Tag: Refugees

Afghan convert to Christianity flees, but persecution follows him

August 2, 2018 Afghanistan, Converts, Delhi, India, Kabul, Minorities, Refugees, Taliban, UN

An Indian newspaper has highlighted the story of an Afghan convert to Christianity who fled Afghanistan on account of the persecution he received for his faith, only to find that it followed him to India. “AP”, a man in his 60s who arrived in India three years ago, now lives . . . Read More

Attack on seven Iranian Christians exposes religious minorities’ ‘extreme vulnerability’ in refugee camps

July 10, 2018 Converts, Greece, Iran, Minorities, Refugees, Religious freedom, Switzerland, UN

Refugee camps in Greece are "microcosms of the Middle East with all the same ethnic and religious tensions" which are being intensified here, causing violence. (Photo: Photo by Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images)

Five Christian converts and two children from Iran were attacked last month in a refugee camp in Greece and told to leave as “this is a Muslim camp”. Following the incident, which took place on Sunday 24 June in a camp near the city of Larissa, about 360km northwest of . . . Read More

Myanmar: Army accused of destroying churches and turning them into Buddhist temples

July 6, 2018 Myanmar Baptists, Buddhist nationalism, Cardinal Bo, Churches, Kachin, Ma Ba Tha, Myanmar, Rakhine, Refugees, Rohingya

Myanmar’s military has destroyed about 60 churches in the past 18 months and turned a third of them into Buddhist pagodas in northern Kachin state, according to an American pastor who visited the region recently. “In the last 18 months, they have bombed 60 churches. Of the 60 churches they . . . Read More

70,000 Syrian Armenians have fled during the war, and few will return

June 27, 2018 Syria Aleppo, Armenians, Bashar al-Assad, Children, Civil War, Deir Ezzor, Education, Europe, Lebanon, Middle East, Refugees, Syria

The fragrance of Middle Eastern cuisine wafts into your nostrils, even before you open the door of the café opposite the central railway station in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. Nerses Kevo, the café’s owner, is one of thousands of Armenian Christians who fled the Syrian civil war and moved to . . . Read More

UN chief ‘personally concerned’ about return of Christians to Iraq and Syria

June 21, 2018 Afghanistan, Al-Shabaab, Antonio Guterres, Asylum seekers, Bashiqa, Human rights, IDPs, Iraq, Islamic State, Kachin, London, Migrants, Myanmar, Patriarch Kirill, Refugees, Somalia, South Sudan, Southeast Asia, Syria, UN

Tree and Arabic painting on the wall in Bashiqa, a town near Mosul in Iraq where Christians are slowly returning, saying: "Tomorrow will be more beautiful." (will be better) (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The UN’s Secretary General has stressed the importance of Christians returning to the areas from which they fled in Iraq and Syria. “I am fully convinced that after the stability of the situation in Iraq and Syria and the adoption of a certain political decision, it is very important to . . . Read More

Assessment of religious conversions as genuine or asylum-motivated dismissed as naïve

June 8, 2018 Aideen Strandsson, Asylum seekers, Baptism, Converts, Denmark, Europe, Finland, Germany, Iran, Kurds, Middle East, Migrants, Netherlands, Refugees, Sweden

Revd Mark Miller of St Thomas' Church, Stockton, in north-east England, The Priest-in-Charge of St Thomas’s, Stockton-on-Tees, the Revd Mark Miller, has had up to 100 Persian asylum-seekers in his congregation

Attempts by Western politicians and media to judge whether Iranian migrants and asylum-seekers who ask to be baptised are either genuine or are doing so to boost their chances of being granted asylum are “naïve”, according to an academic who has carried out extensive research among Iranians who profess to . . . Read More

US religious freedom report shows ‘no progress’ in Myanmar

May 30, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country Aung San Suu Kyi, Iran, Islamic extremism, Kachin, Middle East, Mike Pompeo, Minorities, Mohammad bin Salman, Myanmar, Prisons, Refugees, Religious freedom, Rohingya, Sam Brownback, Saudi Arabia, USA

Displaced Kachin residents cross the Malikha river on 26 April to escape the fighting between the Kachin Independence Army and the Myanmar government troops. (Photo: ZAU RING HPARA/AFP/Getty Images)

Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and Iran are among the countries criticised for their religious-freedom records in the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report for 2017, launched yesterday (29 May) in Washington DC. The report references the violence against the predominantly Muslim Rohingya ethnic group in Myanmar, whose situation is still . . . Read More

Eritrea: Rights groups call for renewal of UN Special Rapporteur’s mandate

May 25, 2018 Eritrea East Africa, Eritrea, Human rights, Pentecostals, Refugees, Religious freedom

A boy in Nguenyyiel refugee camp in Gambela region of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in June. (Photo: Getty Images)

Rights groups have called for the mandate of the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur for Eritrea to be renewed in June. The human rights situation in the East African country has been monitored by the UN Human Rights Council since 2012, when it appointed Ms Sheila B. Keetharuth as the . . . Read More

Can the Scouts help safeguard the future of the Church in Syria?

May 17, 2018 Syria Children, Churches, Damascus, Greek Orthodox, Homs, IDPs, Refugees, Syria, Women, Youth

As the war in Syria enters its eighth year, clergy who have watched their congregations dwindle fear that those who have left the country may not return. One priest expressed his fear that “Christianity will be erased” from certain areas of the country “because the Christians who left these places . . . Read More

Syria: more families return to Homs

May 16, 2018 Syria Civil War, Homs, IDPs, Migrants, Refugees, Syria

Hundreds of people displaced from Syria’s third largest city of Homs because of years of violent conflict will soon be returning home, according to the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). Homs saw some of the first protests of the Syrian conflict back in 2011 and in the years that . . . Read More

Catching Our Eye