Tag: Minorities

Pakistan: Christians continue to face blasphemy convictions and violent attacks

August 22, 2022 Pakistan Blasphemy, Lahore, Minorities, Pakistan, Quetta

People participate in a motorbike rally ahead of country’s 75th Independence Day celebrations in Lahore on August 12, 2022.

While Pakistan celebrates 75 years of independence, the Christian minority continues to face discrimination, harassment and violence because of their faith. On 8 August, a Catholic man was killed and three teenagers injured when two gunmen on motorbikes opened fire in a Christian colony in the town of Mastung, 45kms . . . Read More

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

Afghanistan overtakes N Korea as most dangerous place to live as a Christian

January 19, 2022 Afghanistan Boko Haram, Catholics, Churches, Converts, India, Islamic extremism, Minorities, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Refugees, Religious freedom

Afghan-women-face-highly restricted lives under the Taliban

After the August 2021 takeover by the Taliban of Afghanistan, the country has overtaken North Korea as the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, according to the annual World Watch List of the NGO Open Doors International, out today. After 20 years at the top*, North . . . 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

Pakistani Senator alleges police collusion with gang whose gun attack injures seven, one critically

September 27, 2021 Pakistan Minorities, Pakistan, Women

The most senior political leader of Pakistan’s minority Christians has complained of what he calls ‘prejudicial treatment’ by police in the way the force responded to a terrifying gun attack in a mixed faith neighborhood which injured at least seven, one of them critically ill and fighting for her life . . . Read More

Pakistani Christian couple acquitted of blasphemy after 7 years on death row

June 3, 2021 Pakistan Blasphemy, Catholics, Gojra, Islamic extremism, Minorities, Pakistan, Shafqat Emmanuel Masih, Shaguftah Kausar Masih

Shagufta Kausar and Shafqat Emmanuel faced execution for allegedly sending ‘blasphemous’ texts to a mosque cleric, from a phone containing a sim registered in Shagufta’s name. The couple have consistently denied all allegations and believe Shagufta’s National Identity Card was purposely misused. Imprisoned since 2013, the couple were convicted and sentenced to death in April 2014. Their appeal was due to be heard in April 2020, six years after they
were sentenced, but it was postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. At their last two hearings in 2021, the judges left the court as they were due to hear the appeal against their death sentences,

The Pakistani woman who replaced Christian Asia Bibi in her prison cell on death row, a mother of 4, Shaguftah Kausar, has – after a dozen delays since April 2020 due to COVID-19 – been acquitted from the death penalty by Lahore High court. Kausar, with her disabled husband Shafqat . . . 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

“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

Teachers working in north-eastern Kenya demonstrated in February 2015, asking to be reassigned following the killing of 20 of their colleagues in an attack by Islamist militants. (Photo: Getty Images)

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

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