Tag: Religious freedom

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

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

“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

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

Korean murdered in southeast Turkey ‘for mobile phone’

November 29, 2019 Turkey Diyarbakir, Jin-Wook Kim, Korean, Malatya, Protestants, Religious freedom, Turkey

Criminal investigations into the stabbing to death of a Korean Christian last week in southeast Turkey’s largest city are continuing under a cloak of judicial secrecy, as authorities search for evidence to resolve the controversy over the killer’s motive. South Korean Jin-Wook Kim, 41, was murdered in a late-night Nov. . . . 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

5 years on, 112 Chibok girls missing – but they are just ‘tip of the iceberg’

April 12, 2019 Nigeria Chibok girls, Children, Kidnapping, Minorities, Nigeria, Religious freedom, Women

Dr Rebecca Dali talks of 5th anniversary of Chibok girls' kidnap, from Abuja, Nigeria

Five years ago, April 14th, 2014, about 230 girls from Chibok Girls’ Secondary School in NE Nigeria were rounded up at night by men in army dress and driven off on trucks into the darkness. In the immediate aftermath, 47 of them escaped; some jumped off the trucks, others managed . . . Read More

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