World in Brief

There has been a sevenfold rise in the persecution of Christians in China since 2008, according to a report published in May by China Aid, a partner of UK-based Release International.

The report claims that China is seeking ‘complete control over the nation’s churches’ with the aim of replacing ‘Christ as the head of the church with submission to the Communist Party’. To that end, China has increased its crackdown on Christians and churches, especially house churches.

In the early hours of the morning of 12 May, the tent where a Christian church just north of Minya had been forced to meet for the past year was set on fire by a group of extremists, leaving it completely destroyed.

The church had been using the tent for its regular church services, functions and celebrations after the local authority sealed off their church building in the wake of protests and riots by local Muslims.

A Coptic human rights activist, arrested on 13 May by Egyptian security officials, faces the possibility of life in prison on concocted charges because of his efforts to expose the persecution of Christians.

Mina Thabet (26), director of the Minority and Religious Groups Department at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), faces ten charges filed against him under anti-terrorism laws that were signed into effect in August 2015.

On 22 May, the beating up and arrest of Pastor V. A. Antony (50), his wife, a female church member and her four-year-old son in Satna, Madhya Pradesh, marks the two-year anniversary of the Narendra Modi-led NDA II government.

Mr Antony, leader of the Brethren Church in the village of Aber, nearly 30 kilometres from Satna city, has been ministering in the area for 18 years.

Two Christians were humiliated and tortured for their faith in a village in Chhattisgarh state on 20 April.

The older of the two, Jai Singh, was burnt with a fire-heated coin on his tongue and several other parts of his body as punishment for refusing to deny Christ. Initially they were questioned as to why they had not renounced their Christian faith, but slowly the conversation turned into abuse and death threats.

They were told that if they are found worshipping Christ, they will be cut into small pieces.

Nearly 500 people were baptised in May at various conferences, while hundreds of others have been discipled.

Tens of thousands of New Testaments have been distributed since the beginning of 2016. Elam’s people on the ground continue to be amazed by the way God is at work. One leader commented at a recent baptism of nearly 300 people: ‘It felt like an unstoppable force was at work’.

On the last day of Malaysia’s latest session of Parliament in late May, a member of the ruling coalition, UMNO (United Malays National Organisation), had a Bill amendment approved which aims to tighten the implementation of Shari’a law.

Critics claim that it intends to bring in hudud punishments, such as lashes for adultery and hand amputation for theft (the term hudud refers to punishments ‘decreed by God’). Non-Muslim Malaysians, including many Chinese and Indians, reacted strongly, saying the Prime Minister is under pressure from the Islamist party, which first proposed the Bill, due to up-coming by-elections.

Pastor Guillermo Favela, President of the AEBC Tijuana Ministerial Evangelical Alliance and pastor of the Rios de Agua Viva Church, was stabbed on a street near his church on 18 May.

The assailant demanded that Mr Favela pay 30,000 pesos (approximately £1,112) per month in protection money for the church. When Mr Favela refused, the assailant stabbed him under his left arm before fleeing the scene. The pastor’s wounds were not serious and he was able to file a formal complaint. However, although the authorities subsequently apprehended the assailant, he has since been released.

At least one Christian was killed, several injured and two church buildings attacked in Pandogari, Niger state, on 29 May after a Facebook exchange resulted in a Muslim accusation of blasphemy.

Fellowship Baptist Church, a house and a shop were burned and rioters blocked the Lagos–Kaduna Road, a major artery connecting the northern and southern parts of the country. On 30 May, 25 other shops were looted. Some arrests have been made in connection with the violence and the suspects handed over to the police.

Nigeria’s National Assembly is considering a change to the country’s Constitution that would expand the scope of jurisdiction of the country’s Islamic Shari’a Courts of Appeal, it was reported in early June.

Currently, the Constitution limits those appellate courts to matters concerning family law. If approved, the change would permit Shari’a appellate courts to take up criminal cases, some of which carry the death penalty, arising from lower Shari’a courts. Christian churches in Nigeria say the proposal is a step toward Islamising Nigeria.

Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed three Christians in their home in Ninte village, Jema’a Local Government Area, Kaduna state, in the early hours of 31 May, days after herdsmen attacked another local Christian with machetes.

The armed herdsmen burned a pastor’s house among others.

Floods and mudslides throughout Sri Lanka in mid-May killed at least 58 and affected nearly 420,000 people.

The disaster was triggered by a storm and three days of incessant rain, the worst since 2010. 19 of Sri Lanka’s 25 districts were affected. Several of the flooded areas contain considerable Christian communities. Around 2,000 Christian families are displaced or affected by the floods or landslides. Most of the displaced Christian families are taking shelter in churches, schools and other religious grounds.

After nearly half a year in detention, 36year-old Telahoon (Telal) Nogosi Kassa Rata was released from Khartoum’s Kober prison on 10 May.

Since his as-yet unexplained arrest on 13 December 2015, the leader of Khartoum North (Bahri) Evangelical Church was allowed no access to his lawyer and it is unknown whether he will face charges.

A Sudanese Air Force bombing of civilians in the Nuba Mountains town of Heiban on 23 May struck a Christian family (Sudanese Church of Christ), killing a six-month-old boy and wounding six others.

A spokesman for the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N), which is battling government forces in south-eastern Sudan, noted the bombing in a press statement on Facebook.

On 12-13 May, a group from Islamic State (IS) entered a town near the city of Hama, populated only by Christians and Alawites, killing an unspecified number of men, women and children.

Prior to the women being killed they were raped.

A study published in May found that older women who go to church more than once a week live, on average, five months longer than those who don't.

They discovered that fewer depressive symptoms, greater optimism, stronger social networks and lower rates of smoking were all contributing factors. Researchers examined the health records of nearly 75,000 women who were mostly Christians and had an average age of 60. Looking at all causes of death, academics from the public health graduate school at Harvard University concluded that they were 33% less likely to die over a 16year period.

A man was sentenced at the end of May to attend 12 weeks of Sunday services at a Baptist church.

Jake Strotman, a Catholic, had assaulted a group of Baptist street preachers in Cincinnati, Ohio. The 23-year-old was also ordered by the judge to pay $480 court fines and the minister at Morning Star Baptist Church in West Chester Township must sign off his attendances at the twelve Sunday services.

The wife and family of imprisoned Vietnamese pastor and religious freedom activist Nguyen Cong Chinh suffered beatings and mistreatment at the hands of the authorities on three occasions between 11 and 13 May, while their 18-year-old son was arrested when he tried to protect his mother.

This continues a pattern of official harassment of the family which the pastor’s wife, Tran Thi Hong, describes as ‘intolerable’. Her husband was jailed for 11 years in 2012, ironically accused of having ‘colluded with foreign reactionaries’ in ‘anti-government activities’ in order to ‘falsely accuse Vietnam of suppressing religious freedom’.