World in Brief

A coalition of jihadist groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda released a video showing six foreign hostages, including three missionaries, on 1 July.

82-year-old Ken Elliott was shown in the video. He was kidnapped in January 2016 in Burkina Faso. In it, Ken requested that governments work to negotiate his release. He said he appreciated all the prayers for him and hopes to be reunited with his family. His wife was kidnapped at the same time as Ken, but was released after a month.

Attacks on Christian communities have continued, despite the government signing a peace agreement with 13 rebel groups in Rome on 19 June.

On 21 June, the house of a church pastor in Bria, around 350 miles north-east of the capital Bangui, was torched. Many churches are still being burned down and Christians are fleeing into bushes. Reprisal attacks on Muslims by so-called Christian ‘anti-balaka’ groups have also continued; church leaders have repeatedly condemned violence by the militias.

Three gay men say they have gained legal recognition as the first ‘polyamorous family’ in Colombia, it was reported in June.

Victor Hugo Prada and his two partners, sports instructor John Alejandro Rodriguez and journalist Manuel Jose Bermudez, signed legal papers with a solicitor in the city of Medellin, establishing them as a family unit with inheritance rights.

A religious freedom defender was blocked from leaving Cuba to attend a conference on human rights and democracy on 17 June.

While Llerena López was not given a reason for the travel ban, he was told that it had been put in place after he returned from a visit to the United States, where he had raised concerns about freedom of religious belief violations in meetings with US government officials

Over 120 Christians have been arrested around the date when Eritrea celebrates its Independence Day.

Many evangelicals cannot take part in the celebrations due to conflicts with their faith. Evangelicals and Pentecostals have been at particular risk of arrest since a 2002 law was passed prohibiting Christian practice outside the Sunni Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran denominations,

The leader of a Hindu nationalist organisation, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, has called upon Hindus to make India a ‘Hindu nation’ by 2023, it was reported in June.

Sadhvi Saraswati stated that ‘Christians and Muslims in the country have to … do a ghar wapasi’, a Hindi phrase meaning ‘homecoming’, which implies that all non-Hindus should return to their original ‘home’ which is regarded as Hinduism. He also claimed that taking up arms would not be wrong in protecting Hinduism.

Police in Madhya Pradesh have granted bail to a youth who was arrested along with six other believers who were taking a group of

children to a Christian summer camp in May.

Six adults remain in custody. They face charges of kidnapping and forced conversion, as authorities claim that the parents had not submitted the necessary paperwork when they converted to Christianity and therefore their children are still officially Hindu. Allegations of prison beatings have been made.

Four Iranian converts facing the possibility of up to six years in prison on charges of ‘acting against national security’ are awaiting a verdict after their 14 June hearing.

Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, Mohammadreza Omidi, Yasser Mossayebzadeh and Saheb Fadaie were charged with ‘Acting against national security’, a catch-all charge often used by the Iranian government to punish different types of religious and political dissent, as the charge of apostasy would draw international scrutiny.

An historic Assyrian Christian cemetery in north-west Iran was destroyed in June in what appears to be part of a continued effort to eradicate historical evidence of Christianity in Iran.

A video from Kermanshah city shows flattened and smashed gravestones, some of which have been defaced with graffiti. Christians from Iran’s ancient Assyrian and Armenian minorities are the only Christian groups legally permitted to meet to worship; Iranian Farsi-speaking believers (converts from Islam and their children) are brutally repressed.

Suspected Al Shabaab militants walked into an elementary school compound in northeastern Kenya on 31 May and shot a Christian teacher to death.

Trying to shield the Kenyan Christian, a Muslim teacher of Somali descent told the assailants he would die with him.

One of two assistant pastors arrested by the Burma army is suffering deteriorating health from malnutrition it was reported in June.

Pastor Dom Dawng Nawng Latt, 65, has become weak, lacks energy and suffers from asthma and diarrhoea. The two were arrested for helping local journalists cover attacks on a church building. They tried to negotiate the release of a civilian couple who had complained to army officials about the destruction of their house, but military officials released the couple and detained the clergymen.

A Christian medical worker in Lahore was attacked with acid by a Muslim colleague earlier in 2017.

Twenty-five-year-old Stella Masih, the only Christian member of staff at a medical clinic in Dunyapur, Lahore, had been repeatedly insulted and falsely accused by a Muslim colleague. Despite receiving abuse, she continued to work at the clinic, where she was highly regarded by the management. The acid was thrown across her abdomen.

A court in Pakistan has ordered police to register a case against family members and colleagues of Christian sanitation worker Irfan Masih, who died on 1 June after doctors declined to provide timely medical care.

The family have been accused of attacking the hospital. The man was not treated as the doctor would not touch him as he was covered in filth from his job as a sanitary worker.

Muslims have been lending Christians hijabs so that they can escape the attention of Islamic State militants, who still control parts of the city, it was reported in June.

Around 1,500 civilians are reported to be trapped in Marawi, nearly a month after Islamist militants stormed the city on the island of Mindanao and began targeting Christians and torching churches. Troops have been sent to Marawi as government forces continue to battle with militants who have campaigned for Mindanao to become an Islamic state governed by shar’ia law.

Islamist militants in Marawi are reportedly holding more than 100 Christians as human shields, as the government continues efforts to retake parts of the city, which was taken over by Islamists in May.

The ‘Maute’ Islamist group responsible has declared allegiance to Islamic State (IS) and used an IS media outlet to publicise their desecration of a church in the city. According to a Philippines Army spokesman, women have been kept as sex slaves.

Over 190 incidents of violence against Christians has been recorded since the current government came to power in 2015.

Parallel attacks have taken place on Muslims and both have been blamed on a Buddhist nationalist organisation called Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force).

Prominent Sri Lankan human rights lawyer Lakshan Dias has been criticised by government officials and threatened with being disbarred from his profession after commenting on religious intolerance against Christians and Muslims during his appearance on a television talk show on 14 June.

He quoted data which estimates that Christians were subject to 195 incidents of discrimination, intimidation and violence between 2015 and June 2017.

On the day before churches were bulldozed (July en), the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) wrote an open letter to the Khartoum government protesting ‘the systematic violation of Christian religious freedoms’.

In the letter, the headquarters of the SCOC detailed the ‘hard conditions’ they have faced in recent years, including the demolition of churches, confiscation of church property, government failure to allocate land for construction of any new churches, and travel restrictions on senior church leaders.

US Soccer ordered all players in both their men’s and women’s national teams to wear gay pride shirts during matches against Sweden and Norway in June to celebrate gay pride month.

One star player, Jaelene Hinkle, who is a deeply committed Christian, withdrew from the national team for what US soccer has officially termed ‘personal reasons’.