An uneasy calm returned Monday, October 15, to the village of Gowindhi, near Pakistan's second largest city of Lahore, after a violent mob of Muslims "ransacked and desecrated" the local evangelical New Apostolic Faith church, rights investigators said.

A major advocacy group says that hundreds of Degar prisoners remain in prison for standing up for human rights, for spreading Christianity or for fleeing to Cambodia. Many have died from internal injuries caused by beatings. Indigenous rights are routinely violated, and racism and discrimination are serious problems in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.

Pastor Joseph Thadikka, 57, and his wife Ammini, 52, of New India Bible Church were severely beaten and admitted to the Mananthavadi district hospital with serious head and leg injuries.

A pastor and a church believer were jailed on Friday, October 5th, in a village called Murlar which is 20kms from Kanker District in Chhattisgarh State, India. (Kanker is about 140 kms from Raipur, the capital city of Chhattisgarh).

A village church in Laos that once had nearly 2,000 members has shrunk to only a few dozen daring to attend, amid a deadly government crackdown on local believers accused of being "separatist rebels," a Christian news agency reported Thursday, October 11.

The Congress Party government in Himachal Pradesh state has brought into force its "anti-conversion" law six months after the governor gave assent to the controversial bill regulating religious conversions.