Steel On Steel Persecution Update
August 29, 2010
Edited by: Donald McElvaney, www.missionbarnabas.org
Top Stories:
1. Rapes of Christian Girls in Pakistan Reflect Hidden Trend
2. Unchecked Extremism’ behind Attacks on Churches in Indonesia
3. Coptic Blogger in Egypt Released from Prison
4. Evangelist Arrested in Zanzibar, Tanzania
5. Blasphemy’ Threats Send Pakistani Worker, Couple into Hiding
6. Victim of Orissa, India Violence Rescued from Trafficking Ring
7. Family Refutes Police Claims in Death of Christian in India
1. Rapes of Christian Girls in Pakistan Reflect Hidden Trend
Sexual assault by Muslim extremists is commonplace but rarely reported.
By John Little and Walter Smith
FAROOQABAD, Pakistan, August 16 (Compass Direct New) – A Muslim landowner allegedly targeted a 16-year-old Christian girl, and a gang of madrassa (Islamic school) students allegedly abused a 12-year-old in Punjab Province last month. In Farooqabad, Shiekhupura district, three Muslim co-workers of a Christian man allegedly raped his 16-year-old daughter at gunpoint the night of July 21; the following evening in Gujar Khan, Rawalpindi district, more than a half dozen madrassa students decided to “teach these Christians a lesson” by allegedly gang-raping the 12-year-old girl. School teacher Rana Aftab said she overheard one of the students saying, “We will teach these Christians a lesson they will never forget.” Seven or eight of them raped the girl while the others looked on, Aftab said. The alleged victim’s father, Pervaiz Masih, and Aftab went to the police station to register a complaint, but the officer in charge refused to register it, Aftab said. When Compass contacted officers, one admitted that they are under pressure from Muslims leaders and extremists to refrain from filing a First Information Report (FIR). In eastern Punjab Province’s Farooqabad, the Christian father of the allegedly raped 16-year-old girl said he was later kidnapped and tortured. In his complaint to police, Ghafoor Masih of Kot Sandha village said he was working the fields when three men who work for his Muslim employer, Hajji Rashid Jutt, overpowered his daughter while she was home and dragged her into one of the rooms of the house at gunpoint. “Muslim landowners and their relatives see Christian girls or women as their chattel,” said Joseph Francis, national director of the Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement. “Day by day the rate of rapes of Christian girls is escalating instead of plunging.”
2. ‘Unchecked Extremism’ behind Attacks on Churches in Indonesia
Christians, moderate Muslims blame growth of Islamism under ‘weak’ government.
By Vishal Arora
JAKARTA, Indonesia, August 17 (Compass Direct News) – The country that is home to the world’s largest Muslim population celebrated its 65th Independence Day today amid a widespread sense of distrust in the government’s ability to check attacks on churches by Islamist groups. Muslims and Islamic organizations, Buddhists and Hindus joined hundreds of Christians for an ecumenical worship service near National Monument Square in Jakarta to protest “government inaction” over attacks on Christians and “forced closure of churches,” reported The Jakarta Globe. They had planned to hold the service outside the State Palace, but the government prohibited it due to preparations for Independence Day celebrations, the daily reported. “Why did it take President Yudhoyono so many days to speak against the attacks?” the Rev. Dr. SAE Nababan, president of the World Council of Churches from Asia, told Compass. “Such carelessness can be dangerous for our democracy. Officials must not forget that they are accountable to the people.” Nababan was referring to President Yudhoyono’s call for religious harmony a day before the month-long Islamic festival of fasting, Ramadan, began here last Wednesday (Aug. 11). According to the Globe, it was the president’s “first public comment” addressing “a recent rash of violence against religious minorities.” The president’s statement came after a fifth attack on the Batak Christian Protestant Filadelfia Church (HKBP Filadelfia) in Bekasi city, a suburb of Jakarta, on Aug. 8. Endy Bayuni, former editor of The Jakarta Post, told Compass that churches were being attacked every week but that media were avoiding coverage because it is an “emotional and controversial issue.”
3. Coptic Blogger in Egypt Released from Prison
Pressured to convert to Islam, falsely accused Christian freed under reformed Emergency Law.
By Wayne King
ISTANBUL, August 17 (Compass Direct News) – A Coptic Christian blogger arrested in Egypt on false charges of insulting Islam, then held for almost two years without charge under the country’s Emergency Law, has been released from prison. Hani Nazeer, 31, a high school social worker and blogger, was arrested Oct. 3, 2008 in response to a link to a Coptic Web site he placed on his Web log, “The Preacher of Love.” The Coptic Web site had a link to an online copy of “Azazil’s Goat in Mecca,” a controversial book written in response to “Azazil,” a novel critical of Christianity. During his imprisonment, Nazeer said he was beaten, pressured to convert to Islam and was exposed to constant deprivation. Because of recent reforms to the Emergency Law, Nazeer was released on July 22. Some of the 30 hardened criminals housed with him in a single cell tried repeatedly to convert him to Islam, he said. Nazeer said he wasn’t tortured individually, but that on one occasion guards beat him and other prisoners with sticks during a visit by a police major. He said he was able to get a Bible in prison and was even able to discuss Christ with two ethnic Copts who were incarcerated on felony charges. In May, Egypt amended the Emergency Law to stipulate that only people suspected of committing terrorist acts or of selling illegal narcotics could be arrested. Azza Taher Matar, a member of the International Relations Unit at the Arabic Center for Human Rights Information, said it is likely that the reforms to the Emergency Law will lead to authorities filing more charges of religious defamation against people in an effort to work around changes to the law.
4. Evangelist Arrested in Zanzibar, Tanzania
Elsewhere on island off East Africa, Christians prohibited from worshipping at
university.
By Simba Tian
NAIROBI, Kenya, August 19 (Compass Direct News) – Christian university students on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar, a predominantly Muslim area off the coast of East Africa, have been denied the right to worship, while on another part of the isle a Christian leader has been jailed. Sources said Peter Masanja, an evangelist in Zanzibar’s southeastern town of Paje, was arrested by security agents sometime in early August. Earlier this year Masanja, a member of the Pentecostal Church in Zanzibar, would invite Christians to his house, as he had made part of his land available for church activities. Angry Muslims vowed to prohibit any Christian activities there, sources said. Pastors from Tanzania’s Zanzibar Island sought to meet with prison authorities about Masanja’s arrest, but officials informed them that the person in charge of the prison was away on official business, said Bishop Obeid Fabian, chairman of an association of congregations known as the Fraternal Churches. At Zanzibar University, a private school in Tunguu 18 kilometers (12 miles) from Zanzibar Town, Islamic administrators have denied Christian students freedom of worship while retaining that constitutional right for Muslims, said Samson Zuberi, Christian Union students coordinator. Three student Christian Union leaders have protested to school officials and threatened to go to court over the discrimination, he said. In an April 12 circular, university Dean of Students Mavua H. Mussa warned those defying worship regulations to seek other learning institutions, saying that the ban on religious activities in lecture theaters, halls of residence or anywhere else on campus was absolute. Students said the ban violates the Zanzibar constitution’s provisions for freedom of association.
5. ‘Blasphemy’ Threats Send Pakistani Worker, Couple into Hiding
Pretexts for filing charges of blaspheming Muhammad, Quran are easy to find.
By Walter Smith
BAHAWALNAGAR, Pakistan (Compass Direct News) – Threats of “blasphemy” charges in two provinces in Pakistan have sent a Christian cleaning worker and a young inter-faith couple into hiding. In Chishtian, Bahawalnagar district in Punjab Province, Muslim extremists accused cleaning worker Tanvir Masih of New Christian Colony with blasphemy after they found him using a broom whose handle was covered with a pharmaceutical firm’s advertisement cards bearing a verse from the Quran that read, “God is the best healer!” Masih’s employer, a physician identified only as Dr. Arshad of the privately owned Bajwa Clinic, and the district health officer decided that Masih had committed no blasphemy against Muhammad, the Quran or Islam, and the extremists initially said they accepted their decision, a local pastor said. As Masih came out of the clinic, however, he found irate Muslims had thronged the road, and he made a sprint for his life; since then no one has seen him or his family there. In Karachi, Sindh Province, the Muslim in-laws of a 33-year-old Christian man threatened to charge him with blasphemy – and kill his wife for suspected “apostasy,” or leaving Islam – after he refused to divorce her, the Christian man informed Compass. Shahbaz Javed said that since he secretly wed Mehwish Naz in a civil court in October 2008, his Muslim employer fired him from his factory job, and his wife’s relatives found out where they lived and began to threaten them unless she divorced him. “Her parents warned her again that if she did not give up all this, they would file a case of apostasy against her and implicate Shahbaz Javed in a blasphemy case or kill him,” said the Rev. Khadim Bhutto, a Christian rights worker for Gawahi Mission Trust (GMT).
6. Victim of Orissa, India Violence Rescued from Trafficking Ring
Christians displaced by Kandhamal violence in 2008 sold for coerced labor or sex.
By Shireen Bhatia
NEW DELHI, August 25 (Compasss Direct News) – 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. 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 Kandhmal district to the capital in December 2009, according to the Human Rights Law Network. Her sister and the other two girls remain missing. “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. 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. 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.
7. Family Refutes Police Claims in Death of Christian in India
Bible teacher in Rajasthan state, 20, faced opposition from Hindu nationalists.
By Vishal Arora
NEW DELHI, August 25 (Compass Direct News) – The family of a 20-year-old Christian found dead last week in the northern state of Rajasthan suspects he was killed by Hindu nationalists, though police claim he died of cardiac arrest. Narayan Lal, a farmer from Hameerpura Patar village in Arnod sub-district of Rajasthan’s Pratapgarh district, was found dead the evening of Aug. 17 near a forest where he had gone to tend his goats. Lal was a volunteer teacher in a 10-day Vacation Bible School organized by indigenous Christian organization Light of the World Service Society (Jagat Jyoti Seva Sansthan) in his village area in May, and a relative who requested anonymity told Compass that some villagers did not approve of the young man spreading Christianity. “It seems his throat was strangulated,” the relative said. “I do not know who did it, but I am sure he was murdered. His family was facing opposition for their Christian work, particularly by some residents of Nadikhera village .” A post-mortem report showed no injuries or bruises, and three doctors suggested he died of cardio-respiratory failure, police said. The relative questioned why police did not inform the family of their autopsy report. “We would have taken the body to a private hospital for confirmation,” he said. Though police denied having heard that the family suspected murder, the relative said that Lal’s father told police his son was seemingly killed by some people from Nadikhera village who had been opposing him and his family. Salamgarh Police Inspector Govardhan Ram Chowdhary was unavailable for comment.
For more information concerning the persecution of Christians around the world, please contact Compass Direct at www.compassdirect.org
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