World in Brief

Millions in Madagascar, Malawi and Zimbabwe continue to face severe food shortages as a result of drought across the region, it was reported in January.

People in rural communities were so desperate that they were prepared to risk eating locusts, which are known to be toxic. Young people are collapsing from hunger and exhaustion. Countries with economies that are less robust are suffering greatly due to poor infrastructure and emergency relief processes. The problems are in cities as well as rural areas.

On 23 December, police in Australia arrested seven suspected Islamic terrorists after thwarting a planned bomb attack on three sites in Melbourne, including St Paul’s Cathedral.

Some 400 heavily-armed police raided homes in five of Melbourne’s northwestern suburbs. The raids reportedly culminated weeks of intensive investigations and monitoring by Victoria Police, Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Police suspected that the attacks were being planned for Christmas Day.

A van filled with gas bottles exploded after being driven into the offices of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL).

The police claim there is no link to the threats the ACL received due to their defence of marriage and their campaign against a state-funded LGBT education programme. They have been labelled as a hate group in the Australian Parliament. Their mission statement is: We desire a compassionate, just and moral society through having the public contributions of the Christian faith reflected in the political life of the nation.

A teacher lost his job in a Canadian school for making his pro-life stance known to students, it was reported in January.

The teacher explained in a law lesson that in a democracy there is often a difference ‘between people’s private morality and the law’, giving as an example his belief that abortion was wrong but the law was different to his view. One female pupil complained to a school administrator that she felt ‘unsafe’, a claim she also made after he apologised for upsetting her.

On 21 December, China was called to declare the whereabouts of Chinese Christian human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong as, despite claims he was released, no-one knows where he is.

The outspoken lawyer disappeared on his way home from visiting the wife of another imprisoned attorney. The official Chinese media says Jiang is accused of handing over state secrets to foreigners. When held at a secret location in one of China’s so-called ‘black jails’, an unregistered detention centre, he was denied any legal representation.

Concern was expressed in early January after the organs of a Christian prisoner of conscience Peng Ming were removed against his family’s wishes.

Five days before his death, Peng Ming had been visited by his brother who said that Peng was in good health. The death certificate gave no details of the cause of death and many in the dissident community inside and outside China have ‘expressed doubt over the official version of events’.

The Supreme Court of India delivered a decision on 2 January that an appeal by a political candidate to vote or refrain from voting on grounds of caste, race, community or religion amounts to corrupt practices.

In a 4:3 verdict, the seven-judge bench examined the relationship between candidates standing for public office and Section 123(3) of the Representation of People Act, 1951 (as amended in 1956), which bars a candidate standing for elections, either directly or through their agents, from appealing to any person to vote or refrain from voting on the grounds of their caste, race, community or religion.

Promising to remain faithful will no longer be a legal requirement for marriages in Italy, if a controversial new Bill is passed, it was reported in late December.

Supporters of the Bill want to remove the word ‘fidelity’ from marriage contracts, as they claim that faithfulness in marriage is outdated and obsolete. It has been backed by the Italian Senate. Its proponents want marriage contracts to contain the same wording as same sex civil partnerships, which were legalised in 2016.

Three pensioners were fined more than two months pension for praying with hospice residents in December.

They also offered New Testaments to the residents.

Authorities have failed to prosecute those who led mobs of people to dig up the body of a Protestant in late 2016.

Kanygul Satybaldiyeva’s body was twice dug up, and officials not only allowed this to happen, but will not tell the deceased woman’s daughter what they did with her mother’s body.

A 58-year-old woman was beaten and kicked till she fell unconscious, after she refused to clean a Muslim’s home, it was reported in January.

Recognising the job was too large for her, she offered to come back another day with a team of cleaners. However, the landlord accused her of disrespect, as Christians should not refuse to take orders from Muslims. The attack was so brutal, the perpetrator’s wife pleaded for her husband to stop the beating. The police refused to register the attack.

One of four men detained in Sudan since December 2015 for ‘crimes against the state’ was released on 2 January.

Three others continue to face seven criminal charges, some of which carry the death penalty or life imprisonment if found guilty. The judge at the hearing concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge the church leader. However, the judge ruled there was sufficient evidence to proceed with the trials of fellow church leader Hassan Taour, Darfuri graduate Abdulmonem Abdumawla and Czech aid worker Petr Jasek.

After more than three years, the leadership of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) remains in the hands of government-appointed committee members, even after a court ruled in November that the appointments were illegal.

Sudan’s Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowment appointed a group to run the SPEC offices in May 2013, in what the prior church leaders called a bid to control church activities and rid the country of Christianity.

Christians united in December to launch a campaign to free a US pastor imprisoned in Turkey.

Andrew Brunson was detained and imprisoned by the Turkish Government for allegedly having ties to the Gülen movement whose followers are accused of inciting last July’s coup in Turkey. Bunson, the pastor of Izmir Resurrection Church on Turkey’s west coast, served as a missionary in Turkey for 23 years prior to being arrested.

A study conducted by Harvard University researched the way to be truly happy and the findings ended up being consistent with what the Bible says about true happiness, it was reported in January.

The data was collected over 75 years from the lives of 268 Harvard students from different backgrounds. Alongside showing that money doesn’t bring happiness (Hebrews 13.5), the study showed that having deep relationships brought much happiness, reflecting many passages of Scripture.

Texas officially removed Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid programme in late December.

Planned Parenthood in Texas received about $3.1 million in Medicaid funding. The state first threatened to pull Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood in October 2015 after the release of undercover videos showed Planned Parenthood officials discussing the use of foetal tissue for research. The Texas Health and Human Services Inspector General Stuart Bowen said the undercover videos showed that Planned Parenthood ‘violated state and federal law’.

A US Christian printer should not be forced by the state to produce messages that con-flict with his convictions, lawyers warned in late December.

Blaine Adamson’s company, Hands On Originals, declined to print T-shirts for a Gay Pride festival in 2012 because he did not want to promote its message. The organisation behind the event sued him. A judge backed Adamson, and the lesbian owners of a T-shirt company spoke out in his defence. An appeals court is considering the case, with religious liberty organisation Alliance Defending Freedom representing Adamson.