These articles were first published in our November edition of the newspaper, click here for more.
On 15 October, authorities in Algeria closed the buildings of two of the largest protestant churches in the nation.
A 500-member church in Makouda was closed with just one day’s notice. The church family occupied the building in protest at the closure. The church of Tizi-Ouzou, with 1,000 members, was also closed with no notice given. This follows the closure of a church in Tigzirt on 24 September, two days after shutting another building serving two churches without prior notice.
Tang Jingling, a Chinese human-rights lawyer, was arbitrarily detained for ten days after being reported missing, with his whereabouts remaining unknown until his release on 8 September.
Tang was stopped at a station in Guangzhou on 29 August and prevented from travelling. He subsequently spent several days in detention, during which police confiscated his passport. After his release there was also an unexplained power cut at his home. He had just completed five years in jail without access to his Bible or his family.
Hindu extremists and police in eastern India ordered jailed Christians to stop gathering for worship, with the extremists threatening to bring a venomous snake to bite a pastor’s wife, sources said in September.
The house-church pastor, disabled by polio, had been arrested in Jharkhand state with his family and other Christians. The hard-line Hindus disrupted their worship, beat the pastor and live-streamed hostile commentary on Facebook. One passer-by told the Hindu extremist leader the Christians ‘should be sacrificed alive’.
Rohit Oraon believes the murder of his wife was planned, and that his relatives also meant to kill him and his child, it was reported in September.
The 25-year-old knew his brother and father disapproved of him marrying out of his tribe and becoming a Christian. His wife was killed by an axe blow to her head, which took place in front of their three-yearold. Relatives were jealous of his prosperity and the fellowship he had found among Christians.
A Kurdish bookseller spent months in pris-on in Iran for selling a Farsi Bible, accord-ing to reports in September.
Mustafa Rahimi, who was seized by government security agents, was fined and given the prison sentence in June. He was bailed, but summoned to jail a few days later. Reports varied as to whether Rahimi was sentenced to six months and one day or three months and one day.
An Iranian Christian couple and their son had their court appeals against lengthy prison sentences postponed on 3 September after the judge failed to turn up.
They had been sentenced for ‘acting against national security’. No new date has been scheduled for the appeals of Pastor Victor Bet Tamraz, his wife Shamiram and their son Ramiel. Bet Tamraz was pastor of an Assyrian church in Tehran before it was closed for worshipping in Farsi, the language spoken by most Iranian Muslims.
On 9 September, a Myanmar military offi-cer dropped a lawsuit against Kachin pastor Hkalam Samson, who had spoken about human-rights violations.
The pastor had said on a live broadcast that there was no religious freedom in the nation, and that oppression and torture were still common.
On 14 September a woman was kidnapped by Muslim Fulani herdsmen, and then killed despite her family paying a ransom for her release.
Her husband, the Revd Ishaku Katung of the Evangelical Church Winning All, Bagoma, escaped when the herdsmen broke into their home, but was wounded by gunfire. His kidnapped wife’s legs were broken in order to prevent her from escaping. She was later killed and dumped in the bush.
Amir Masih, a Christian, died on 3 September as a result of severe torture while being held in police custody in Lahore.
A post-mortem examination found evidence of torture on Masih’s body. He had gone voluntarily to the police to give a statement to clear his name following a minor theft from his employer’s home. CCTV footage showed two officers at a hospital with Masih, who was unable to stand. One of the officers kicked him while he was on the ground before both officers dragged him inside.