Updates on the persecuted Church
Barnabas Fund, 15 February 2023 (excerpts)
- Islamic State Mozambique announced the killing of 5 Christians in Cabo Delgado Province on 4 February. The Islamists said that “the soldiers of the Caliphate … captured and slaughtered 5 Christians, praise be to God”. Pray for all those at risk of such violence in northern Mozambique, especially our brothers and sisters.
- The Mexican Senate of the Republic (the upper house of Mexico’s parliament) has backed recognition of the Armenian Genocide in a vote held on 8 February. France already recognises the Armenian Genocide. Between 1893 and 1923, 3.75 million Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and Syriac Christians perished in the Ottoman Empire in a policy of extermination of Christian minorities. Give thanks for increased awareness of these events.
- Sunita Munawar, 19, a young Pakistani Christian woman, is in hospital after a Muslim man, Kamran Allah Bux, threw acid on her while she was getting off a bus in Karachi on 1 February. Bux admitted his crime, saying that he threw acid at Sunitra for rejecting his proposal that she convert to Islam and marry him. Sunita’s family had earlier complained to police about Bux’s unwanted advances but had been ignored. Pray that justice will be administered to act as a deterrent against harassment of Christian girls and women in Pakistan.