News

Pakistan police deny Christian-Muslim tension after blasphemy allegation

  May 19, 2016 Pakistan Barelvi, Blasphemy, Bonded labourers, Islamic extremism, Mandi Bahauddin, Pakistan Muslim League, Punjab, Sunni Tehreek, Sweepers

Imran Masih’s house in the remote village of Chak 44, Punjab, Pakistan.World Watch Monitor   Conflicting reports have emerged over Christian-Muslim tensions in a remote Pakistani village, after an illiterate Christian cleaner was accused of blasphemy. However, international media reports of a Muslim mob attacking the local Christian minority are . . . Read More

Return of one Chibok girl raises Nigeria’s hopes for the 218 still missing

  May 18, 2016 Nigeria Boko Haram, Chibok girls, EYN, Nigeria

The first missing schoolgirl kidnapped by Boko Haram militants two years ago has been rescued. Amina Ali Nkeki was found on Tuesday (17 May) in the Sambisa Forest, close to the border with Cameroon. Her return has now raised the hope that the rest of the 218 missing girls may yet . . . Read More

Hostile homecoming for Mexican Protestant after exile

  May 16, 2016 Mexico Catholics, Chiapas, Exile, Lauro Pérez Núñez, Oaxaca, Protestants

Lauro Pérez Núñez has been arrested and detained several times since leaving ‘traditionalist’ church.Coordinación de Organizaciones Cristianas   Lauro Pérez Núñez, a convert to the Protestant faith, was ordered to leave his community last year for violating what local authorities claimed was the village’s “custom” of belonging to the “traditionalist” . . . Read More

Religion-driven hostility to Christians follows them to German refugee centres

  May 13, 2016 Afghanistan, Chechnya, Europe, Iran, Migrants, Refugees, Sweden, Syria

Mahan, 2, an Iranian Christian refugee who along with his parents is seeking asylum in Germany, peeks from behind a glass partition in the dining room at the Spreehotel refugee centre in January 2015 in Bautzen, Germany. About 200 refugees, many from Syria and Tunisia, but also from Chechnya, the . . . Read More

US lawmaker pledges to push for special envoy to Nigeria

  May 11, 2016 Nigeria Agatu, Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, West Africa

A member of the U.S. Congress said on Wednesday (11 May) that he will help introduce legislation calling on the president to establish a special envoy to Nigeria and the wider Lake Chad region, in an attempt to sharpen the American response to deadly Islamist insurgencies that have killed thousands . . . Read More

DR Congo death toll nears 50 after second attack

  May 11, 2016 Democratic Republic of the Congo ADF, Beni, Bukavu, Cadeau, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eringeti, Islamic extremism, North Kivu

At least a further nine people have been killed in another attack by suspected Islamist militants in the eastern extremes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, bringing the total killed in the past week to nearly 50. World Watch Monitor reported last week that between 20 and 40 villagers . . . Read More

European Parliament debates Nigeria and Boko Haram

  May 9, 2016 Nigeria Agatu, Boko Haram, Europe, Islamic extremism, Terrorism

Jan Olbrycht MEP, co-chairman of the European People’s Party Working Group on Inter-religious Dialogue, and Joachim Zeller MEP, at the 3 May event.African Diaspora for Freedom of Religion   A conference on religious radicalisation, Boko Haram and terrorism in Nigeria was held by the largest group in the European Parliament . . . Read More

Syrian priest: ‘No words to describe the suffering’

  May 6, 2016 Syria Aleppo

Amid the worst violence since the Syrian conflict began more than five years ago, a local Syrian Catholic Archbishop has joined in raising attention to the situation facing Christians in the city of Aleppo. “More than half the city’s population left over the last four or five years,” Jean-Clement Jeanbart, Melkite . . . Read More

DR Congo – Christians killed, as thousands flee continuing Islamist violence

  May 6, 2016 Democratic Republic of the Congo ADF, Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Islamic extremism, North Kivu

Islamist militants are suspected to have killed between 20 and 40 villagers in the eastern extremes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to news reports and a World Watch Monitor source. Attackers carried machetes and axes into a village in North Kivu province, in eastern DRC, late in . . . Read More

Third church in four months burnt down in N. Tanzania

  May 5, 2016 Tanzania Bukoba, Catholics, Churches, Kagera, Pentecostals

Another church in Tanzania’s extreme north-west corner was burned to the ground on 2 May in a suspected arson attack. No group has claimed responsibility for the fire that destroyed the Roman Catholic church in Nyarwele, in the Kagera region which borders Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. It is the third . . . Read More