Oppression of Christians World Wide.
Steel On Steel Persecution Update
March 27, 2010
Edited by: Donald McElvaney, www.missionbarnabas.org
Top Stories:
1. Islamic Gunmen Kill Christian Aid Workers in Pakistan
2. Pakistan’s ‘Blasphemy’ Laws Claim Three More Christians
3. Christians Refuse to Allow Officials to Close Church in Indonesia
4. Morocco Begins Large-Scale Expulsion of Foreign Christians
5. Attacks in Punjab, India Similar to Orissa Mayhem, Report Says
6. Egyptian Court Refuses to Return Passport to Christian
7. Christian Who Fled Iran Wins Asylum in Kenya
8. Lao Officials Threaten to Burn Shelters of Expelled Christians
9. Second Wave of Attacks Near Jos, Nigeria Leaves 13 Christians Dead
1. Islamic Gunmen Kill Christian Aid Workers in Pakistan
World Vision worker says militants dragged his colleagues into room and executed them.
By Xavier P. William
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 10 (Compass Direct News) – Suspected Islamic militants armed with guns and grenades stormed the offices of a Christian relief and development organization in northwest Pakistan today, killing six aid workers and wounding seven others. The gunmen besieged the offices of international humanitarian organization World Vision near Oghi, in Mansehra district, of the North West Frontier Province. Police and World Vision’s regional spokesman said the Pakistani staff members, including two women, were killed after up to 15 gunmen arrived in pick-up trucks and began firing. “They gathered all of us in one room,” World Vision administration officer Mohammad Sajid, who was in the office at the time, told Compass. “The gunmen, some of whom had their faces covered, also snatched our mobile phones. They dragged people one by one and shifted them to an adjacent room and shot and killed them.” Senior police officer Waqar Ahmed blamed the attack on “the same people who are destroying our schools” – a reference to Taliban militants opposed to co-education who have blown up hundreds of schools across the northwest in the past three years. “Now they want to disturb relief work in quake-hit areas,” Ahmed said.
2. Pakistan’s ‘Blasphemy’ Laws Claim Three More Christians
Cafeteria worker, couple convicted without basis under widely condemned statutes.
By Brian Sharma
KARACHI, Pakistan, March 10 (Compass Direct News) – A Christian couple was sentenced to 25 years in prison for violating Pakistan’s widely condemned “blasphemy” laws last week, and another Christian convicted without basis under the same statutes the previous week received the same sentence. In Kasur, Ruqqiya Bibi and her husband Munir Masih were sentenced on March 3 to 25 years of prison under Section 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code for defiling the Quran. They had been arrested by Mustafabad police in December 2008 for touching Islam’s sacred scripture without ritually washing. Tahir Gul, a lawyer of the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), told Compass that the matter arose out of a quarrel between Muslim and Christian children and turned into a clash of their parents. In Karachi, a court on Feb. 25 sentenced another Christian, Qamar David, to 25 years in prison and a fine of 100,000 rupees (US$1,170) after he was convicted without basis for sending blasphemous text messages in May 2006. David was convicted under Section 295-A of the blasphemy statues for “injuring religious feelings of any community,” and also under Section 295-C for derogatory remarks against Muhammad. His lawyer, Pervaiz Aslam Chaudhry, told Compass that the conviction was without basis as all 16 witnesses at the trial said that not David but the owner of the cell phone through which they received the blasphemous messages was guilty. The cell phone is owned by a Muslim, Munawar Ahmad. “In spite of these facts, the court has absolved him of all charges,” Chaudhry said.
3. Christians Refuse to Allow Officials to Close Church in Indonesia
Authorities in Bekasi, West Java run into determined lawyer, congregation.
By Victor R. Ambarita
BEKASI, Indonesia, March 11 (Compass Direct News) – Efforts by local officials in this city in West Java to close a church met with stiff resistance this month, as a defiant lawyer and weeping women refused to allow it. Women of the Huria Christian Protestant Batak Church (HKBP) cried in protest as officials from the Bekasi Building Department on March 1 placed a brown signboard of closure on the church building in Pondok Timur, Bekasi, 12 miles (19 kilometers) from Jakarta. The seal stayed in place for about two minutes before some of the shrieking women tore it down. The sign was trampled as furious church members stampeded over it, shouting and screaming, and Bekasi city officials turned and ran as the congregation fanned out. The defiance followed a heated debate within the same church building minutes before, as the Christians had invited the Bekasi officials inside to discuss the matter when they arrived to seal the building. The discussion soon became heated as a city official asserted that the church did not have a building permit and had to be sealed. The church had applied for a worship building permit in 2006, but local officials had yet to act on it, according to the church’s pastor, the Rev. Luspida Simanjuntak. At the meeting inside the church building, attorney Refer Harianya said that the sealing was illegal because officials had failed to follow proper procedures. “Because you have not followed the procedures which I have outlined, we will act as if the sealing never took place,” Harianya told city officials as members of the congregation cheered. He said that if the city tried to close the church, they would be named in a lawsuit. One of the officials, identified only as Pemana, responded, “Go ahead and sue.”
4. Morocco Begins Large-Scale Expulsion of Foreign Christians
Ongoing purge launched nationwide to stop ‘proselytization.’
By Damaris Kremida
ISTANBUL, March 12 (Compass Direct News) – Moroccan authorities deported more than 40 foreign Christian aid workers this week in an ongoing, nationwide crackdown that included the expulsion of foster parents caring for 33 Moroccan orphans. Deportations of foreign Christians continued at press time, with Moroccan authorities expressing their intention to deport specifically U.S. nationals. Sources in Morocco told Compass that the government gave the U.S. Embassy in Rabat a list of 40 citizens to be deported. Citing Western diplomats and aid groups, Reuters reported that as many as 70 foreign aid workers had been deported since the beginning of the month, including U.S., Dutch, British and New Zealand citizens. At the Village of Hope orphanage near Ain Leuh, 50 miles south of Fez, the government on Monday (March 8) expelled 16 staff workers, 10 foster parents and 13 natural-born dependents from the country. The orphanage arranges for orphaned children to live with a set of foster parents rather than in a traditional dormitory setting, according to its website. Police first came to the orphanage Saturday afternoon (March 6), questioning children and looking for Bibles and evidence of Christian evangelism; by late Sunday night they had told all foster parents and staff that they had to leave on Monday. New Zealand native Chris Broadbent, a worker at Village of Hope, told Compass that the separation of the foster families and the children under their care was traumatic. As much as they hoped to be re-united, he said, that did not seem likely – officials told them they could visit as tourists in the future, but in reality authorities do not allow re-entry for those who have been expelled.
5. Attacks in Punjab, India Similar to Orissa Mayhem, Report Says
Hindu nationalists try to burn Christians alive for protesting offensive Jesus banners.
By Vishal Arora
NEW DELHI, March 3 (Compass Direct News) – Attacks on Christians last month in Punjab state following protests against banners depicting Jesus drinking and smoking were eerily similar to the anti-Christian violence in Orissa state in 2007 and 2008, according to a fact-finding mission released yesterday by the All India Christian Council (AICC). Dr. John Dayal, a member of the fact-finding mission, pointed out that factors such as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) being part of the ruling coalition, police inaction, coordination of attacks and support of the local merchant community for Hindu nationalist groups in the anti-Christian attacks in Punjab reminded him of mayhem in Orissa’s Kandhamal district. “The strategy of the assailants in Punjab was eerily reminiscent of what was practiced and perfected against churches in Orissa,” Dayal said. Supporters of the Hindu extremist Sangh Parivar burned the 1865-built Church of the Epiphany belonging to the Church of North India (CNI) denomination on Feb. 20. They also tried to destroy a nearby Salvation Army church and attacked its pastor, Gurnam Singh, leaving him seriously injured. “Even as the larger group of attackers focused on burning the CNI church, a group of men armed with sticks and rods came to the house of the CNI deacon,” the report notes. “The deacon, Victor Gill, and his wife Parveen, hid themselves under the bed. The assailants damaged the doors, tried to enter the room forcibly, and told the couple they would be burnt alive if they did not come out.”
6. Egyptian Court Refuses to Return Passport to Christian
Convert from Islam tried to leave country to save his life.
By Will Morris
ISTANBUL, March 15 (Compass Direct News) – An Egyptian court last week refused to return the passport of a convert from Islam who tried to leave Egypt to save his life, the Christian said on Friday (March 12). On Tuesday (March 9) the Egyptian State Council Court in Giza, an administrative court, refused to return the passport of Maher Ahmad El-Mo’otahssem Bellah El-Gohary. El-Gohary said he was devastated by the decision. “I am being threatened, my life is being threatened, my daughter’s life is being threatened very frequently, and I don’t feel safe at all in Egypt,” he said. Nabil Ghobreyal, El-Gohary’s attorney, told Compass the government declined to give the court any reason for its actions. On Sept. 17, 2009, authorities at Cairo International Airport seized El-Gohary’s passport when he tried to visit China; he eventually intended to travel to the United States. El-Gohary gained notoriety in Egypt in February 2009, when he filed a court application to have the religion on his identification card changed from Muslim to Christian. He was branded an “apostate,” and multiple fatwas, or religious edicts, were issued against him. Since filing his application, El-Gohary has lived in fear and has been in hiding with his 15-year-old daughter, moving every month from apartment to apartment. He is unable to work, and his daughter, also a Christian, is unable to attend school. “We are very fearful,” El-Gohary said. “We are hiding between four walls all day long.”
7. Christian Who Fled Iran Wins Asylum in Kenya
Judge rules Iranian convert from Islam requires protection from persecutors.
By Simba Tian
NAIROBI, Kenya, March 15 (Compass Direct News) – Mohammad Azbari, a Christian convert from Islam who has fled to Kenya, knows what it’s like to be deported back to his native Iran. When it happened in 2007, he said, Iranian authorities pressured the government of Norway to return him and his wife Gelanie Azbari to Iran after hearing rumors that he had forsaken Islam. “When we arrived in Iran, we were interrogated by security and severely beaten,” he told Compass in Nairobi, where he and his family fought to persuade the Kenyan government to decline Iran’s demand to deport him back. “My son got scared and began urinating on himself.” Azbari had been employed in the Iranian army before fleeing, he said, and authorities were monitoring his movements because they were concerned that, having Islam, he might betray his country and reveal government secrets. When he and his Christian wife, a native of the Philippines, first fled Iran in 2000, he was still a Shia Muslim; he became a Christian in the Netherlands in 2003. After Azbari and his family were returned to Iran from Norway in 2007, police began looking for him in October of last year, and he eventually made it into Kenya – where he was charged with illegal entry. On March 4 a court in Kenya ruled that Azbari’s family deserved asylum from religious persecution in Iran.
8. Lao Officials Threaten to Burn Shelters of Expelled Christians
Village heads tell church members they must recant faith within 48 hours.
By Sarah Page
DUBLIN, March 16 (Compass Direct News) – Officials in southern Laos in the next 48 hours plan to burn temporary shelters built by expelled Christians unless they recant their faith, according to advocacy group Human Rights Watch for Lao Religious Freedom (HRWLRF). Authorities including a religious affairs official, the district head, district police and the chief of Katin village in Ta-Oyl district, Saravan province, expelled the 48 Christians at gunpoint on Jan. 18. Left to survive in the open, the Christians began to build temporary shelters, and then more permanent homes, on the edge of the jungle, according to HRWLRF. On Monday (March 15), district head Bounma, identified only by his surname, summoned seven of the Christians to his office and said he would not allow Christian beliefs and practices in areas under his control. The Christians later heard through local sources that the chiefs of Katin and neighboring Ta Loong village planned to burn down their temporary shelters and 11 partially-constructed homes erected on land owned by Ta Loong, according to HRWLRF. These threats have left the Christians in a dilemma, as permission is required to move into another district.
9. Second Wave of Attacks Near Jos, Nigeria Leaves 13 Christians Dead
Muslim Fulani herdsmen strike two more villages, slaughtering women and children.
By Lekan Otufodunrin
LAGOS, Nigeria, March 17 (Compass Direct News) – Less than two weeks after a massive attack in Nigeria that killed 500 Christians, Muslim Fulani herdsmen today unleashed more horrific violence on two Christian villages in Plateau state, killing 13 persons, including a pregnant woman and children. In attacks presumably over disputed property but with a level of violence characteristic of jihadist method and motive, men in military camouflage and others in customary clothing also burned 20 houses in Byei and Baten villages, in the Riyom Local Government Area of the state, about 45 kilometers (29 miles) from the state capital, Jos. The ethnic Berom Christians, who live as farmers, have long faced off with Fulani nomads who graze their cattle on the Beroms’ land. State Gov. Jonah Jang condemned the killings, alleging that some unnamed persons were fueling misunderstanding among communities in conflict. Because the style of killing is typical of jihadist fundamentalists, Christian leaders suspect Islamic extremists are encouraging the attacks, throwing religious gas on low-burning land and ethnic conflicts. Dalyop Nyango Mandung, a survivor of the attack whose 90-year-old mother, Ngo Hwo Dongo, was killed in her room, told newsmen that the villagers were awakened by gunshots from the Muslim herdsmen who were barricading their houses. Mandung, however, distinguished the assailants in military fatigues from the Fulani herders. “We saw them in military uniforms, about two of them were in military uniform and the Fulani were in their normal clothes,” Mandun reportedly said. “My mother was the only one killed in the family.”
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