Americas

More than five weeks after town bosses in Chiapas state, Mexico, signed an agreement to restore water lines cut off from Christians since January, the Protestants still rely on dirty, distant wells and puddles for washing and drinking.

An influential Christian Cuban “prisoner of conscience” remained behind bars Pentecost Sunday, May 27, despite suffering of tuberculosis in the Kilo 7 Prison in the province of Camaguey, dissidents told BosNewsLife.

Local political bosses who had voted to expel 65 Christians from a small town near here grudgingly signed an agreement yesterday to let the evangelicals stay in their homes.

On Monday (April 23), small town political bosses near this city in Chiapas state are set to meet with representatives of 65 Christians they have threatened to expel in a showdown that could influence religious rights throughout the region.

Juan Mendez Mendez became a Christian in a village outside of this city in Chiapas state on April 7, and two days later local authorities put him in jail — for leaving their religious blend of Roman Catholicism and native custom.

One of Cuba’s most prominent Christian prisoners, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, has said he has been forced to watch abuses “that threaten the decorous behavior of a civilized society” but stressed he trusts God to one day end his “unjust sentence,” in a letter published by BosNewsLife Saturday, March 3.

There was concern Wednesday, February 21, about the plight of dozens of evangelical prisoners in Mexico’s southeastern state of Chiapas who rights watchers say have been wrongly convicted of involvement in the massacre of 45 Tzotzil Indians nearly a decade ago.

Persecution of evangelical Christians in the southern state of Chiapas “is accelerating daily in the indigenous regions,” according to the National Bar of Christian Lawyers.

During my many years as a reporter, I have been involved in some incredible situations and one of them took place in Chiapas, Mexico, back in March of 1998.