Morning Star News, November 15, 2020

Authorities in Cuba have demolished a church building and are blocking other churches from re-opening after the lifting of pandemic restrictions.

“Today the government is blocking the re-opening of some of our temples, which we closed due to the pandemic, based on the argument that they’re illegal, when 90 percent of our churches are illegal because they don’t offer us a pathway for making them legal,” Pastor Julio C. Sánchez said.

The church obtained legal status, and thus the right to negotiate with officials, before the onset of the regime of Fidel Castro in 1959 halted legalizing new churches.

“The reality is that this is part of a government campaign against the church, because we have made a front against its agenda of establishing gender ideology and other laws openly contrary to Christian principles.”

Accusations against evangelicals in state-controlled media are constant and growing, portraying them as extremist, homophobic, anti-development and used by anti-government groups, he added.

To demolish the sanctuary, police who arrived early in the morning had to remove more than 30 Christians who had gathered there to pray and did not hesitate to use violence.

Barnabas Fund, 10 November 2020

Islamic militants turned a village football pitch in northern Mozambique into an execution ground where they beheaded more than 50 people between Friday, 6 November and Sunday, 8 November.

In one attack, gunmen shouting “Allahu Akbar” stormed into Nanjaba village on 6 November, firing weapons and setting homes alight. Two villagers were beheaded and several women were abducted.

Christians who refuse to deny Christ are amongst the victims. The attacks are amongst the worst seen, in recent years. Desperate people are flooding in to the Christian mission stations for protection.

More than 2,000 people have been killed and about 430,000 left homeless in the region since 2017. The militant Islamist organisation, known locally as Al Shabaab (not the Somali-based group), is linked to Islamic State and has effectively gained control of an area of Cabo Delgado.

World Watch Monitor, October 19, 2020

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 killed 31 unarmed Fulani men. The men were rounded up after their IDs had been checked.

A former inhabitant of the village told Radio France Internationale the security forces “go to the villages where these people grew up and look for their relatives. The relatives don’t support terrorism, they are living in their villages. But they detain these people who they see as complicit in terrorism”.

“There is not a very good view of the Fulani,” said Adama, himself Fulani and a pastor in central Burkina Faso who asked not to be identified by his real name for security reasons.

“They are regarded as militants taking part in jihadi attacks, causing trouble in the Sahel region. But that is not all that there is to it. Not all Fulani are terrorists and not all terrorists are Fulani. We, the Fulani, are also the image of God and one first needs to see that”.

Barnabas Fund, 26 October 2020

After a five-month break during the Covid-19 crisis, the committee overseeing the licensing of churches in Egypt approved 100 new registrations when they met again on 19 October.

The new batch is made up of 45 churches and 55 affiliated service buildings. The Cabinet-affiliated committee, headed by Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli, last met in May when it granted 70 licences.

This, the 17th batch of licences to be approved, brings the number of churches granted official recognition to 1,738 out of the original 3,730 that applied for registration.

A total of 1,992 churches are still waiting to be granted licences under the Law for Building and Restoring Churches, introduced in September 2016.

A number of churches were already registered before the new law was brought in.  It is illegal for Christians to worship in an unlicensed church building in Egypt, but until the committee began work in early 2017 it was extremely difficult to obtain a licence.

Forum 18, 21October 2020

Violence against people taking part in the ongoing protests, public events to pray for Belarus and for violence by the regime to end have increased.

For example, Catholics organising and participating in prayer events in the street in Minsk and other towns have been and continue to be accused and. The same charges are also brought against people organising and participating in peaceful political protests against the regime. Many Protestants participate in such protests.

Regime officials are hostile towards followers of beliefs they see as a threat and the regime maintains a network of KGB secret police and religious affairs officials to ensure compliance.

Restrictions include: restrictions on who can hold meetings for worship and where they can be held; difficulty of opening places of worship, and excessive charges for confiscated places of worship still owned by the state; strict controls on foreign citizens who exercise their freedom of religion and belief; prior compulsory censorship of religious literature; arbitrary and unpredictable denials of religious broadcasting; and obstruction of the freedom of religion and belief of death-row prisoners and their families.

As one Belarusian Protestant commented, “they have created conditions so you can’t live by the law. We would need to close half our churches in order to operate technically in accordance with the law”.