Morning Star News, August 20, 2020

Municipal officials in Nepal ordered a church to stop construction of a worship hall after about 40 local Hindus objected to it.

Hindus had threatened relatives who became Christians after pastor Manish Bohra began proclaiming Christ in January. When the church began to outgrow its rented room, he obtained an eight-year lease on land from an area resident on which to build a temporary worship structure.

“On July 26, I received a phone call from officials warning us not to construct a church, and that they had received a petition from the local residents opposing Christian activities in the area,” Pastor Bohra told Morning Star News.

Nepalese law does not provide for registration of religious organizations with the exception of Buddhist monasteries.

The church in Galkot began with just two families in January and within a few weeks grew to 45 members.

“Many from Hindu families had come to Christ from poverty-stricken and emotionally drained families.  As a church, we had encouraged them to put belief in Christ, and soon we saw the Lord working in their lives.”

World Watch Monitor, August 21, 2020

Lord Alton’s question recognised the new UN International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief on 22 August.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram alone has killed 27,000 people over the past 10 years, based on its extreme radical Islamist beliefs and agenda.

Latest research by the Pew Center shows India, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria, CAR, Pakistan, Israel, Bangladesh and Yemen have ‘very high’ social hostility involving religion.

The focus is limited to violence based on religion or belief.

“Poland and other states have to be commended for recognizing the issue of violence based on religion or belief as a contemporary issue that can no longer be neglected”.

Pew has shown that, of all global religions, it is Christians who experience the most hostility.

Nationalistic governments such as India and Myanmar continue to deny freedom of religion for their sizeable Christian minorities. Mobs often attack and kill with impunity.

Extreme persecution also comes at the hands of radical Islamic militias, such as in in Mali, Chad, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Libya and Somalia.

Middle East Concern, 17 August 2020

Christians in Algeria ask for prayer for the Spring of Life church in Makouda, second largest Protestant church in Algeria with about 700 members, as a court  rejected their request to cancel the governor’s order to close it under Ordinance 06-03, which stipulates that permission must be obtained before using a building for non-Muslim worship.

Under Ordinance 06-03, Algerian authorities started a campaign in November 2017 to close churches.

In June 2020, the Makouda pastor was fined by another court for unpermitted modifications to the (church) building.

Christians in Algeria are concerned this verdict might be a precedent for similar action by municipal authorities against other churches.

Algerian Christians ask us to pray that regulations governing non-Muslim worship will be amended and justly implemented, so that Christians will be able to worship freely.

World Watch Monitor, July 29, 2020

21 pages of incidents of violent attacks took place across the north and Middle Belt of Nigeria between 1 December 2019 and 11 April 2020.

180,000 people are currently Internally Displaced living in 8 camps across Benue State.  Another half a million are living with relatives, driven out of their homes or fearing attack.

The extreme Islamist militants Boko Haram have killed more people than Islamic State killed in Iraq and Syria combined.

This number of 27,000 dead at the hands of Boko Haram over the past ten years is in the latest new report tracking the violence occurring across Nigeria.

Meantime over the past 20 years, nearly 19,000 people have been killed by extremist militant Fulanis, with over 43,000 Nigerians killed by Boko Haram over the same period.

The 311-page report, ‘Nigeria’s Silent Slaughter’, is a collaboration between networks in Nigeria and its diasporas in the UK and the US.

The researchers conclude: “Overall, Boko Haram and Fulani militants are conducting a genocidal slaughter in Nigeria. We are not condemning the entire Fulani population.”

A local journalist, Reuben Buhari, reported that last week, 11-20 July, 64 had been killed in Kaduna in a way that he saw as ‘systematic’ across a traditionally Christian area.

Locals say that there is a clear disparity between the number of Christian villages and communities attacked and the number of Muslims killed.

Morning Star News, August 2, 2020

Dozens of foreign Christians in Turkey have been forced to leave the country or been banned from returning in what appears to be government targeting of the Protestant Christian community.  Many such foreigners have lived in the country for decades.

The Istanbul Protestant Church Foundation (IPCF) stated, “We must inform you that since 2019, it has been made increasingly difficult for foreign Protestant clergy serving in Turkey to be resident in our country.”

It is estimated that 35 Christian workers received similar bans in 2019 and 16 more since the end of June.  Those fighting the ban find that administrative courts are not giving lawyers access to reports from Turkish intelligence.

There are about 10,000 Turkish Protestants who attend about 170 churches, many of them house churches, in the overwhelmingly Muslim country of more than 84.3 million people, said an MEC researcher.

“It’s notable that none of these people have been charged with any breaking of the law,” he said.