News

Church surveillance, COVID-19 controls affect China’s Christians – 1 of 5 global trends

  January 13, 2021 Global News -- No Particular Country Boko Haram, China, Churches, Egypt, Fulani herdsmen, Hindu nationalism, Human rights, India, Iraq, Islamic extremism, Minorities, Nigeria, Religious freedom, Turkey, Women

                  The emergency that dominated the globe during the past year — the novel coronavirus — also dominated the countries of the World Watch List published by Open Doors International today (Jan 13) and the lives of the estimated 340 million Christians . . . Read More

Burkina Faso: Fulani pastor brings hope to stigmatised communities

  October 19, 2020 Burkina Faso Burkina Faso, Churches, Djibo, Fulani herdsmen, Islamic extremism, Sahel, Terrorism, West Africa

The disproportionate presence of ethnic Fulani among Islamist militants wreaking havoc in the Sahel and West Africa has led to a stigmatisation of the Fulani generally, says a Protestant pastor from Burkina Faso. In April security forces went into Djibo, a town in the northern part of Burkina Faso and . . . Read More

Swiss woman, hostage almost 5 years, killed by Islamist extremists in Mali

  October 10, 2020 Mali Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Beatrice Stockli, Burkina Faso, Gloria Argoti, Islamic extremism, Jeff Woodke, Ken Elliott, Kidnapping, Niger

A Swiss missionary Beatrice Stockli – kidnapped from Timbuktu in northern Mali in January 2016 – was killed only weeks before other hostages were freed by Islamist extremists, in an apparent prisoner-hostage swap negotiated by the new transitional government in Mali. News of her execution came from Sophie Petronin, a . . . Read More

Priest, held by Islamist extremists for two years, freed in Mali

  October 9, 2020 Niger Catholics, hostage, Islamic extremism, Italian, Kidnapping, Mali, priest

An Italian priest abducted two years ago in Niger, close to the border with Burkina Faso, is among four hostages held by Islamist extremists who’ve been freed and flown to the capital of Mali, Bamako. The new Malian transitional government met the hostages, after Malian authorities freed scores of suspected . . . Read More

Eritrean evangelical Christians freed on bail due to COVID-19

  September 10, 2020 Eritrea Churches, Human rights, Pentecostals, Religious freedom, UN

The Eritrean government has released on bail more than 20 prisoners who’d been in detention for years because of their faith, the BBC reports. It says sources have said that the prisoners are from Christian evangelical and Pentecostal denominations, some held in a prison outside the capital Asmara. In 2002 . . . Read More

“Why don’t these black lives matter?”

  August 21, 2020 Global News -- No Particular Country Boko Haram, Churches, Islamic extremism, Minorities, Nigeria, Religious freedom, UN

                  The question of the UK’s Lord Alton on a new UN Day recognised for only the second time this year, the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief, 22 August. Until 2019, there has . . . Read More

NGOs say changes to Sudan’s Islamic laws don’t go far enough

  August 18, 2020 Sudan Apostasy, Blasphemy, Converts, Human rights, Minorities, Religious freedom, Sharia, Women

Despite the abolition in July 2020 of Sudan’s apostasy law (under which the case of Christian doctor Mariam Ibraheem, sentenced to hang in 2014, became global headline news), a group of 29 Sudanese NGOs says that its transitional government’s amendments to many of its laws do not go far enough. . . . Read More

Boko Haram has killed more than Islamic State in Iraq and Syria combined

  July 29, 2020 Nigeria Archbishop Ben Kwashi, Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, Islamic extremism, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria, Refugees, Women

Nigerian Wanhena Sheku was working alone on her farm when a group she identified as Fulani herdsmen attacked her in mid-October, 2019. “They told me to place my left arm on a wooden log before they hacked my hand off. Then they took my severed hand and ran away. I . . . Read More

Turkey orders deportation of pastor’s American wife, a mother-of-three, in string of expulsions

  July 3, 2020 Turkey Andrew Brunson, Ankara, Human rights, Protestants, Turkey, USA

An American mother-of-three has been told she has to leave Turkey, one of the latest incidents in a series of expulsions of Christian expatriates from the country. Joy Anna Crow Subasigüller, originally from Florida, USA, and her Turkish husband Lütfü were married seven years ago. They settled and started a . . . Read More

“Incessant killing more dangerous than Coronavirus”: report on Nigeria to UK Parliament

  June 15, 2020 Nigeria Boko Haram, Borno, Chibok girls, Fulani herdsmen, Islamic extremism, Kidnapping, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria, Women

“The incessant killing is more dangerous than Coronavirus” …The words of a community leader in central Nigeria – after coronavirus had reached his country – after an April attack in which nine people died, including a pregnant woman and her three year old. His reaction is one of several testimonies . . . Read More