World in Brief

Many Nigerian Christian refugees who fled to Cameroon to try and escape Boko Haram as well as internally displaced Cameroonians are now facing hunger, it was reported in August.

Many refugees fled to Cameroon, which is around 70% Christian, to escape from Boko Haram, only to find that the group expanded its operations and began attacking communities in northern Cameroon. Some displaced Christians have faced further violence from Muslim cattle herders for attempting to grow crops in the bush. Schools and hospitals in the area are also non-functioning.

The large congregation of Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto welcomed home their Senior Pastor, Hyeon Soo Lim, on 13 August after being held for more than two years of a life sentence in a North Korean labour camp.

Lim said he knew people were praying and that daily the feeling of loneliness and isolation turned to ‘peaceful solitude with God’ as he prayed too. Remarkably, he was allowed to keep the Bible he was sent from home and he memorised 700 verses.

Zhang Xiuhong, the former deacon of Living Stone Church, Guizhou Province, was released on 7 August after spending more than two years in detention.

The deacon was stopped and hauled from her car, her house was raided, and she was subsequently charged with ‘illegal business operations’. However, her interrogators’ questions mainly focused on the church, its pastors and other core members, rather than her business activities. Held for 18 months before her trial, she will face restrictions for the duration of her five-year suspended sentence.

A church in Egypt’s Minya province was closed in August by the local authorities after Muslim extremists threatened to riot if it was not shut down.

At least 15 other churches remain closed after the government voiced similar ‘security concerns’. Islamists have repeatedly tried to either close down or destroy churches in Minya. After President Morsi’s government was ousted in 2013, more than 1,000 Muslim Brotherhood supporters attacked and set fire to churches there.

After spending 95 days in jail, six Christian men arrested in May as they travelled with children to a Bible School summer camp, were granted bail in late August.

They still face charges of ‘forced conversion.’ One of the men, Amiya Jal, a schoolteacher and a volunteer church leader, was told by some Hindu extremists that he cannot return to work until the case has ended.

Church leaders in India have criticised the 12 August introduction of an ‘anti-conversion law’ in the eastern state of Jharkhand.

The Freedom of Religion Bill, introduced and passed on the same day, seems harmless in name, but in reality prevents people from having the freedom to choose to change their religion. Under the new law, offenders – those deemed to have ‘forced’ another person to change their religion – could face imprisonment or fines.

An Iranian ayatollah in Qom warned, in August, that more and more Iranian young people are converting to Christianity.

External evidence corroborates his assertion that many Iranian young people are embracing Christianity. This is despite those converting facing prison or even death for doing so.

After a Protestant pastor and five foreign guests held baptisms in hot springs near Almaty, a court fined all six and ordered one foreigner deported, it was reported in late August.

It was deemed that they had conducted illegal ‘missionary activity’. A Baptist pastor succeeded in overturning a police fine for leading his church.

Three men were beheaded and several houses torched on 18 August during an early morning raid on a village on the northern coast of Kenya by members of the Somali Islamist terror group, al Shabaab.

The gunmen reportedly struck Maleli Village in Lamu County at around 12.30am, targeting men, but sparing women and children. A night-time curfew, imposed following similar raids in July, has been extended for three months. The assailants are believed to have hideouts and training grounds in the dense Boni Forest, which extends to the Somali border.

The BBC reported in August that many Iranian refugees in the Netherlands are converting to Christianity.

The report acknowledged that the lives of those who convert from Islam are at risk because of the death penalty for apostasy in Islam and that many are scared to be identified, but still suggested that baptism was linked to visa applications. A former Muslim told how the goodness of Christians’ lives had impressed him and helped him explore the Christian faith.

Journalist Luka Binniyat was remanded in custody for 40 additional days on 31 August, after the judge presiding over his trial refused to review his ‘excessive’ bail terms.

Mr Binniyat wrote a story about an attack that later proved incorrect and he apologised publicly. His case highlights eroding press freedom and the seeming inequality before the law of different religious communities in Kaduna

Suspecting corrupt police and accusing the government of failing to contain a rash of kidnappings, Christian leaders announced that an abducted pastor was freed on 9 August.

The Revd Jen Tivkaa Moses, kidnapped by young Fulani men between Jos and Abuja, was brought back to Jos at about 1am. The church leaders would not say whether a ransom was paid to the kidnappers, who had demanded 1million naira (£2,045), but church sources said a payment was made to secure his release.

Muslim Fulani herdsmen in central Nigeria’s Plateau state massacred 20 Christians, including children, as they slept in the hours after midnight on 8 September

Police reportedly said the attack was an act of vengeance after the discovery in the previous week of a slain and beheaded Fulani boy who was a resident of another village. Residents had known the attackers and never experienced problems. They suspect that extremists accompanied the herdsmen during the attack.

A Christian man, arrested in dubious circumstances, died in prison on 13 August.

Arrested after a suicide bombing in March 2015 he was one of 42 Christian men taken into custody, even though the vast majority could not be identified in film footage of the attack. Since April he suffered from tuberculosis to such an extent that he could not walk to the bathroom. Only taken to hospital once, he died the day after the visit. He leaves behind a widow and children aged 12, 10 and 6.

In an expanded order to remove ‘blasphemous’ content from social media in Pakistan, a High Court judge, on 12 August, included a recommendation that Parliament include terrorism charges against those accused of blasphemy.

The recommendation is unlikely to result in action by Parliament, but it reflects a radical strain of thought at high levels in Pakistan and will be seriously debated in the National Assembly.

A Sudan church leader arrested in 2015 for ‘spying’, was re-arrested for a day, along with five other fellow church leaders on 23 August.

The previous case was dropped due to lack of evidence, but this arrest marks the third time the pastor has been held. Two days before, two other church leaders from Omdurman had been evicted by police from their homes; one of them was allegedly arrested for trespassing by entering his own office, but released on bail later that day.

The pastor of a church in Izmir who has been detained for over a year on terrorism charges was accused of espionage and attempting to overthrow the Turkish Government in late August.

The pastor, who is a US citizen but has lived in Turkey since 1993, was arrested in October 2016. His detention and the new charges appear to be part of the government’s ongoing crackdown on Christian activity, following the apparent attempted coup in July 2016.

In August it was reported that a school sports coach, fired for praying after games, lost his legal case, whilst a Senator faced demands to stop tweeting Bible verses

US judges claimed the football coach’s actions could be seen as state endorsement of religion. Senator Marco Rubio faced pressure from an atheist group to stop using his personal Twitter account to post Bible verses. They claim his tweets are a violation of the US Constitution’s First Amendment

Parents of kindergarteners at a California school were upset after they found out that the school held a transgender ‘gender reveal’ without their prior knowledge, it was reported in August.

One said: ‘My daughter came home crying and shaking, so afraid she could turn into a boy.’ The school board told parents that, unlike sex education discussions, teachers are not required to notify them regarding trans-gender discussions.