World in Brief

An atheist website had such little interest in its global convention that it cancelled the event called ‘A Reason to Hope’.

The website said that ticket sales were substantially below expectations and below the levels for the previous two conventions.

After much criticism, Bolivian president Evo Morales announced on 21 January that his government would repeal a law that seemed set to make evangelism a crime.

The new penal code, placed the ‘recruitment of persons for their participation in religious organisations or cults’ alongside recruitment for armed conflicts or sexual exploitation. The punishment would have been 7–12 years in prison. Catholic and Protestant church leaders protested, fearing it could lead eventually to evangelism being made a crime.

Residents of Roum village in the Far North Region of Cameroon, bordering Nigeria, woke up to find two churches and many houses ablaze on the night of 15 January.

The fire was claimed by Boko Haram militants, who had stormed the village late at night. Four people were killed. Apart from the Union des Eglise Evangelique (UEEC) Church and a Catholic church, the fire also destroyed 93 huts, 20 food storehouses and 11 motorbikes, a local newspaper reported.

Two pastors in neighbouring Guizhou province, Su Tianfu and Yang Hua of Huoshi Church, were fined the equivalent of more than 1 million US dollars in January, after the money they received in collections and offerings from their congregation was deemed ‘illegal income’.

A local source said that the government specifically targets high-profile churches, but that many other congregations do not experience the same level of harassment. Churches that receive overseas support also receive harassment from authorities.

Authorities near Lincang city, Yunnan province, jailed six Christians on 18 January for up to 13 years, accusing them of ‘using an evil cult to undermine law enforcement’.

During the trial, one accused said: ‘I am a Protestant Christian believer, and I believe in Jesus. My evangelism hasn’t contravened principles in the Bible, and my beliefs do not constitute an evil cult.’ The defence lawyers’ licence to practise law will be reviewed under suspicion of ‘illegally’ defending their clients.

An Egyptian Christian was thrown out of his village after it was alleged that he had attacked a Muslim woman, on 17 January.

The Coptic community, of which he was a part, was forced to pay the equivalent of nearly 3,000 US dollars to the woman’s family, though they say the allegations are baseless. The man had gone to collect money he was owed from a Muslim man. It was at the house that the allegations of assault were made.

On 31 January, a court found 15 people guilty of attacking a Coptic church south of Cairo, and also fined a Coptic man for illegally hosting the church on his premises.

The misdemeanour court handed down one-year suspended jail sentences to the 15 attackers, with a fine for ‘inciting sectarian strife, harming national unity and vandalising private property’. The owner of the premises received a fine equivalent to $20,500 for hosting a church without a licence. The church had been meeting for 15 years on the site.

A Coptic Christian killed by Islamic militants in Egypt’s northern Sinai was buried in his village after being shot on 13 January.

Bassem Herz Attalhah, 27, was shot after three Islamist gunmen stopped him and asked if he was a Christian. Demanding to see his hand, as many Copts in Egypt bear a small tattoo of a cross on their wrists, the militants then shot him in the head, killing him instantly.

A church in Marsabit, northern Kenya, was attacked by Muslim youths on 13 January after police arrested a local cleric accused of recruiting young people to join the Somali-based terror group Al Shabaab.

Muslim youths, believed to be the cleric’s students, attacked the premises of a bank and then targeted a church, smashing windows and destroying furniture. The church guard was also assaulted.

Muslim students at a high school in Nairobi beat and stabbed Christians who refused to convert to Islam on 23 January.

Tensions had been growing for weeks, and groups had been segregated along religious lines. The conflict came to a head when Muslim students began speaking in inflammatory terms and tried to force Christian students to recite the Islamic creed for conversion and make them participate in Muslim cleansing rituals.

In early February, an imam admitted he had blocked a Christian’s burial in a state-owned cemetery in Barskoon in Issyk-Kul region.

Accompanied by a ‘mob’ of young men and officials, he then denied all responsibility and tried to blame everything on villagers.

13 January saw the dedication of the first Myanmar Study Bible in Yangon, when many church leaders across different denominations prayed for its wide use.

This edition uses an updated version of the translation by Adoniram Judson. It contains about 1,000 additional notes, and is aimed at helping disciple new Christians. Martin Manser and Pastor Mike Beaumont wrote and edited the English text, which was then translated by a team led by Jacob Mung, leader of CLC Myanmar. Gifts were given from a range of international charities to fund the printing costs.

On 2 January, OM’s first riverboat sailed from Lelystad on a 12-hour voyage to Arnhem, Netherlands, where it was open to the public for the first time.

The highly-anticipated voyage was realised after more than two years of planning and groundwork, since mid-2015. The crew consists of around 80 people who are passionate about Jesus and reaching out to others.

A spate of violence attributed to ethnic Fulani herdsmen in central Nigeria has seen dozens killed since the turn of year.

In Benue State, violence claimed 80 lives and forced 80,000 to flee. The funerals on 11 January for 73 of the victims in Makurdi were broadcast live. Among those killed were seven members of Benue State Livestock Guards – a special paramilitary unit set up by the state governor to ensure the full implementation of the ban on open grazing – their vehicle was torched, and others were injured in separate attacks.

Nigeria’s Department of State Service (DSS) declared in mid-January that Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) is responsible for the killing of Christian farmers in Benue.

DSS claimed that the group is active across the country and is the mastermind of the killings in Benue. The security agency also claimed the Islamic terror group used foreign terrorists and recruited young men to fight and kill innocent Nigerians, ostensibly to exacerbate tensions along the county’s ethnic, religious and regional fault lines.

In late January, a 13-year-old Christian girl was raped by a co-worker at the farm where she worked.

A passing neighbour was alerted by the screaming of her cousin, who was also tied up and told she would be the next victim. Local villagers were stopped from beating up the attacker by the girl’s father, who said the police should deal with the crime.

While walking to school during January, a seven-year-old boy from a Christian family was led away by a Muslim youth and raped.

The family of the attacker tried to pay off the Christian family in accordance with Pakistan’s Qisas and Diyat laws. The victim’s family decided to go through the courts to receive justice.

The rape and murder of a Muslim child made worldwide news in January, which stands in contrast to the many hundreds of children from Christian homes abducted and raped each year in Pakistan which go unreported.

A Muslim high-school student accused of killing a Christian in Pakistan was, in January, freed on bail due to gaps in police investigations.

Sharoon Masih died after Ahmed Raza beat him for drinking water from a glass used by all students. His father based his account to the police on what Muslim student witnesses had told him, but they later changed their story. His son was the only Christian in the class. The post-mortem report also has significant gaps, including the reason for death.

A campaign was launched in January to free a dying Christian asylum seeker from the brutal Immigration Detention Centre of Bangkok, who has been there since April and is suffering from either TB or cancer, according to a hospital diagnosis.

Asloob George was fleeing a blasphemy allegation that led to his third son being beaten by a mob of around half a dozen Muslims and two of his other brothers being attacked.