Tag: Human rights

Egypt: Coptic Christian imprisoned for 5 years for ‘blasphemy’

February 9, 2022 Egypt Blasphemy, Cairo, Egypt, Human rights, Minorities

An Egyptian police officer enters Tora prison on the outskirts of Egypt's capital Cairo

A Coptic Christian has been sentenced to five years in prison for blasphemy, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, or EIPR, which represented him during his trial. On 29 January the Cairo Economic Court found Marco Gerges guilty of “contempt for Islam”, “exploiting religion in promoting extremist ideas”, . . . Read More

Pakistan sewage workers’ widows pressured to drop criminal negligence cases

November 22, 2021 Pakistan discrimination, Human rights, legal, Minorities, Pakistan, Sweepers

Mariam, widow of sewer cleaner Nadeem Masih, Oct 4, 2021

“I so wish wish I hadn’t pushed him to go that night”…. Widow Mariam Bibi, mother of six at the age of 32, desperately wishes she could turn the clock back. “It was about 10pm on Sunday night and we were preparing for bed, so [my husband] Nadeem didn’t want . . . Read More

COVID-19 exacerbates discrimination against minority Christians globally

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

• Christians refused coronavirus aid in countries from India to Yemen to West Africa • COVID-19 legitimises increased surveillance and restrictions by authoritarian governments • Organised criminal groups use virus as means to extend their control, including over churches • Nationalism driven by majority religious identity rises in countries such . . . Read More

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

Eritrean evangelical Christians freed on bail due to COVID-19

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

If they're not Lutheran, evangelical women in Eritrea have to pray together in secret. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

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

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

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

Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

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

UN Sec. General’s “biggest data gap in the world” affects persecuted Christian women

March 6, 2020 Global News -- No Particular Country Converts, Human rights, Kidnapping, Minorities, Religious freedom, Women

Women to women conference in Ethiopia, February 2018.

The UN Secretary-General last week called it ‘the biggest data gap in the world…what UK writer Caroline Criado Perez calls “default man” thinking: the unquestioned assumption that men are standard, and women the exception. Very often, women are not counted, and their experiences don’t count”. And this lack of ‘counting’ . . . Read More

India: Supreme Court orders seven Kandhamal Christians freed on bail after 9 years in prison

December 13, 2019 India BJP, Hindu nationalism, Human rights, India, Kandhamal, Minorities

Eleven years ago today, 13 December 2008, an Indian man was arrested. Initially, he suspected it would be quickly resolved – he was active in local politics and assumed it was for something minor connected to that. But it was to be over ten years before he would get his . . . Read More

EU Envoy’s threat of trade sanctions played crucial role in Asia Bibi’s freedom

September 5, 2019 Pakistan Asia Bibi, Blasphemy, Canada, Europe, Human rights, Jan Figel, Pakistan, Religious freedom, Salmaan Taseer, Shahbaz Bhatti

EU Envoy on religious freedom, Jan Figel, meets with Asia Bibi's lawyer, Saif ul Malook in Lahore, December 2017. (Photo: Jan Figel)

Freed Pakistani Christian Aasiya Noreen, known to the world now as Asia Bibi, has pleaded for the many others like her accused of blasphemy who, she says, are still “lying in jail for years – their decisions should also be done on merit. The world should listen to them. “The . . . Read More

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