christian persecution

The three young children of a Christian couple jailed on baseless charges of desecrating the Koran in Lahore, Pakistan last week have no relatives to care for them and are extremely upset, a rights advocate said.

Terrorists entering a town in Taraba state, Nigeria at about 2 a.m. on Sunday (Sept. 10) killed two Christians, wounded several others and kidnapped six people, sources said.

According to sources, assailants in an area of Nigeria where Fulani terrorists have operated freely burned a Catholic seminary student to death Thursday night in a failed kidnapping attempt.

A machete-wielding Muslim threatened to kill members of a house church in Indonesia as he and family members on Aug. 29 broke up a worship service, sources said.

A pastor was shot and wounded by hardline Muslims on Sunday evening (Sept. 3) in Jaranwala, Pakistan a week after Islamist slogans were written on the walls of his church building, sources said.

Church and rights leaders in Pakistan are demanding an investigation into anti-Christian rioting in Jaranwala amid illegal arrests of area Christians and a police claim of a “foreign conspiracy” to create religious strife, sources said.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Tuesday (Aug. 29) ordered the government to respond to a petition to stop courts from allowing forced conversion and marriage of minority girls in verdicts that act as covers for child rape, sources said.

Two Christians were kidnapped on Friday (Aug. 25) in Kaduna state, Nigeria, two days after gunmen described as terrorists killed a Baptist pastor in another area of the state, sources said.

Two teen boys were sentenced to two years in prison in Austria for conspiring to kill as many Christians as possible at a middle school in the Styria city of Bruck an der Mur.

Police in India have issued questionnaires to at least 40 churches in Indore, Madhya Pradesh state seeking information that Christians fear will be used by Hindu extremists to attack them, sources said.