In Depth:  International Christian Concern

The preacher of a house church in Taiyuan, who was detained last November, has been detained again along with five women after their Bible study at the preacher’s home.

Almost 40 people from the local authority raided the home of An Yankui, the preacher of Xuncheng Church, as he was having an evening Bible study with a small group of church members.

The National People’s Congress (NPC), in late May, passed controversial new legislation on national security for Hong Kong, and on 4 June, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Hong Kong’s own legislature made it a crime to insult the National Anthem.

As the 4 June law was passed, students held a silent vigil at the Pillar Of Shame sculpture commemorating the massacre.

Following support from Christians, a man who was attacked by Islamic militants has fully recovered and is seeing his family thrive after he was supported to set up a small business.

The former quarry worker, named John, runs a small mill that processes various grains into flour. He has a poster in his shop pointing his customers to salvation in Jesus.

At a religious freedom event in July, a pastor from Myanmar recounted his ordeal of being jailed and tortured for more than a year.

Pastor Langjaw Gam Seng was arrested in 2016 and wrongfully charged for exposing the Burmese Army’s airstrike against a church. Seng also provided aid to victims of violence and helped to bury the dead in the midst of armed conflicts.

On 19 May, more than 70 officials from China’s southeastern Fujian Province were dispatched to shut down a house church in Xiamen.

Xunsiding Church, with over four decades of history, received an administrative pen-alty notice after the officials inspected the church. The church also received a fine of 25,000 yuan (approximately USD $3,600).

On 13 May assailants broke into a Christian home and assaulted two elderly women, a mother and daughter.

The women were repeatedly stabbed with a knife, and their gold and money was stolen. The two victims were hospitalised in Mosul. The daughter, who sustained a violent head injury, remains in a critical condition. Two men are reported as having been arrested for the attack.

A video, spread widely in Turkey, shows an Islamic theologian and TV personality Nihat Hatipoğlu leading a 13-year-old Armenian Christian boy in a conversion during Ramadan, it was reported on 15 May.

The video was broadcast live from Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul, which is where Armenians were imprisoned during the 1915 genocide before being sent to their deaths. The square is a central location for commemoration events which remember the genocide. Forced conversions were a prominent feature of the 1915 genocide, and the video brings many concerns.

A Christian student from Karachi was nearly killed after being stabbed in an attack by Muslim classmates on 15 February.

The incident began when Haroon Irfan, a Christian student at Government Mohammadi School in Karachi, reported that his Muslim classmate, Muhammad Majid, stole and damaged his school notebook.

Four churches in different Upper Egypt villages were targeted by hard-line Islamic extremists in early January.

In each village, the extremists formed a mob and attacked the churches, which were seeking official recognition. In each of these incidents, the police denied the rights of Christians to publicly worship and closed the churches, according to the demands of the mob.