World in Brief

A 15-year-old Coptic Christian boy was sentenced to 15 years in an Egyptian prison for sexual assault, even though forensic reports showed no evidence of a crime.

His mother says her son, Fadi, is innocent and was targeted only because her Muslim neighbours, whose eight-year-old son was the alleged victim, ‘don’t like Christians’. The Muslim boy’s grandfather is imam at the local mosque. The family were forced to move home, which itself is a crime against the Egyptian Constitution where Article 63 prohibits arbitrary forced displacement of citizens.

Theological books for Indian pastors are costing more due to customs charges, it was reported in March.

Siloam said their books arrived safely, but due to delays and the customs charge on second-hand books and Bibles, the organisation needs to re-think the best way to export valuable Christian books.

A church closed for years by order of the local mayor was told in mid-February it could reopen if a mosque was also allowed on its premises

The GKI Yasmin Church in Bogor had resorted to holding open-air services outside the Presidential palace in Jakarta in protest. The church was sealed and padlocked by order of the mayor. He claimed there were falsified community signatures on documents and the church brought trouble with local Muslims. Later he said the church should not be built on a street with an Islamic name.

An Iranian convert to Christianity, imprisoned since August, fell seriously ill after going on a now-ended hunger strike, it was reported in February.

Amin Afshar Naderi went on hunger strike with his fellow detainee Hadi Asgari, who is also said to have suffered recent ill health and been refused medical treatment. They are the two remaining detainees from an initial group of five Christians arrested while picnicking in the Alborz Mountains north-east of Tehran last summer. They have been visited and told their case will now be investigated.

The son of an abducted Christian pastor, Raymond Koh, filed a second police report in March, on suspicion that his father has been murdered.

Jonathan Koh said the reason for the report was the lack of information or a ransom demand, even though the family had offered a reward. The abduction was filmed and carefully executed, and comes against the background where pressure has been increased on non-Muslims where civil and shar’ia laws are being harmonised. Koh had been arrested for ‘proselytising’ Muslims months before the incident.

On 28 January, an Anti-Terrorism Court in Lahore acquitted 106 Muslims accused of an attack on Joseph Colony – sparked by a blasphemy accusation in March 2013 – after the prosecution case collapsed.

More than 80 prosecution witnesses, 63 of them with statements recorded about the attack that destroyed more than 150 homes, said they did not recognise the accused.

A Pakistani Christian boy accused of blasphemy for ‘liking’ and ‘sharing’ a Facebook post which ‘defamed and disrespected’ the Kaaba in Mecca – the building at the centre of Islam’s most sacred mosque – was refused bail on 7 February.

Lawyers for Nabeel Masih, 16, argued that he should be granted bail as he has no prior convictions and is still a juvenile. However, a Magistrate’s Court rejected the application. About 80 people at the hearing threatened Masih’s family.

Pakistan’s National Assembly passed a law on 6 February which amended some criminal laws, making it possible for sectarianism, mass lynching and forced conversions to be punished more vigorously.

The Bill’s statement of objectives and reasons state that ‘terrorism, sectarianism and extremism have gripped the entire country and these acts have become the order of the day.’ Critics see the implementation of the law by the police being problematic, due to a rife bribery culture and animosity towards ‘ritually impure’ Christians.

A Christian facing the death penalty on blasphemy charges was granted bail by the Supreme Court on 1 February because of gaps in the investigation of his case.

Evangelist Adnan Prince, imprisoned since 2013, had sought to correct misconceptions about Christianity in a Muslim book. He was charged with: outraging religious feelings; defiling the Qu’ran; and derogatory remarks against Muhammad (Section 295-A, 295-B and 295-C of Pakistan’s widely condemned blasphemy laws).

Prosecutions were reported in February to have continued under ‘missionary activity’ restrictions, and have led to the first known deportation of a foreigner, Indian Victor-Immanuel Mani.

This deportation has separated him from his Russian wife and young child. Separately, appeals have been made against two court orders to destroy Bibles, the Bhagavad Gita and other texts.

A church in Karuwalagaswewa was attacked and burned by a 200-strong Buddhist mob on 5 January.

Threats had previously been made to the church’s pastor, so the local police inspector met with the pastor and the local Buddhist monk and promised to maintain law and order. However, that very night the church was destroyed. The congregation continues to meet in the open air.

State officials in Sudan plan to demolish at least 25 church buildings in the Khartoum area, it was revealed in mid-February.

The government reportedly claimed that the churches were built on land zoned for other uses, but Christian leaders said that it is part of wider crack-down on Christianity. The Sudan Council of Churches denounced the order and called on the government to reconsider the decision or provide alternative sites for the churches. Mosques located in the same area were spared from the demolition order.

A Czech Christian aid worker, freed from prison in Sudan on 26 February, has spoken of how the prison authorities treated him.

‘The first two months were probably the most severe for me because I was placed in a cell together with members of the Islamic State, who humiliated me as a Christian. It then escalated into humiliation and physical beatings, and psychological torture and humiliation,’ Petr Jasek told reporters, once safely back on Czech soil.

Police in Omdurman, Sudan arrested four Christians on 20 February and accused them of destroying the signboard of a Muslim interest trying to take over their Christian school.

The Christians, including the Revd Sidik Abdalla Anglo, a member of the SPEC Presbytery, spent the night in jail and were then released on bail. ‘These accusations are false and baseless,’ Anglo, a teacher of Christian education, said after his release. ‘We are glad that the accusations were false. Jesus said that those who follow him would face persecution.’

Hours after an evangelist in Uganda accused of kidnapping was released on bail on 3 March, an Islamic leader urged village Muslims to kill him.

Muslims in eastern Uganda’s Kachomo village, Budaka District gathered to discuss how to stop Hassan Muwanguzi, a lay leader with the Church of Uganda well known in the region for his wide-ranging evangelism. In an effort to defame Muwanguzi and stir up Islamist sentiment against him, Nghangha Mubakali accused him of kidnapping and making a human sacrifice of his daughter.

A regional church leader convened an emergency meeting of pastors in eastern Uganda on 10 February to refute what he called a false news story aimed at covering up a Muslim assault on a prayer meeting.

The Kampala-based newspaper The Daily Monitor’s ‘false and fabricat[ed]’ story had turned around an incident where Christians had been beaten and raped by Muslims, to claim the Christians had turned ‘on each other’. The Uganda police force had also supported the false story.

The United Nations (UN) Committee on Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) voted on 3 February to reject Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s (CSW’s) application for official UN accreditation, after deferring the application since 2009.

CSW applied in 2009 for consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), an official UN accreditation which would give CSW access to the key human rights advocacy platforms including the Human Rights Council and General Assembly. Other human rights organisations were also denied accreditation.

A car was confiscated from a Protestant because he did not pay illegal fines for giving religious books away, it was reported in mid-February.

The books were approved by the Religious Affairs Committee, which apparently changed its mind so as to fine the Pastor. Raids and fines continue.