Britannia Radio

Steel On Steel Persecution Update

December 19, 2009

Edited by: Donald McElvaney, www.missionbarnabas.org

Top Stories:

1. Unprecedented Christmas Gathering Held in Vietnam
2. More than Half in Turkey Oppose Non-Muslim Religious Meetings
3. Special Investigations Team Sought in Orissa, India Violence
4. Chinese Pastor Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison
5. Somali Christian Flees Refugee Camp Under Death Threat
6. Christian Woman from Sudan Flees Muslim Family
7. Hindu Nationalist Party Official in India Charged in Nun’s Rape
8. China Sentences Five More Christian Leaders
9. Church Screening of ‘Jesus Film’ Attacked in Pakistan


1. Unprecedented Christmas Gathering Held in Vietnam

With permission little and late, organizers work by faith to accommodate crowds.

Special to Compass Direct News

HO CHI MINH CITY, December 14 (Compass Direct News) – On Friday evening (Dec. 11), history was made in communist Vietnam. Christian sources reported that some 40,000 people gathered in a hastily constructed venue in Ho Chi Minh City to celebrate Christmas and hear a gospel message – an event of unprecedented magnitude in Vietnam. A popular Vietnamese Christian website and other reports indicated up to 8,000 people responded to the gospel message indicating a desire to follow Christ. Authorities initially refused to grant permission and tried urgently to talk leaders out of going ahead, promising future concessions if they would cancel the event. At the close of business on Dec. 9, just 48 hours before the scheduled event, officials granted permission but for only 3,000 people; organizers had less than two days to turn a vacant field into something that would accommodate a stadium-size crowd. Christian sources said authorities either did not or could not stop busses from other directions, and that at least 2,000 people had to be turned away. They said that the main speaker, the Rev. Duong Thanh Lam, head of the Assemblies of God house churches, “preached with anointing” and people responding to his gospel invitation poured to the front of the stage “like a waterfall.”


2. More than Half in Turkey Oppose Non-Muslim Religious Meetings

Survey finds nearly 40 percent of population has negative view of Christians.

ISTANBUL, December 4 (Compass Direct News) – More than half the population of Muslim-majority Turkey opposes members of other religions holding meetings or publishing materials to explain their faith, according to a recently issued survey. Fully 59 percent of those surveyed said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to hold open meetings where they can discuss their ideas. Fifty-four percent said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to publish literature that describes their faith. The survey also found that almost 40 percent of the population of Turkey said they had “very negative” or “negative” views of Christians. In the random survey, 60 percent of those polled said there is one true religion; over 90 percent of the population of Turkey is Sunni Muslim. Ali Çarkoglu, one of two professors at Sabanci University who conducted the study, said no non-Muslim religious gathering in Turkey is completely “risk free.” “Even in Istanbul, it can’t be easy to be an observant non-Muslim,” Çarkoglu said.


3. Special Investigations Team Sought in Orissa, India Violence

Acquittals increasingly surpass convictions due to shoddy or corrupt police investigators.

By Shireen Bhatia

NEW DELHI, December 7 (Compass Direct News) – Christian leaders in India have called for a special investigations team to counter the shoddy or corrupt police investigations into anti-Christian violence in Orissa state in August-September 2008. Of the 100 cases handled by two-fast track courts, 32 have been heard as of Nov. 30, resulting in 48 convictions and more than 164 acquittals. The number of cases registered total 787. Among those exonerated “for lack of evidence” was Manoj Pradhan, a legislator from the Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who was acquitted of murder on Nov. 24. Thus far, Pradhan has been cleared in six of 14 cases against him. “Manoj Pradhan has been let off in all the major cases against him, mostly murder cases, for lack of evidence,” attorney Bibhu Dutta Das told Compass. “Now only small cases of arson remain against him.” Attorneys have said acquittals have resulted from police investigations that are intentionally defective to cover up for Hindu extremist attackers. Meantime, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has publicly admitted that Hindu nationalist groups were behind the killings and arson of Christians and their property. “It is learnt from the investigation into the riot cases that the members of the RSS , the VHP and the Bajrang Dal were involved in the violence that took place last year,” Patnaik told the state legislative assembly last month.


4. Chinese Pastor Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison

Harsh punishment for house church leader based on apparently far-fetched charge.

Special to Compass Direct News

LOS ANGELES, December 8 (Compass Direct News) – Chinese authorities have quietly sentenced Uyghur Christian Alimjan Yimit (Alimujiang Yimiti in Chinese) to 15 years in prison on the apparently contrived charge of “providing state secrets to overseas organizations,” according to China Aid Association (CAA). The charge against the 36-year-old house church leader, held for more than two years at Kashgar Detention Center in China’s troubled Xinjiang region, was based on innocuous interviews he granted to media outside of China, according to his lawyer, Li Dunyong. “The 15-year sentence is far more severe than I originally expected,” Li said in a CAA press statement released yesterday. “It is the maximum penalty for this charge of ‘divulging state secrets,’ which requires Alimujiang’s actions to be defined as having ‘caused irreparable national grave damage.’” CAA President Bob Fu said Alimjan’s sentence was the most severe for a house church leader in nearly decade. “The whole world should be appalled at this injustice against innocent Christian leader Alimujiang,” Fu said in the CAA statement. “We call upon the U.N. and people of conscience throughout the world to strongly protest to the Chinese government for this severe case of religious persecution.”


5. Somali Christian Flees Refugee Camp Under Death Threat

Flood of refugees to camp in Kenya brings Muslims hostile to his family.

By Simba Tian

NAIROBI, Kenya, December 9 (Compass Direct News) – Somali Christian Mohamud Muridi Saidi last month fled a refugee camp near Kenya’s border with Sudan after Muslims threatened to kill him. For Saidi, a father of four, the recent relocation of 13,000 refugees from the Dadaab refugee camp near the Somali border to the Kakuma camp, where he had lived since 2002, brought its own nightmare: the arrival of Muslims from Somalia’s Lower Juba region who knew of his father’s Christian activities in his home village. After Somalis four times threw stones at Saidi’s iron sheet home in the Kakuma refugee camp – once in mid-October, and again on Nov. 17, 21 and 22 – word spread that they intended to kill him. Case workers for a Lutheran World Federation (LWF) service group confirmed the death threat. “I know the attackers are the Muslims who forced us to leave Somalia in 2002,” Saidi told Compass in Nairobi, adding that he was unable to bring his family with him when he fled on Nov. 23. “They are not safe, and that is why we should be out of Kakuma as soon as possible.” Saidi has reported the attacks to the LWF as well as to police in Kakuma. Case workers for the LWF service group confirmed that the stoning of his home had escalated to the threat of him being assassinated. “Saidi has security-related issues fueled by the new refugees from Dadaab,” said one LWF service worker, who requested anonymity for security reasons, last month. “I did some investigation and found out that Saidi’s life is threatened.”


6. Christian Woman from Sudan Flees Muslim Family

Native of Khartoum lives in seclusion in Egypt as brother, ex-husband hunt for her.

By Simba Tian

NAIROBI, Kenya, December 10 (Compass Direct News) – A Sudanese woman who fled to Egypt after converting from Islam to Christianity is living in secluded isolation as her angry family members try to track her down. Howida Ali’s Muslim brother and her ex-husband began searching for her in Cairo earlier this year after a relative there reported her whereabouts to them. While there in July, her brother and ex-husband tried without success to seize her 10-year-old son from school. “I’m afraid of my brother finding us,” said the 38-year-old Ali, who has moved to another area. “Their aim is to take us back to Sudan, and there they will force us to return to the Islamic faith or sentence us to death according to Islamic law.”


7. Hindu Nationalist Party Official in India Charged in Nun’s Rape

Local politician of Bharatiya Janata Party had attended Christian school.

By Vishal Arora

NEW DELHI, December 11 (Compass Direct News) – Police in Orissa state have arrested an official of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for allegedly leading an attack that ended in the rape of a Catholic nun during last year’s anti-Christian mayhem in Kandhamal district. Gururam Patra, identified by local residents as general secretary of the BJP in Kandhamal district, was arrested on Saturday (Dec. 6) in Balliguda; he was charged with leading the attack but not with the rape of Sister Meena Lalita Barwa, then 28, on Aug. 25, 2008. “He is the one who went into the house where the nun was staying and took her out, along with his associates who outraged her modesty,” said an investigating officer, Dilip Kumar Mohanty. Previously police had arrested 18 associates of Patra. Hindu extremist groups distanced themselves from Patra, with Orissa BJP President Suresh Pujari telling Compass that he did not know if Patra was a member of his party. Union Catholic Asian News (UCAN) agency reported that Patra had attended a Catholic school, Vijaya High School, in Raikia town in Kandhamal district. Principal Mathew Puthyadam told UCAN that right-wing Hindu groups commonly recruit people educated at Christian schools and indoctrinate them against Christians.


8. China Sentences Five More Christian Leaders

Arbitrary administrative decision sends church leaders to re-education labor camp.

LOS ANGELES, December 3 (Compass Direct News) – Bypassing the court system, China arbitrarily sentenced five more leaders of the Fushan Church in Linfen City, Shanxi Province, on Monday (Nov. 30), this time to re-education labor camps for two years, according to China Aid Association (CAA). A Chinese court last week sentenced five house church leaders to three to seven years in prison after they were arrested en route to Beijing to file a complaint about an attack on their church, according to the advocacy organization. The five leaders sentenced to labor camps this week were accused of “gathering people to disturb the public order” after they organized a prayer rally of 1,000 people the day after military police and others attacked their church members and building on Sept. 13. In what CAA termed “an arbitrary administrative sentence by the Public Security Bureau enacted so the leaders would not be ‘required’ to go through the court and prosecution system,” China delivered the verdicts to church leaders Li Shuangping, Yang Hongzhen, Yang Caizhen (wife of Pastor Yang Xuan, who was sentenced to three years of prison on Nov. 25), Gao Qin (also known as Gao Fuqin), and Zhao Guoai. “Yang Caizhen was seen being beaten severely during an interrogation,” CAA said in a press statement. “Having had one of her front teeth knocked out during a beating, and fasting and praying during her detention, Ms. Yang is reported to look very fragile.”


9. Church Screening of ‘Jesus Film’ Attacked in Pakistan

Muslim villagers injure seven Christians, two seriously; police refuse to register case.

By Jawad Mazhar

SARGODHA, Pakistan, December 14 (Compass Direct News) – Some 50 Muslim villagers armed with clubs and axes attacked a showing of the “Jesus Film” near this city in Punjab Province on Wednesday night (Dec. 9), injuring three part-time evangelists and four Christians in attendance. Two of the evangelists were said to be seriously injured. The Muslim hardliners also damaged a movie projector, burned reels of the film and absconded with the public address system and donations from Christian viewers in Chak village, about 10 kilometers northeast of Sargodha, at 7 p.m. Officers at the Saddr police station refused to register a case against the Muslim assailants, sources said. The three part-time evangelists – Ishtiaq Bhatti, Imtiaz Ghauri and Kaleem Ghulam – were screening the film within the premises of the Catholic Church of Chak. Bhatti was treated for minor injuries, while Ghauri and Ghulam sustained serious injuries for which they received treatment at another hospital. The evangelists said from their clinic beds that a Muslim cleric instigated the Muslim villagers, who were armed with clubs, spades and axes. “They charged on us deadly and swiftly and left us injured and broke all our appliances and took away funds collected by congregants to help us,” Bhatti said. “Muslim men also injured those Christian villagers who tried to intervene and stop them.”