These articles were first published in our February edition of the newspaper, click here for more.
Fourteen members of the same Christian family, including five boys, were shot dead in an Islamist extremist attack on a church in southeast Burkina Faso during Sunday morning worship on 1 December.
The pastor was killed, leaving only one male survivor in the church’s congregation. ‘Eighty members were gathered there [at the service] including 15 men, the rest were women and young children. Of the 15 men, 14 were killed in cold blood on the spot.’
Two pastors were shot dead by Muslim militants as they travelled together by car after a Christmas service on 25 December.
Pastor Paul Djirobe was driving from his church in Batangafo to Bouca to the home of Pastor Michael Radjino, a visiting coordinator of a group of evangelical churches, when they were attacked by Seleka jihadists. Both men were shot in the head. Militants continued shooting, preventing efforts to recover the bodies. The men had to be buried later at the scene of the attack.
In December, Pastor Wang Yi was sentenced to nine years in prison for ‘subversion’ and ‘illegal business activities’ in China, showing how authorities there are increasingly intolerant of unregistered churches.
Pastor Wang will also have $7,200 (£5,519.88) of his assets seized and be ‘stripped of political rights’ for three years, according to a government statement. Bob Fu, president of the China Aid Association, said: ‘This is a pure case of unjust religious persecution against a peaceful preacher of a Chinese Reformed church’.
Egyptian authorities eased strict civil-defence building regulations in December, permitting the approval of 87 licences for church and church-affiliated buildings – an increase on the 64 agreed on 22 October.
This brings the total number of buildings licensed to 1,322 of the original 3,730 that applied for registration before the process began in 2017.
Five extremists threatened to burn alive Christians attending an Advent celebration in a private house in Tamil Nadu, India on 17 December.
They also forced the owner of the house where the celebration was being held to evict his tenants, a Christian couple. A pastor in attendance sought immediate medical help for the injured at a police checkpoint, but was turned away. Local sources say the complaint was eventually recorded as a ‘non-cognisable offence’, meaning the police cannot make an arrest.
Christians, arrested in central India after Hindu nationalist tribal villagers disrupted their worship service, spent Christmas in prison before they were released on bail after 11 days – accused of illegally practicing medicine.
They were initially arrested after more than a dozen tribal villagers radicalised by Hindu nationalists intruded into their housechurch worship service on 10 December wearing blankets that concealed guns and locally-made sharp weapons. The charge of unregistered medical practice was apparently based on the Christians engaging in prayer for healing.
Ten Christians and one Muslim were killed by Boko Haram in Nigeria on Christmas Day, International Christian Concern has reported.
The Boko Haram sect known as Islamic State West Africa Province released a video showing the execution. In the video, the group explains that this execution was done in order to avenge the killings of two ISIS leaders. Both of these terrorist leaders were killed in US military actions this year.
The authorities of the unrecognised Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine have banned 12 ‘extremist’ Baptist books, a human-rights organisation reported in December.
The books included the Gospel of John. The ban came a week after Luhansk’s Supreme Court overturned part of a lower court decision that Christian books seized from a Baptist pastor should be destroyed. The Supreme Court upheld the pastor’s fine of more than a month’s average local wage.
A New York school district violated both the US Constitution and federal law when it repeatedly denied a freshman student the right to form a Christian club at her high school, a religious liberty legal group reported in December.
First Liberty Institute is representing Daniela Barca, who says she was denied the right to form an officially recognised Christian club though the high school has clubs including the Pride Club (GSA) and the Masque & Mime Society.