Britannia Radio

Steel On Steel Persecution Update

May 11, 2010

          Edited by:  Donald McElvaney, www.missionbarnabas.org


Top Stories:   

     1.  Pakistani Authorities Allegedly Torture Christian Girl, Family
     2.  China Moves Uyghur Christian Prisoner, Allows Family Visit
     3.  Buddhist Extremists Drive Christians from Village in Bangladesh
     4.  Muslims Burn Christian Center under Construction in Indonesia
     5.  Bomb Attack in Iraq Seriously Injures Christian Students
     6.  Al Shabaab Militants Execute Christian Leader in Somalia
     7.  Pakistani Muslims Abduct Young Christian Woman, Family Says
     8.  Chinese Rights Lawyer Gao Zhisheng Missing Again
     9.  Anti-Christian Motives Suspected in Evangelist’s Slaying in India


1.  Pakistani Authorities Allegedly Torture Christian Girl, Family

Air Force police illegally detain 14-year-old, relatives after allegations of theft.

By John Little

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, April 29 (Compass Direct News) – Local authorities on Monday (April 26) recovered a 14-year-old Christian girl from Pakistan Air Force (PAF) police who allegedly tortured her and her family for five days as Christian “soft targets” over false theft allegations, sources said. Islamabad police in predominantly Sunni Muslim Pakistan removed Sumera Pervaiz from a PAF hospital, where she was recovering from injuries that a doctor said could cripple her for life. Earlier this month, according to family and police sources, PAF police were said to have illegally detained her and members of her family after PAF Wing Commander Faheem Cheema, who had hired Sumera as a maid, found gold ornaments and other valuables missing from his home in PAF Colony, Islamabad. Cheema filed a theft complaint with local police without naming any suspects, but without informing local officers the wing commander on April 15 allegedly directed PAF police to illegally detain Sumera and four members of her family – Pervaiz Masih, Sana Bibi, Parveen Masih and Kala Masih – who live in PAF Colony in Islamabad. Cheema has denied that he ordered PAF police to detain the girl and her family members. When District and Session Court Judge Mazhar Hussain Barlas ordered Sumera to appear at a hearing on April 22, she testified that on April 15 three persons who were not in uniform arrived at her house at midnight and detained her, her father Pervaiz Masih and the other family members. “For many days we remained in the custody of those people, who severely tortured me during their ‘interrogation,’” she said.


2.  China Moves Uyghur Christian Prisoner, Allows Family Visit

Court rejects appeal of 15-year sentence for Alimjan Yimit.

By Sarah Page

DUBLIN, April 29 (Compass Direct News) – Authorities in Xinjiang Province recently moved Uyghur Christian Alimjan Yimit from a prison in Kashgar to a prison in the provincial capital Urumqi and allowed the first visit from family members since his arrest in January 2008, according to Compass sources. Alimjan (Alimujiang Yimiti in Chinese) was noticeably thinner but in good spirits, the family told friends after their brief visit to him in Xinjiang No. 3 prison on April 20, one source told Compass. They were allowed only 15 minutes to speak with Alimjan via telephone through a glass barrier, the source said. But Alimjan’s lawyers, Li Baiguang and Liu Peifu, were prohibited from meeting with him, despite gaining permission from the Xinjiang Bureau of Prison Management, the China Aid Association reported on Saturday (April 24). Officials have now granted Alimjan’s wife Gulnur (Chinese spelling Gulinuer) and other close family members permission to visit him once a month. Alimjan and Gulnur pastored a Uyghur ethnic house church in Xinjiang prior to his arrest in January 2008. Attorney Li told Radio Free Asia earlier this month that while the initial charges against Alimjan were both “instigating separatism” and “leaking state secrets” to foreign organizations, his actual offense was talking to visiting Christians from the United States. The Kashgar Intermediate Court found Alimjan guilty of “leaking state secrets” on Oct. 27, 2009 and gave him a 15-year sentence. His lawyers appealed the sentence, but the People’s High Court of Xinjiang upheld the original verdict on March 16. “This decision is illegal and void because it never succeeded in showing how Alimjan supplied state secrets to people overseas,” Li told Radio Free Asia.


3.  Buddhist Extremists Drive Christians from Village in Bangladesh

Villagers upset with establishment of church break up prayer meetings, invade homes.

By Aenon Shalom

DHAKA, Bangladesh, May 3 (Compass Direct News) – Four Christian families in southeastern Bangladesh left their village yesterday under mounting pressure by Buddhist extremists to give up their faith in Christ. Sources told Compass that 20 to 25 Buddhists brandishing sticks and bamboo clubs in Jamindhonpara village, 340 kilometres (211 miles) southeast of Dhaka, began patrolling streets on Friday (April 30) to keep the 11 members of the Lotiban Baptist Church from gathering for their weekly prayer meetings. On Saturday, the Buddhist extremists captured four men and beat one woman who had gathered in a home, threatening to kill them if they did not become Buddhists within 24 hours. Yesterday, the Buddhist extremists attacked the homes of the Baptists two hours before their 1 p.m. worship service, sources said. “Just two hours before our church service, a group of people swooped into our houses and drove all of us out so we could not attend the church service,” said one church member who requested anonymity. The Christians captured Saturday night were released after the extremists, who ripped crosses off the walls of their homes, threatened to kill them if they continued praying and worshipping in the area. After yesterday’s attacks, all Christians in Jamindhonpara fled, taking shelter in another village, source said. Jamindhonpara is located in the Lotiban area, Panchari sub-district of Khagrachari district. “When they come, they do not listen to us,” said the church member. “They arbitrarily do whatever they like. The situation is indescribable – they hunt us down the same way that one hunts down a mad dog to kill it.”


4.  Muslims Burn Christian Center under Construction in Indonesia

Throngs fear site would be used as Christian school or church.

By Samuel Rionaldo

JAKARTA, Indonesia, May 4 (Compass Direct News) – Hundreds of people calling themselves the Muslim Community of the Puncak Route last week burned buildings under construction belonging to a Christian organization in West Java Province. Believing that a church or school building was being built, the mob set fire to the Penabur Christian Education Foundation’s unfinished guest house buildings in Cibeureum village of Cisarua sub-district, Bogor Regency, on April 27. They also burned a watchman’s hut and at least two cars belonging to foundation directors. A leader of the mob who identified himself only as Tabroni told Compass that local residents did not want a Christian worship center or Christian school in the predominantly Muslim area of Cibeureum known as Kongsi. “We found that there is an effort to Christianize through the construction of a school and a Christian place of worship,” Tabroni said. A foundation spokesperson identified only as Mulyono denied that it was building a school or a place of worship. Mulyono added that the guest house, a term synonymous with “conference center” in Indonesia, will be used for education and training. “It is not true that we were building a school or a place of worship,” Mulyono told Compass.


5.  Bomb Attack in Iraq Seriously Injures Christian Students

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

By Damaris Kremida

ISTANBUL, May 5 (Compass Direct News) – 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. They 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.


6.  Al Shabaab Militants Execute Christian Leader in Somalia

Islamic extremists run into 57-year-old Yusuf Ali Nur after battle with rival group.

By Simba Tian

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 5 (Compass Direct News) – Islamic militants yesterday killed another leader of the underground church movement in Somalia, sources said. Before he was fatally shot on Tuesday (May 4) in Xarardheere, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Jowhar, 57-year-old Yusuf Ali Nur had been on a list of people the Islamic extremist al Shabaab suspected of being Christian, sources who spoke on condition of anonymity told Compass. Al Shabaab, said to have links with al Qaeda, has vowed to rid Somalia of Christianity. The militants fighting the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu had been engaged in a two-hour battle with a rival rebel group, the Ahlu Sunna Waljamer, which had taken control of the Xarardheere area, before they came across Nur. Nur had lived in Xarardheere since leaving Jowhar in July 2009. Eyewitnesses said that after al Shabaab took control of the area, they went from house to house looking for enemy fighters when they arrived at Nur’s rented home at about 10:30 a.m. Sources said that upon finding Nur, one of the militants remarked, “Oh! This is Yusuf, whom we have been looking for,” before they sprayed him with bullets at close range. Nur is survived by his wife, Muna Sheikh Farah, and three children, ages 11, 9 and 7.

 
7.  Pakistani Muslims Abduct Young Christian Woman, Family Says

Mother beaten on two occasions for trying to recover her; police refuse to prosecute.

By Jawad Mazhar

LAHORE, Pakistan, May 6 (Compass Direct News) – Muslims who kidnapped and forcibly converted an 18-year-old Christian woman to Islam severely beat her mother on two occasions to discourage her from trying to recover her daughter, lawyers said. Muhammad Akhter and Muhammad Munir on April 25 broke into the home of 50-year-old widow Fazeelat Bibi while her sons were at work and beat her because they were upset at her continuous demands that they return her daughter Saira, Christian Lawyers Foundation (CLF) leaders told Compass. CLF President Khalid Gill said that neighbors’ calls to the police emergency number went unheeded as the men beat her in Lahore’s predominantly Muslim Bostaan Colony. On April 18 Muhammad Akhter and members of his family had beaten her with clubs and ripped her clothes when the widow, having received a tearful phone call from her kidnapped daughter that day, went to their house to argue for her release. In her telephone call, Fazeelat Bibi said, Saira told her that Munir, Akhter and Munir’s sister Billo Bibi had kidnapped her, stolen the jewelry of her dowry, forced her to convert to Islam and were pressuring her to marry Munir. When Saira was kidnapped on March 10, she was engaged to a young Christian man in Youhanabad, a large Christian slum on the outskirts of Lahore. “Saira’s brothers and I were very joyful because we were about to fix her wedding date,” Fazeelat Bibi said. Kotlakhpat Police Station Inspector Rana Shafiq has flatly refused to help her recover her daughter and has explicitly sided with his fellow Muslims, Gill said. Shafiq was unavailable for comment.

 
8.  Chinese Rights Lawyer Gao Zhisheng Missing Again

Two weeks after release, Christian vanishes while in police custody in northern Xinjiang.

By Sarah Page

DUBLIN, May 7 (Compass Direct News) – Gao Zhisheng, a Christian human rights lawyer released by Chinese officials on April 6 and missing again since April 20, is “definitely in the hands of Chinese security forces,” Bob Fu of the China Aid Association (CAA) told Compass today. “Right now nobody has been able to locate him,” Fu said. “The Chinese security forces need to come up with an explanation.” Gao, initially seized from his home in Shaanxi Province on Feb. 4, 2009 and held incommunicado by security officials for 13 months, was permitted to phone family members and colleagues in late March before officials finally returned him to his Beijing apartment on April 6. Gao had told a reporter from the South China Morning Post (SCMP) that he expected to travel to Urumqi within days of his release to visit his in-laws, and witnesses saw him leaving his apartment sometime between April 9 and 12 and getting into a vehicle parked outside his building, SCMP reported on April 30. Gao’s father-in-law reportedly confirmed that Gao arrived at his home with an escort of four police officers but spent just one night there before police took him away again. Gao phoned his father-in-law shortly before he was due to board a flight back to Beijing on April 20. He promised to call again after returning home but failed to do so, according to the SCMP report. Fu said he believes that international pressure forced authorities to allow Gao a brief re-appearance to prove that he was alive before officials seized him again to prevent information leaking out about his experiences over the past year.


9.  Anti-Christian Motives Suspected in Evangelist’s Slaying in India

Hostilities common in area in Bihar state; victim had been part of team attacked in 2008.

By Shireen Bhatia

NEW DELHI, May 11 (Compass Direct News) – The gruesome nature of the May 2 murder of an evangelist in Bihar state who had no enmity with anyone has led area Christians to suspect anti-Christian motives. The mutilated body of Ravi Murmu, 32, was found in Jamalpur, Munger district, with the right hand nearly severed by means of a sharp weapon, and the jaw and neck were similarly slashed. “Efforts were made to chop off his hand and neck, trying to separate it from his body,” Shekhar Kumar, a member of his church, told Compass. Police are investigating but have made no arrests so far. “All his belongings were intact, which included his motorbike, Bible, cell phone, wristwatch and some cash,” Murmu’s brother-in-law, Shiv Kumar, told Compass. “This seems to be a planned murder. That is why Ravi was targeted when he was alone. To me the motive seems to be anti-Christian.” Murmu’s pastor, Yunus Mandal of Bethel Brethren Assembly in Jamalpur, agreed. “The intention behind the murder evidently is not robbery,” Mandal said. “I am suspicious that Hindu fundamentalists have done this, but this could also be the handiwork of the Naxalites .” About a year and half ago, Murmu was attacked along with others in another part of Bihar state, the Newada area, about 160 kilometers (99 miles) from Jamalpur, Pastor Mandal said. “Ravi at that time was also beaten up and sustained injuries on the face and to his teeth,” he said. “They would have killed us, but they found money in our possession worth about 180 U.S. dollars, and so they looted it and fled.”