World in Brief

Suspected Fulani herdsmen have attacked a Baptist worship service in north-central Nigeria, killing one Christian, wounding another and abducting five others.

‘The Fulani herdsmen came to our village as the church service was going on,’ said Yakubu Bala of Haske Baptist Church in Manini Tasha village, Kaduna state. ‘They surrounded the church and started shooting. They rode on motorcycles, firing at us randomly and at anyone they sighted.’ Nigeria was at the top of the world rankings in the number of kidnapped Christians last year with 990.

The city of Cremona in Italy’s Lombardy region has honoured US-based evangelical humanitarian relief organisation Samaritan’s Purse with the award of ‘honorary citizenship’ for its relief work during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Samaritan’s Purse operated a field hospital last Spring to support the overwhelmed regional health system. For 60 days, 100 medics treated 281 patients in 60 beds, in the city of 77,000 inhabitants.

Their efforts were ‘much appreciated by citizens, local authorities and the city’s hospital structure’ and the decision to give the award was approved unanimously by all political parties.

Pro-life and pro-family evangelical pastor Milagros Jaúregui Aguayo has been elected to the Peruvian National Congress. She was standing for the conservative Renovación Popular Party.

‘Attempts to distort and legally falsify God’s proposal regarding life and the family have increased. That is why I have decided to participate in the next election’, Aguayo said at the start of her campaign. ‘We must be generous and look out for those most in need. We are living epistles who show who Jesus really is’.

The wife of disappeared Chinese human-rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng (see photo) has called on the Chinese Government to return his remains. She believes he may have been ‘persecuted to death’.

Gao Zhisheng frequently took on human-rights cases and defended religious minorities. He was first detained by the authorities in 2006, and subsequently suffered multiple disappearances, beatings and torture. He served a prison sentence from 2011–2014. He was released in 2014, only to disappear again in 2017. Gao’s current whereabouts are unknown, but he may still be in some form of detention.

Christian schools in the Holy Land are struggling to survive as families withdraw their children because of economic hardship brought on by the pandemic.

Schools rely on fees as they receive no financial support from local authorities, but in a region that relies heavily on tourism, many families have been left unable to meet the cost. The charity Friends of the Holy Land said Covid had devastated livelihoods after a year without tourists, placing huge burdens on families. Many have used up all their reserves during lockdown, leaving them now unable to afford school fees.

Prominent Muslim political leader Rishad Bathiudeen and his brother Reyaj have been detained in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings of three churches and three hotels in Sri Lanka that killed over 269 people.

They were arrested in pre-dawn raids with circumstantial and ‘scientific’ evidence connecting them to the attacks. A police spokesperson said the brothers had allegedly aided and abetted those ‘who committed the Easter Sunday carnage’. Bathiudeen’s lawyer, Rushdhie Habeeb, called the arrests politically motivated and said there was no reason given.

A mother of seven children in eastern Uganda suffered serious wounds and was cut off from her family after her husband and other Muslim relatives attacked her on Easter Sunday for putting her faith in Christ.

Salimati Naibira, 37, of Bukoba B village, Mayuge District, lost consciousness after her husband cut her with a dagger, known as a Somali sword, in the thigh and back as she attended a local worship service for the first time. She had converted from Islam to Christianity three days prior.

Police in Lahore have tortured a Christian man into confessing to a false allegation of blaspheming Islam and illegally kept him in custody for more than two months, despite the law requiring he be brought before a judge within 24 hours of arrest.

Salamat Mansha Masih’s attorney, Aneeqa Maria, said he was detained after Muslims overheard him reading the Bible in a park and accused him of ridiculing Islam and its prophet. During his unlawful detention, Masih ‘was mentally and physically tortured to confess to the baseless accusation’.

Photographer Robert Updegrove (see photo) is suing the state of Virginia over a law that would force him to service same-sex weddings – despite religious objections. He is continuing his legal battle after a lower district court dismissed his initial complaint.

At issue is the Virginia Values Act, a law that expanded state anti-discrimination rules to include sexual orientation and gender identity. According to legal filings, Updegrove seeks to conduct his custom photography business for engagement sessions and wedding ceremonies ‘celebrating the union of one man and one woman’.

The state of Arizona has made it a felony to perform abortions based on genetic abnormalities, such as Down’s syndrome, and has also enacted other pro-life measures.

Governor Doug Ducey said the new law is part of his commitment to pro-life ideals. ‘There’s immeasurable value in every single life – regardless of genetic makeup. This legislation goes a long way in protecting real human lives.’ The law includes exemptions for life-threatening medical emergencies for the mother and when the deformity is itself lethal. Medical providers who perform prohibited abortions could go to prison.

An armed group has attacked and set fire to an evangelical church in a rural part of Padre Las Casas, in the Araucanía region of Chile.

The attack occurred just 40 metres away from another evangelical church, the Pailahueque community, which was burned down recently and its educational centre totally destroyed. Volunteer firefighters went to the scene but were shot at when they arrived at the burning premises. The latest burnings are believed to be a continuation of a long-running political campaign to scrap Chile’s General Pinochet-era Constitution, which happened last October.