World in Brief

Taliban militants attempted to attack a Christian-run day-care centre on March 28 in Kabul, saying it was ‘a church used to convert Muslims to Christianity’.

The assailants, however, mistakenly targeted the next-door building, which houses workers with a US government-sponsored project that runs agricultural and de-mining programmes throughout the country.

Trans World Radio is replacing obsolete computers and support software for broadcasts in Guam and Sri Lanka which reach a vast area of spiritually needy people, it was reported in late March.

Broadcasts are heard in North Korea; isolated villages in Papua New Guinea; in India, where some 20,000 people respond to broadcasts each month; and they provide training for pastors in China where tens of thousands of people are responding to the gospel each year.

Hindu extremists have attacked a church building under construction and threatened the 15 Christians who were carrying out the work in late February.

The incident was in the village of Pradhanpada, Kandhamal. Two people have been arrested, and police are searching for other suspects. A commentator said that Christians in the area ‘live in fear of the radical Hindu groups’ who subject them to daily acts of discrimination and intimidation.

On March 18–19, two days of public gospel meetings were held in a village outside the city of Bellary in Karnataka.

There was no opposition from Hindu people and many villagers gathered to watch the singing and dancing performed by Sunday school children. Pastor Rathna Kumar preached the gospel and several people came to know Jesus. Further gospel meetings like this are being planned for the coming months. Please pray that more people are saved through this work.

A group of Christians were attacked by Hindu extremists on two consecutive days in an effort to force them to convert to Hinduism in early March.

The home of a pastor was raided and Christians present were beaten .The following morning, 15 Christians were dragged from their homes, told to convert back to Hinduism and beaten. The pastor and two others were paraded half-naked to the outskirts of the village.

During the Norouz holidays around March 20, in one city alone over 6,000 New Testaments have been given out to Iranian holidaymakers.

In a neighbouring nation, over 14,000 New Testaments have been distributed during the holidays. As Iranians are celebrating, Christians are at work, and Jesus is on the move as testimony is given of those coming to faith as they read the Bible.

On March 5, as a new UN report raised ‘serious concerns’ about the state of human rights in the country, eight Iranian Christians were rounded up during a social picnic and subjected to interrogation.

They were taken away, blindfolded and interrogated for several hours by armed intelligence and security agents. Most of the group was subsequently released, but three, Amin Khaki, Hossein Barunzadeh and Rahman Bahman, were held.

A bullet lodged in the brain of an 18month-old boy, whose mother was killed in a church shooting on March 23, has been successfully removed.

Satrin Osinya underwent a three-hour operation at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi and was described by the chief neurosurgeon as fully awake and back to his old state. Five other people died in the shooting.

The Palestinian Authority has stopped including religious affiliation on national ID cards, meaning that these will no longer differentiate between Muslims and Christians, it was reported in late March.

Explaining the move, the Interior Ministry said that the Palestinian Basic Law prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity. Hamas have criticised the move as they fear it is one step towards allowing Jewish settlers to remain in the future Palestinian state and to be citizens on equal terms with Muslims and Christians.

Churches and Christian organisations in

Russia that are engaged in educational, social and charitable work are facing harassment from the authorities, with one church liquidated for alleged illegal non-religious educational activity on March 5.

The church lost its appeal against closure with the accusation that it had been conducting general (non-religious) educational work which, as a religious organisation, it was not licensed to do.

The Pilgrim’s Progress is being transformed into a televised puppet show for children and their families by Family Life Network’s Russian partners, it was reported in late March.

The first eight episodes follow Grandpa as he encounters characters and predicaments on his spiritual journey that teach him that he can abandon his heavy backpack at the feet of Jesus.

A top leader of one of Sri Lanka’s most militant Buddhist extremist groups led 250 people in an assault on a Christian leader and his family, it was reported in mid-March.

The man made a 71-mile trip to storm the house of the pastor and then drag him and his wife out into the street and assault them. Their 18-year-old daughter was verbally abused.

Despite thousands being killed and many fleeing Syria, Jesus is at work among the Syrian people, it was reported on March 20.

Refugees, away from the secret police, have freedom to consider the claims of Christ. They are being served mostly by Christians and are able to the see the Christian faith demonstrated.

A church in Turkey was broken into and vandalised by a group of thugs who stole items including the church bell on March 23.

The offenders, who were apparently linked to the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, forced their way in through the front door of the church. A church worker on site sought help at a nearby police station but said the officers on duty refused to intervene.

Christians in Turkey who were shocked to learn that the confessed killers of three Christians would be released on bail under a new law, are more at ease as the suspects are effectively under house arrest, a Christian leader said in mid-March.

Under public pressure, authorities effectively put the men under house arrest by requiring them to wear electronic monitoring devices.

The Russian annexation of the Crimea during March has rightly brought much condemnation from the West.

However, some believe the Russian intervention may be to the good as there has been extensive Muslim intrusion into the country and the Russians will probably reverse this.

On March 10 it was reported that despite the tensions, mission groups and churches are reporting an increased interest in faith in the Ukraine.

‘Christians throughout Ukraine are praying and fasting. All churches are overcrowded with people who are coming to seek God’s face and ask for deliverance’, according to Rostislav Borishkevich, director of Good Samaritan Mission in Kiev. ‘People are crying out to God because they know that only he can help our nation.’

In two separate raids in early March, anti-terrorism police and other officials seized religious literature from private homes.

In one raid, an anti-terrorism officer tore posters with Scripture texts from the walls, and kept threatening a Christian that his home could be taken away from him and that his children could be expelled from school. Personal details of the 37 people present after the Baptist congregation’s Sunday service were taken.

A series of bomb blasts in Tanzania’s island of Zanzibar is stoking fears that the Islamist UAMSHO breakaway movement is increasingly targeting Christians, it was reported in mid-March.

Churches in Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous archipelago in the Indian Ocean, have been attacked and burned down. Some Christian clerics have been killed; others have been seriously burned after being splashed with acid.