Bulletin of Christian Persecution
March 2 - March 22, 2011
March 2, 2011
Egypt
Christian Copts staged a massive demonstration on Monday, February 28, against the Governor of Minya Ahmed Dia-el-Din, calling for his resignation. The demonstration was prompted by the governor's decision to demolish a church community center for the care of the handicapped.
Pakistan
Shahbaz Bhatti, minister for Minorities Affairs and a Christian was gunned down in the back seat of his car while leaving his mother's home. He was the only Christian in the Pakistani cabinet and was murdered for criticizing the blasphemy law that prescribes the death penalty for those insulting Islam by leaving the religion. More HERE.
March 3, 2011
Pakistan
A Christian community is facing more wrongdoings by local landlords who grabbed Christian-owned fields and shops with the complicity of local police and officials. Also Christian symbols are desecrated but the blasphemy law is not applied in this case. Local authorities say accusations are all made up but fail to provide legal backing for grabbing Christian property. More HERE.
Ethiopia (Hat tip to AtlasShrugs)
Thousands of Muslims shouting "Allah Akbar" razed five churches and the homes of two evangelists. The Muslims started the attacks after falsely accusing the Christians of desecrating the Koran.
March 4, 2011
Pakistan (Hat tip to JihadWatch)
The Islamic terrorists responsible for Christian Minister Bhatti's murder--Tanseem Al Qaeda and Tehrik-e-Taliban threaten to send all of those like Shabaz Bhatti "one by one to hell." A translation of the jihadi letter.
March 5, 2011
Turkey
Istanbul police's anti-terror unit apprehended two suspects accused of plotting to assassinate a Christian priest in the city's Fatih district.
March 7, 2011
Ethiopia (Hat tip to InfidelsAreCool)
A mob of Muslim extremists overpowered police to get to Christians handing out Bibles.
Egypt
Egyptian Christians protested on Monday after a church was set on fire on the outskirts of Cairo, the first sectarian flare-up since the January 25th revolution.
Egypt (Hat tip to JihadWatch)
Documents seized from State Security offices reveal the government's involvement in the bombing of a Coptic Church on New Year's Day in Alexandria that killed 21 people and injured 80.
March 9, 2011
Egypt (Hat tip to InfidelsAreCool)
According to Father Abram Fahmy, pastor of St. Simon the Tanner Monastery in Mokatam Hills, on the outskirts of Cairo, Copts were killed and injured today in an attack by Muslims. It was reported the Egyptian army fired live ammunition on Copts. The attack has claimed until now the lives of 9 Copts and injured 150, 45 seriously. Muslims threw fire balls at the Monastery from the top of the hills. Coptic youth have arrested five of them, who are now being held within the Monastery grounds, waiting to be handed over to the authorities. Eight homes and 20 garbage recycling factories owned by Copts have been torched, as well as 30 garbage collection vehicles.
March 11, 2011
Malaysia
Christian leaders report that the Malaysian government is holding in detension 30,000 imported bibles written in the Malaysian language. Update HERE.
March 12, 2011
USA (Hat tip to GatesofVienna)
With the only Christian in Pakistan's government murdered outside his mother's home, Coptic Christian churches being burnt in Egypt, and Iraq's Christian population reduced by about half of its 1.4 million total of 25 years ago, the future for many Christians in the Muslim world looks at best uncertain.
Dr. Walid Phares wants the Chicago area to be aware of the ongoing persecution and Saturday stressed the unknowns of the political situation in many countries in the region. He is particularly anxious about what type of government might replace any overturned regimes.
March 15, 2011
Pakistan
A Christian convicted for blasphemy was found dead in his jail cell. The official word is he died from a heart attack but many suspect that he might have fallen prey to active hate campaign going on in the country on this issue by extremist groups. More HERE.
Turkey
Discrimination, slander and attacks against churches were among the examples of ongoing harassment that the Turkish Association of Protestant Churches (TEK) recorded in 2010. In an eight-page report published earlier this year, TEK's Committee for Religious Freedom and Legal Affairs outlined problems Protestants face. Turkish laws and "negative attitudes of civil servants" continue to make it nearly impossible for non-Muslims to establish places of worship, the committee reported.
Iran
Five Iranian house church Christians were behind bars Wednesday, March 15, after being sentenced to one year imprisonment on charges of "crimes against the Islamic order" and there were reports that Iranian authorities have been burning Bibles.
March 16, 2011
Pakistan (Hat tip to Persecution.org)
Pakisti Christians are converting to Islam due to threats and intimidation at the rate of 60 per month. In one madrassa in Lahore alone, 678 Christians embraced Islam in 2009. Last year they were almost 700. These are "dangerous days" minorities, activists say as the blasphemy law is used to force them to change religion.
March 17, 2011
Malaysia
A Christian lawyer in Malaysia has failed in her attempt to be allowed to practice in the Muslim Shariah courts.
March 18, 2011
Malaysia
The Christian community said today that it is appalled by what it says is the government's desecration of 5,100 holy books shipped in from Indonesia that were detained and has flat out refused to collect the Port Klang shipment.
March 19, 2011
Iraq
Archbishop Bashar Warda made his alarming prediction at a press conference for the launch of the Aid to the Church in Need report on oppressed Christians abroad, Persecuted and Forgotten? Speaking alongside Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Archbishop Warda said that there were fewer than 200,000 Christians left in Iraq and "the time for waiting" was running out. He cited Mosul, one of the most dangerous cities in the world to be a Christian, where hundreds were driven out in October 2009, saying: "In 2003 there were 4,000 Chaldean families, 1,000 Christians from other churches, and 11 active Chaldean churches. Now six churches have been closed, and if it goes this way, it won't be this long before certain areas of Iraq are evacuated.
Libya
Libya's minority Christians were among those facing danger Saturday, March 19, as the international community began enforcing a no fly zone over the predominantly Sunni Muslim nation to halt attacks by forces loyal to embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Heavily Islamic Libya currently ranks number 25 on the annual Open Doors' World Watch List of 50 nations known for their reported persecution of Christians. North Korea tops the list at number 1. While there are no laws that explicitly provide for religious freedom, the country adheres to Islamic law and all citizens are Sunni Muslims 'by definition', according to rights activists. It is prohibited to evangelize to Muslims or distribute Arabic scriptures, according to Open Doors investigators.
March 20, 2011
Egypt
Many Egyptian Christians say they voted to reject proposed constitutional amendments because they fear hasty elections to follow may pave the way for Islamist groups to rise to power and further religious persecution. More HERE.
Ethopia (Hat tip to InfidelsAreCool)
Evangelical churches and homes have been burnt down by mobs of Muslims in the southwestern Jimma region of Ethiopia. The attacks have left at least one person dead and 7,000 displaced. "This is a strategically planned attack by an extremist Islamic group.
Nigeria (Hat tip to InfidelsAreCool)
Two men were killed in the Nigerian city of Jos when explosives they were carrying on a motorbike went off, preventing what local residents said was an attempted attack on a Christian community. More than 200 people have been killed since late last year in and around Jos, which lies in Nigeria's "Middle Belt" between the mostly-Muslim north and predominantly Christian south. More HERE.
March 21, 2011
Indonesia
Some 100 members of a Christian congregation conducted services on the sidewalk in Bogor Sunday after police prevented them from using a contested church site that has been sealed off by city officials in defiance of a Supreme Court order.
Turkey
A Turkish court ordered five military officers and two civilians jailed Monday in a probe into the 2007 killing of three Christians, including a German national, over allegations that the attack was part of an alleged plot to topple the government. The Christians -- a German and two Turks -- were tied up and had their throats slit at a Bible-publishing house in the southern city of Malatya. More HERE.
March 22, 2011
Saudi Arabia
Two Indian Christians working in Saudi Arabia have been arrested in Riyadh, and sentenced to 45 days in prison. On March 11, 2011, Vasantha Sekhar and Nese Yohan were arrested and beaten. They were accused of proselytizing. ICC contacts in Saudi Arabia believe they were arrested to keep them from practicing Christianity privately in their home.
SPECIAL REPORT:
The World
Seventy five percent of religious persecution in the world is against Christians, claims a new report by a U.K. Catholic organization. Examining 33 countries, the British branch of Aid to the Church in Need reported that most of the persecution was occurring in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in its 2011 "Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their faith."
Produced by Political Islam.com
Publisher: Bill Warner; Edited by Asma Marwan
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