by Felix Corley, Keston News Service As believers who claim their rights have been violated by the state authorities debate and argue over the best way to resolve such violations, Keston News Service has discovered that Rafik Aliev, chairman of the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations, has repeatedly warned believers not to take ... Read more
...continue reading this storyJust two days after a court in the capital Baku liquidated a Baptist congregation, a local policeman in the small town of Chukhuryurd near Shemakha in central Azerbaijan tried to ban a small Baptist church from meeting, Baptist sources told Keston News Service. "He had heard the news of the Baku church's liquidation on ANS television and came to the local elder last Friday [5 April] and told him the church could not meet on Sunday for worship," Ilya Zenchenko, head of the Baptist Union in Azerbaijan, told Keston from Baku on 10 April. "We told the church elder on Saturday the policeman had been overzealous and exceeded his powers and that his demands for the church not to meet had no legal basis."
...continue reading this storySANTA ANA, CA (ANS) -- Christian prisoner Ayub Masih fled his native Pakistan and arrived in an undisclosed country in the West on Wednesday after being imprisoned for six years on blasphemy charges. Despite being acquitted and released on August 15 by Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Masih’s life remains under constant threat from Muslim extremists.
...continue reading this storyWASHINGTON, DC (ANS) - - Two Filipino Christians were quietly whisked away from their homes near Jeddah early Wednesday morning, April 10, according to the Washington, DC based human rights organization, International Christian Concern (ICC).
...continue reading this storyZAMBOANGA CITY, PHILIPPINES (ANS) -- The American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham turns one year old today under the captive of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), a terrorist group operating in the Southern Philippines and believed to have links to the Al Qa'ida network in Afghanistan.
...continue reading this storyCHARLOTTESVILLE, VA -- An uncertain number of leaders of a major house church movement in China have disappeared in what at first was thought to be a massive government raid. Now cult activity is suspected.
...continue reading this storyChristians, including four clergymen, who were taking part in a prayer procession for peaceful elections were arrested in Zimbabwe.A total of 11 Christians were arrested in the city of Bulawayo on February 16 after taking part in the ecumenical procession.
...continue reading this storyChristians in Vietnam face oppressive, often brutal, persecution from authorities. Despite official measures to kill Christianity, the church of Jesus Christ continues to grow.
...continue reading this storyHO CHI MINH CITY, August 21 (Compass) -- A pastor and lawyer who has been regularly harassed for exposing religious liberty abuses in Vietnam was arrested on August 17 along with his wife and another man in the capital city of this Southeast Asian country.
...continue reading this storyHO CHI MINH CITY (Compass) -- In April, 26 years after the communist takeover of Vietnam, authorities granted legal status to Protestants of the southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam (ECVN). Optimists felt this might signal a change in the oppressive religious policy that has long marked Vietnamese communism, especially with the rise of "moderate" Nong Duc Manh to general secretary of the Communist Party.
...continue reading this story