World in Brief

Six people, mostly children, were killed and four others injured when an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated on a road near a mainly Christian community in northern Burkina Faso in August.

In May, Christians were among those targeted and killed when armed jihadists launched three separate attacks within 48 hours that left at least 58 dead. Violence by Islamist extremists has surged in Burkina Faso in the past year, causing thousands to flee their homes.

Canada saw a significant rise in the number of deaths by euthanasia taking place in 2019, with a third giving ‘not wanting to be a burden’ as a reason.

A government report revealed that in 2019 5,631 people were killed by euthanasia or assisted suicide, a rise of 26% on the year before. 34% who requested they be killed by their doctors cited fear of being a burden to their families. 13.7% said it was because of ‘isolation or loneliness’.

Authorities replaced a cross in the home of an elderly Christian man with an image of Xi Jinping and ordered him to pray to the country’s President instead of God.

The 84-year-old man was among a number of Christians in several provinces ordered to remove Christian imagery from their homes and replace them with pictures of Communist leaders. ‘Xi Jinping is a man, not God. I feel saddened for the cross being taken down, but there is nothing I can do.’

Police, state security officers, and ethnic and religious affairs bureau officials raided Guangzhou’s Bible Reformed Church and accused Christians of ‘spreading evil religion’.

Authorities interrupted a Bible study and took three Christians, including the minister, Yang Jun, to the police station. Officials released two individuals that night, but detained Minister Yang for a day. They alleged he had been ‘showing off and swindling’.

After four months locked down on board, the first thing the OM ship’s crew members did was pray.

‘Touching the ground never felt so good!’ said one volunteer, delighted to get off the ship for a socially-distanced walk after the prolonged period of isolation. The crew asked God for blessing and protection over the island and her people.

On August 21, a pastor was attacked and brutally beaten by radical Hindu nationalists.

The radicals reportedly accused the pastor of forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity and used this accusation as a justification for their assault. ‘God gave me the grace to accept even death,’ the pastor said. ‘Scriptures were running through my mind as I was being attacked. However, when I thought about my four-year-old daughter and my wife, I was shattered, and it was excruciating.’ The police, to date, have taken no action.

A Christian father of seven in northern India was hospitalised for more than two weeks after Hindu extremists with iron rods interrupted his night prayers with his family and beat him at his home.

Pappu Kumar had put his faith in Christ just three months earlier. As he was attacked, the furious mob verbally abused him and told him to stop following the Christian faith.

Christian Mohammadreza Omidi was finally released from prison on 18 August. He had finished serving his 24-month sentence for national-security-related charges in July 2019.

Omidi was one of four Christians arrested in 2016 during a series of raids by security agents on Christian homes, in which Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, Deacon Saheb Fadaie and Yasser Mossayebzadeh were also arrested. In June, an appeal verdict was issued and Pastor Nadarkhani and Deacon Fadaie had their ten-year sentences reduced to six years.

Families were threatened with their water supply being cut off because they want to hold religious meetings.

Two Protestant families – who were forced to sign an illegal agreement in which they renounced their right to hold services in order to have their access to water and other essential services reinstated – were informed at a community meeting on 22 August that they risk being cut off again if they cannot pay the remainder of a fine that was levied as part of the agreement.

Municipal officials in Nepal ordered a church to stop construction of a worship hall after local Hindus objected to it.

The church in Galkot began with just two families in January and within a few weeks grew to 45 members, Pastor Bohra said. Some of the area Hindus had threatened relatives who became Christians after the pastor, Manish Bohra, began proclaiming Christ.

A new law is being proposed in the Netherlands to legalise euthanasia for healthy people over the age of 75.

The Bill, proposed by Pia Dijkstra MP, would allow over-75s with no medical problems to apply for an ‘end-of-life supervisor’. In the Netherlands, euthanasia is already legal if the person is deemed to be experiencing ‘hopeless and unbearable suffering’. Dijkstra has recommended that the current law doesn’t go far enough and those who are ‘tired of life’ should be helped to die.

A church pastor in Karachi has languished in jail since May on a baseless charge of extortion levelled against him in retaliation for taking a stand against alleged land-grabbers who demolished the homes of poor Christians.

Falsely accusing Pastor Sohail Latif Sandhu of extortion, the alleged land-grabbers told his wife they would get him freed if she had sex with them, and then tried to rape her when she refused.

A Christian girl, Anika Shehzad who was working as a domestic servant, was beaten after refusing to convert to Islam, and accused of theft.

When her family saw her in her beaten state, they were told by her employers that she had stolen their money. The father was then himself accused of stealing when he began asking questions about what had happened.

An angry Muslim mob forced its way into a Pakistan police station on 5 August after a Christian man was arrested for alleged blasphemy.

Sohail Masih, from Abidabad, Nowshera Virkan, was accused by a local Muslim leader of insulting Islam in a Facebook post. Sohail was later charged under sections 295-A and 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code. The charge of ‘defiling the name’ of Muhammad (295-C) carries the death penalty.

A 14-year-old Christian girl, who was abducted at gunpoint and forced into marriage by a Muslim man, was returned to her kidnapper by the High Court in Lahore on 4 August.

This overturned an earlier court ruling that had placed her in a women’s shelter. Maira Shahbaz, who escaped from Nakash Tariq told supporters by telephone that he had raped her and filmed her naked in order to blackmail her into giving court statements.

The landslide victory of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka’s 5 August general election opens the door for his government to introduce anti-conversion legislation.

In March 2020, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, brother of the President and a leading member of the majority Sinhala Buddhist community, had hinted to the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress that he would introduce laws criminalising conversions if he could be confident of receiving the support of Parliament.

One young Christian man in eastern Uganda died after family members beat him and his cousin for leaving Islam.

After hearing preaching at an open-air evangelistic event in Budaka Town, the two men made a public confession of faith in Christ. They were driven from their home, and had stayed with Christian friends during some of lockdown, but had found themselves needing to return to their family home. Their relatives were about to set them on fire when some cattle herders and Christians happened by. The cousin is still unwell.

Tim Keller (who recovered from cancer in 2002), said in August that his current tumours have shrunk after undergoing more chemotherapy.

He announced in June that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He says he has not been seriously debilitated and can still do ‘some work and ministry’.