News

Iraqi Yazidi couple flees ISIS to freedom

  December 22, 2014 Iraq Iraq, Peshmerga, Refugees, Yazidis

Rescue operations began Dec. 19 in northern Iraq for thousands of Yazidi villagers trapped for the past four months on Mount Sinjar and its surrounding villages. Aided by a barrage of coalition air strikes, Kurdish Peshmerga forces began a military offensive on Dec. 17 to break the siege imposed upon Sinjar’s . . . Read More

Christmas 2014 ‘evokes not joy but fears’ for India’s Christians

  December 18, 2014 India BJP, Christmas, Dharm Jagran Samiti, Good Governance Day, Hindutva, India, Maharashtra, Narendra Modi, RSS, Uttar Pradesh

Christmas is an occasion mostly associated with joy and celebration. But since the start of the holiday season, India’s minority religious groups of Christians and Muslims have been especially under pressure. The Indian Parliament has hardly functioned since the start of December because several opposition lawmakers have been protesting a . . . Read More

Three more cases in which Pakistani Christians accused of blasphemy

  December 11, 2014 Pakistan Asia Bibi, Barelvi, Blasphemy, Kasur, Lahore, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan, Sharia

Three more cases of blasphemy accusations have emerged in Pakistan, even after a Christian couple’s beating to death and burning in a brick kiln after allegations of blasphemy horrified the world, including the metropolitan elite in the country. The Christian couple were killed over suspicions of desecrating the Qur’an on . . . Read More

Human Rights Day but Article 18 violated every day

  December 11, 2014 North Korea Divorce, Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-il, UN

Drawing made by a former prisoner who was detained in the Chongori prison. North Korean prisoner pretends to be asleep and uses food to catch a mouse which he will eat raw.United Nations Human Rights   “Christmas in a N. Korean gulag will be just another day of grotesque suffering” . . . Read More

Lawyer: ‘Egyptian convert’s arrest linked to leaving Islam’

  December 9, 2014 Egypt Egypt, Minya, Mohammed Hegazy, Sharia, Upper Egypt

The first Egyptian citizen to attempt to change his legal religious identity from Muslim to Christian, Mohammed Hegazy, has been in jail for a year now, awaiting a verdict on separate misdemeanor charges, due on Dec. 28. Hegazy faces a five-year prison sentence if an appeal court upholds his conviction . . . Read More

‘Secret church’ served with coffee & cakes in Central Asian cafes

  December 5, 2014 Azerbaijan, Central Asia, House churches, Islamic extremism, Kyrgyzstan, Russian Orthodox Church, Uzbekistan

In a country where Christians often must meet secretly to avoid arrest, a group of women have taken the opposite approach: hiding in plain sight. They meet to pray and encourage each other in a coffee shop, in one of the largest cities in Central Asia. “It is better for . . . Read More

Clampdown on Sudan’s churches

  December 4, 2014 Sudan Bahri, Churches, Khartoum, Omdurman, Sharia, Women

A building used as a church by Sudanese Christians is being torn down by police after worshippers fell into a dispute with a group that claims to own the building. The evangelical church community in Bahri, a suburb of Khartoum, had formed a human chain to prevent the building from . . . Read More

Dispatch from Aleppo

  December 3, 2014 Syria Aleppo, Bashar al-Assad, Civil War

Free Syrian Army fight government forces, north of Aleppo 21 Aug 2012Photo: CC/ Christiaan Triebert   From today World Watch Monitor will publish an occasional diary from a Christian pastor living in Aleppo, the Syrian city that has become a key battleground between rebels and President Assad’s government forces. After . . . Read More

Muslim and Christian leaders pledge to promote dialogue in Great Lakes region

  December 3, 2014 Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda

Attendees of Interreligious Dialogue for Peace and Security in Great Lakes region; Nov 18World Watch Monitor   Clerics from Rwanda, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo have pledged to promote dialogue aimed at preventing sectarian conflict in their countries. Twenty-one Christian and Muslim leaders gathered Nov. 17-18 at Cyangugu, Rwanda, . . . Read More

Taliban murder four humanitarian aid workers in Kabul

  December 2, 2014 Afghanistan Afghanistan, Kabul, Taliban

Werner and Hannelie Groenewald, October 2014INcontext   Three armed Taliban insurgents swept into a Kabul guesthouse on Nov. 29, murdering three South Africans and two Afghans in the compound of an international aid agency in the Afghan capital. Werner Groenewald and his two teenage children were murdered in the guesthouse . . . Read More