pastor Co had the opportunity to be released if they had signed "confessions," but they refused to do so, especially as they are not fluently literate in Vietnamese.

Both Pastor Du and Co are evangelists with the Vietnam Good News Mission Church.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Armenian Christian leader put to ‘Évin’ prison in Iran

Pastor Vahik Abrahamian, an Armenian Christian residing in Tehran, Iran, who was visiting a friend, upon his return to his home was arrested in Tehran by plainclothes security officers, reports FCNN. The manner in which he was arrested and the prolonged detention in Evin notorious prison, has created grave concern amongst the Iranian Christian community, particularly with family and friends.

"As per reports by FCNN correspondents and sources within the country, on Saturday 20th February 2010 (1 Esfand 1388) plainclothes security officers arrested 44 years old ‘Vahik Abrahamian’ , who is an Armenian Christian leader, as he was departing a friend’s house who was visiting Iran from Europe.

The manner in which Pastor Abrahamian was arrested is very unsettling and indeed ambiguous. As per received reports, 3 plainclothes security agents who were in a green Peugeot vehicle, swarmed upon Mr. & Mrs. Abrahamian as they were departing their friends house.

What is quite uncommon in any similar incident, one of the agents was filming the whole episode with a handheld camera. The agents showed an arrests warrant with permission to ‘shoot to kill’. After searching their vehicle and seizing all personal belongings, they set Mrs. Abarahmian free and took Pastor Vahik to Evin prison.

As per FCNN reports, wife and parents and extended family and friends of this Armenian Christian leader, are extremely concerned for the well being of the prisoner and are completely in state of shock. Mrs. Abrahamian has been unwilling or afraid to discuss the matter with anyone.

All Pastor Vahik’s family and friends vouch for his meek, humble and Godly character. All are unanimous that he was not only God fearing and law abiding citizen but was also very compassionate and sensitive particularly to the drug addicts and reached out to serve them. All are totally convinced that his character is beyond reproach and are hoping that this grave misunderstanding by the authorities will clear and he will be set free.

It’s noteworthy that Pastor Abrahamian had dual Dutch and Iranian citizenship, yet chose to live, work and serve in his native country Iran, staying close to aging mother and family.

As per obtained reports, there are many unanswered questions with regards to the circumstances leading to his arrest which is normally conducted in detaining known terrorists or political activists. The authorities have neither commented why this extraordinary measures were taken and nor why is he being held for such lengthy period. It’s also unclear who is holding this law abiding ordinary citizen and which authority has ordered his arrest! It seems that we have a long wait to hear from Islamic republic Juridical and legal authorities about reason of his arrest.

The received reports indicate that after elapse of over a month from his arrest, there is complete silence by Iranian Legal and juridical authorities and so far he has been denied appointment of a lawyer or visits by next of keen. Mother, Wife, brother and extended family are extremely concerned for his well being and are grief stricken with no clear and promising news.

At this time we would like to beseech all Christian community in Iran and overseas to fast and pray for his release and also pray for other Christians arrested in the last days and weeks in various cities in Iran. May God in His grace intervene in this situation and let’s hope that he will unite with his family bringing great joy and relief in the festive days of the Nowruz’ spring in Iran.

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

MEXICO: ‘TRADITIONALIST CATHOLICS’ ATTACK, EXPEL CHRISTIANS

Evangelicals in two states lose homes, crops for refusing to participate in religious revelry.

MEXICO CITY, August 19 (Compass Direct News) – “Traditionalist Catholic” leaders last month expelled 57 evangelical Christians from towns in two states for refusing to participate in their religious festivals.

Leaders of traditionalist Catholicism, a mixture of Roman Catholicism and native rituals, expelled 32 Christians from their homes in a village in Hidalgo state and another 25 from a town in Oaxaca; in each case, the evangelicals were deprived of their property for refusing to participate in drunken festivals that included worship of Catholic icons.

Hundreds of evangelical Christians from six states of Mexico organized a caravan on Aug. 10 on behalf of the 32 evangelicals from Los Parajes, near Huejutla in Hidalgo state, who were violently torn from their homes on July 13 when the town’s traditionalist Catholic leaders struck them with machetes and ropes. They were forced to leave behind 121 acres of land planted with crops, as well as their homes and animals.

The 32 Christians in Hidalgo state, north of Mexico City, say they have lost their entire crops of corn and sesame, and they are missing the season for planting jicama.

Cars and buses forming the caravan met at noon in the town of Tantoyuca, Hidalgo, proceeding together with police escort to Huejutla, where they left their vehicles and continued on foot toward the central plaza carrying the Mexican flag, a Christian flag, and placards with messages of love and support. Pastor Carlos Del Angel of Cerro Azul, Veracruz organized the protest, with the demonstrators also bringing food and clothing to the victims.

At press time Christian lawyer Samuel Noguera had still not been able to reach a solution with authorities. One of the expelled evangelical leaders, Enrique García, told newspaper Milenio Hidalgo on Aug. 11 that local and state authorities should respect the rights of those who have been expelled.

“It seems to me impossible that once it has been proven that all of us evangelicals have fulfilled our obligations to the town, we should still be exiled,” García reportedly said. “I understand that approximately 70 percent of the population of Los Parajes is open to our return.”

In February the Christians had reached an agreement with the community allowing them to choose to follow their own faith, but when Enedino Luna Cruz became town leader he burned the document, according to the evangelicals.

At first the expelled group, including two infants, four other small children, and several older adults, took refuge in two rooms of Benito Juarez School in nearby Huejutla, sleeping on the floor and going without food and water – and quashing plans for a 15th birthday celebration, a traditional Mexican quinceanera or “coming out” party, for Alejandra Dorotea Gerónimo, according to local newspapers.

The Milenio Hidalgo newspaper reported on July 28 that townspeople in Los Parajes had offered to allow the Christians to return if they denied their faith and paid the equivalent of nearly $13,900 in “fines” for having refused to contribute to the traditionalist Catholic festivals, but they refused.

“We are being treated as though we were delinquents for being evangelicals,” one Christian leader, Roberto Hernandez, told Milenio Diario on July 21.

The men were prohibited from leaving the school to try to earn money for food and were forbidden to tend to their crops.

Milenio Hidalgo later reported that on August 4 the refugees were moved out of the school into a small house with three rooms, one bathroom, and no tables or beds. Due to lack of space, the men were unable to lie down to sleep at night. Following the Aug. 10 caravan, the Milenio Hidalgo reported that the group would be relocated to a larger house with five bedrooms and two baths.

Three years prior, town officials had cut off water and electricity service to the seven Christian families in the village for being unwilling to return to Catholicism. At that time the pastor of the group was beaten and tied up in a futile effort to force him to change his faith. Likewise, in the current case authorities told the Christians their expulsion could have been avoided if they had rejected their faith.

Death Threat

In the Yavelotzi community near San Jacinto, Oaxaca, 25 Christians were threatened and expelled from their homes for the same reasons on July 17, according to Christian support organization Open Doors.

The Netherlands-based organization said local authorities of Yavelotzi threatened to beat and kill a group of evangelical Christians on that day if they did not leave the community at once. The Christians had refused to participate in week-long parties characterized by drunkenness and worship of Catholic icons.

The 25 Christians left behind their homes, crops and communal rights – necessary for gaining access to government assistance – and were warned not to return unless they renounced their faith in Jesus Christ, according to Open Doors. They relocated to a nearby community called Rancho Tabla.

To prevent them from returning to their homes, Yavelotzi officials have taken away their land and have refused to allow their children to register for school, the organization said in a statement.

In nearby Arroyo Copete, according to Open Doors, traditionalist Catholic leaders have refused to allow the children of 10 Christian families to register for school, and are forcing the families to participate in the Catholic festivals. The officials assert that the evangelicals are not participating in the obligatory community service, but evangelicals say contributing to that service requires them to participate in “idol worship” as well.

In the Yavelotzi conflict, lawyers for both sides were to meet on July 25, but it was postponed at the last minute as the attorney for the Yavelotzi community was unable to attend.

Report from Compass Direct News 

INDIA: OFFICIALS ON DEFENSIVE AT ‘WATCH LIST’ DESIGNATION

U.S. religious rights panel cites culture of impunity at authorities allowing atrocities.

NEW DELHI, August 18 (Compass Direct News) – Ahead of one-year remembrances of massive anti-Christian violence in the eastern state of Orissa, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has put India on its “Watch List” for the country’s violations of religious freedom, evoking strong reactions from the Indian government.

USCIRF Chairman Leonard Leo said in a statement on Wednesday (Aug. 12) that it was “extremely disappointing” that India “has done so little to protect and bring justice to its religious minorities under siege.”

The U.S. panel’s decision was “regrettable,” a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, Vishnu Prakash, said in a statement on Thursday (Aug. 13), after the USCIRF put India on the list due to a “disturbing increase” in violence on minorities and a growing culture of impunity in the country.

Violence erupted in Kandhamal district of the eastern state of Orissa in August-September 2008, killing more than 100 people and burning 4,640 houses, 252 churches and 13 educational institutions, according to rights groups such as the All India Christian Council (AICC), the Global Council of India Christians (GCIC) and the Christian Legal Association (CLA).

“India’s democratic institutions charged with upholding the rule of law, most notably state and central judiciaries and police, have emerged as unwilling or unable to seek redress for victims of the violence,” Leo said. “More must be done to ensure future violence does not occur and that perpetrators are held accountable.”

Disagreeing with the USCIRF report, the foreign ministry’s Prakash said India is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. “The Constitution of India guarantees freedom of religion and equality of opportunity to all its citizens, who live and work together in peace and harmony,” he said.

Christians were shocked by the foreign ministry spokesman’s claim that “aberrations, if any, are dealt with promptly within our legal framework, under the watchful eye of an independent judiciary and a vigilant media.”

Attorney Robin Ratnakar David, president of the CLA, told Compass that one year after the violence only six people have been convicted in just two cases of rioting, while several suspects have been acquitted in four such cases despite the formation of fast-track courts.

Dr. John Dayal, secretary general of the AICC, pointed out that the more than 50,000 people who fled to forests or took shelter in refugee camps have not returned home out of fear of Hindu nationalist extremists who demand they either convert to Hinduism or leave their villages.

He said there also had been several “pogroms against Muslims, often sponsored or condoned by the state.”

In 2002, India’s worst-ever anti-Muslim violence occurred in the western state of Gujarat. A compartment of a train, the Sabarmati Express, caught fire – or was set on fire (as claimed by Hindu extremists) – near the Godhra city railway station on Feb. 27. In the fire, 58 Hindu passengers, mainly supporters of the Hindu extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), were killed. The VHP and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed it was an attack by Islamic terrorists; the ensuing violence killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.

Following the anti-Muslim violence, the USCIRF recommended that India be designated a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), its list of the world’s worst violators of religious freedom. India was removed from the CPC list in 2005.

Designation on the Watch List means a country requires “close monitoring due to the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the government,” according to USCIRF. The other countries on USCIRF’s Watch List are Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, the Russian Federation, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Venezuela.

CLA attorney David said the August-September 2008 violence in Kandhamal could have been prevented had the administration brought to justice those responsible for previous mayhem in December 2007. The December 2007 violence in Kandhamal killed at least four Christians, burned as many as 730 houses and 95 churches and rendered thousands homeless.

The attacks were launched under the pretext of avenging an alleged attack on a VHP leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati. It was the assassination of Saraswati by Maoists (extreme Marxists) on Aug. 23, 2008 that sparked the second spate of violence in Kandhamal, as Hindu nationalists blamed non-Marxist, local Christians for it.

Dayal said the USCIRF’s latest conclusions could have been avoided if more action had been taken against the perpetrators of last year’s violence.

“The USCRIF action would not have been possible, and India would have been able to rebuff the U.S. scrutiny more effectively, if several thousand Christians were still not in refugee camps, if the killers were still not roaming scot-free and if witnesses, including widows, were not being coerced,” he said.

‘Indifferent’

Shashi Tharoor, India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, told a private news channel that India did not need approbation from outside its borders.

“As far as we are concerned, we are essentially indifferent to how others view the situation,” he said. “In democracy, what matters to us is how we deal with our own internal issues. I don’t think we need any certificates from outside.”

He dismissed the report as meddling in internal affairs even though between June 2002 and February 2007 Tharoor served as under-secretary general for communications and public information for the United Nations, a body representative of international accountability in human rights.

In its annual report, India’s home (interior) ministry had acknowledged that the incidence of communal violence was high. It noted that in 2008, as many as 943 communal incidents (mainly against Muslims and Christians) took place in which 167 persons were killed and 2,354 persons were injured. The figures were up from those of 2007, when there were 761 incidents in which 99 persons were killed and 2,227 persons were injured.

Justifying its decision, the USCIRF report stated that several incidents of communal violence have occurred in various parts of the country resulting in many deaths and mass displacements, particularly of members of the Christian and Muslim minorities, “including major incidents against Christian communities within the 2008-2009 reporting period.”

“Because the government’s response at the state and local levels has been found to be largely inadequate and the national government has failed to take effective measures to ensure the rights of religious minorities in several states, the Commission decided to place India on its Watch List.”

The USCIRF had released its 2009 annual report on religious freedom across the globe on May 1 but put the India report on hold, planning to prepare it after a visit to the country in June. A USCIRF team planned to visit India to speak to the government and others concerning the situation in Kandhamal and Gujarat on June 12, but the Indian embassy in Washington, D.C. did not provide visas in time.

“USCIRF’s India chapter was released this week to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of the anti-Christian violence in Orissa,” Leo pointed out in last week’s statement.

‘Teflon-Coated State’

The AICC’s Dayal seemed pessimistic about a change in the government’s attitude.

“Unfortunately, nothing really impacts the government of India or the government of Indian states,” he said. “The state, and our social conscience, seems Teflon-coated. The patriotic media and political sector dismiss international scrutiny as interference in the internal affairs of India, and a beaten-into-submission section of the leadership of religious minorities assumes silence to be the best form of security and safety.”

Dr. Sajan George, the national convenor of the GCIC, said the report showed that India had become a “super violator” of human rights. The Rev. Dr. Babu Joseph, spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, said the U.S. panel’s report did not augur well with India’s claim to find a respectable place within the community of nations.

“India as an emerging economic power in the world should also endeavor to better its records of protecting human rights, particularly when it comes to religious freedom of its citizens,” Joseph said.

Joseph told Compass the USCIRF report was “a clear indication of the growing concern of the international community with India’s repeated failure to take decisive and corrective measures to contain religious intolerance.”

Christian leaders generally lauded the report, with Dayal saying, “India’s record on the persecution of minorities and the violation of religious freedom has been a matter of international shame for the nation.”

Report from Compass Direct News 

PAKISTAN: MUSLIM FORCES 12-YEAR-OLD GIRL TO CONVERT, MARRY HIM

Police ridicule Christian mother for kidnapping complaint; others demand money, labor.

LAHORE, Pakistan, June 4 (Compass Direct News) – The Christian mother of a 12-year-old girl in Punjab Province who was kidnapped, coerced into converting to Islam and forcibly married to a 37-year-old Muslim hopes to recover her daughter at a court hearing next week.

The reaction of Pakistani law enforcement authorities to Sajida Masih’s complaint so far – ridiculing her and asserting that there is nothing she can do because her daughter is now a Muslim – does not encourage her hopes of recovering her daughter Huma at next Thursday’s (June 11) hearing.

Masih said that Muhammad Imran abducted Huma at gunpoint on Feb. 23 from Hanif Kot village in Gujranwala district, forcibly converted her and then married her. Imran has since disappeared along with his first wife, three children and new child-bride.

Masih, who worked alongside Imran as a farmhand, said the kidnapping occurred on her son’s wedding day. Masih said that when she sent Huma and the child’s aunt out of their home to see if transportation had arrived for the wedding party, Imran – who had helped in preparing for the ceremony – was waiting and told her to sit on his motorbike.

Huma did not understand and, with her concerned aunt tightly holding her hand, she refused.

Masih’s attorney, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said Imran took out a pistol and told Huma that he would shoot her as well as her parents if she did not obey; he also pointed the weapon at her aunt and said that he would kill her. Huma got onto the bike with him; her family has not seen her since.

Masih immediately ran to the owner of the farm where she and Imran work, Khan Buhadur, who told her to first finish the wedding and then see him in the evening. Masih’s attorney said that when she and relatives went to Buhadur after the ceremony, however, he said only that Imran had fled with his family along with the girl, and that he did not know where they were.

Suspecting that Buhadur was complicit in the kidnapping, Masih went to Sadar police station in Gujranwala. Police officers first ridiculed her, the attorney said, and then told her to go back to Buhadur because “only he could do something.” For several days officers and Buhadur shuttled her back and forth between them.

Unable to get police to register the case, Masih submitted a report with the help of a lawyer and took it to the police station, where officers consigned it to the dustbin.

Three days after the kidnapping, police finally registered a First Information Report (FIR) on Feb. 26 – but changed the age of the kidnapped girl from 12, as her mother reported, to 16. Moreover, Investigating Officer Niaz Khan told Masih that the FIR was useless since she was too poor to hire a lawyer, and that she should try to reach an out-of-court agreement with Buhadur – implying that he knew of the child’s whereabouts.

The Masih family learned from a friend of Imran, identified only as Javed, that Huma had converted to Islam and had married the fugitive father of three. Javed further said that Imran had told him police would do nothing as he had paid them 50,000 rupees (US$620).

The family subsequently received a court notice, the attorney said, stating that Imran had requested nullification of the FIR on Huma’s abduction, claiming she was an “adult” and had “willfully” converted to Islam and married him.

According to Huma’s birth certificate, issued by St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Gujranwala, she was born on Oct. 22, 1996. The attorney said that Imran had submitted a fake birth certificate stating she was born on Dec. 23, 1990, which would make her 18 years old. The legal marriage age for girls in Pakistan is 16.

Only then did Masih obtain the services of the lawyer now handling the case, who is supported by the American Center for Law & Justice.

A hearing on the case had been scheduled for May 6, but because of a change of judge a new date was set for June 11. Unwilling to wait, the family and their lawyer went with a court bailiff to a factory owned by Buhadur in Gujranwala on May 14, hoping to get help in recovering Huma, but Buhadur did not cooperate.

Buhadur had been demanding that Masih pay him 100,000 rupees (US$1,240) that she had supposedly borrowed from him, but this demand only surfaced after the kidnapping – an implied attempt to extort money from her in exchange for information on the whereabouts of her daughter, according to the lawyer. Buhadur withdrew this pressure on Masih after the visit from the court bailiff and efforts by the attorney.

At a meeting of villagers on May 16 at the Sadar police station, Buhadur said that Imran owed him money and that he would inform officers if he learned anything of his whereabouts.

Another land owner, Karamat Ali Saroyya, subsequently called Masih saying that Huma was in Muridke, near Lahore, but when Masih and her lawyer set out again and met with Muridke police, they were unable to find her.

Saroyya later demanded that Masih work his fields for one year in order to get her daughter back.

Masih’s lawyer and other legal representatives said police and officials at the Municipal Corporation’s office, which keeps birth and death records, have been reluctant to help, saying that Huma had converted and that therefore there was no reason that she should be returned to non-Muslim parents.

Report from Compass Direct News

INDIAN BISHOP WARNS OF ‘SECRET AGENDA’ TO REMOVE CHRISTIANS

As India conducts its month-long national elections, a leading Indian bishop has accused Hindu nationalists of threatening Orissa state voters with violence and pursuing a “secret agenda” to flush Christians out of the region, reports Catholic News Agency.

Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of the Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, speaking in an interview with the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), claimed that leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have made death threats against people unwilling to vote for them. He said the BJP was determined to eliminate Christianity from Orissa state’s Kandhamal district, where the vast majority of the state’s churchgoers live. Catholic priests in Orissa report that the BJP has warned Christians in Kandhamal district that if they voted for other candidates, the party would bully them into leaving the area, ACN says.

Nearly 30,000 people fled the district in 2007 and 2008 during anti-Christian attacks on nearly 300 villages in Kandhamal. Eighty people, including a Catholic priest, were killed. About 270 churches and chapels were desecrated while 6,000 homes were destroyed.

Archbishop Cheenath told ACN that people in relief camps in Kandhamal were generally able to vote. However, he said “several thousands” who fled the district during the violence were denied the vote because they were prevented from registering.

“The BJP party officials have threatened to attack the Christians and chase them away. The threats were very serious and there has been a great fear among the people,” the archbishop said, speaking from Bangalore.

“The problem for the people was made worse because the authorities in Orissa took no tangible steps to prevent such things from happening.”

“The secret agenda of the [BJP politicians] is to remove the Christians from Kandhamal,” Archbishop Cheenath said. “It was clear that this was what they wanted to do before the elections and if they win again there is no doubt that they will continue in that way.”

A Catholic priest in Kandhamal on election day reported that trees had been felled to block access to villages in order to prevent people from voting. The same tactic was used during the anti-Christian violence.

The priest said there was hardly any movement of the people.

“My colleagues and I were scared… I reached the polling booth of my village but after only two hours [of voting] the booth was literally empty. We were the first ones to cast our votes.”

The priest told ACN it was important to remember that thousands of people are still living outside the district and had not exercised their vote.

“Are these not citizens?” he asked.

The priest also alleged that four Hindus gang-raped a girl after learning that her uncle had refused to abandon his Christian faith.

In the run-up to the elections, BJP Kandhamal candidate Ashok Sahu was arrested for making an anti-Christian speech in the village of Raikia. He has since been released.

According to ACN, Sahu was closely linked to Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, the militant anti-Christian Hindu leader whose murder last August, allegedly by Maoists, sparked widespread violence against churchgoers.

Report from the Christian Telegraph