World in Brief

Coptic houses were attacked in a village on 4 June, after Copts objected to a group of young Muslim men swimming naked in a canal in front of their homes as Coptic women sat outside.

A Muslim mob gathered around the homes of Christians across the canal and began pelting them with bricks and stones, while shouting ‘Allah is the greatest’ and chanting slogans against Copts. They broke the windows and doors of houses, and looted and destroyed some properties. Six people were injured, requiring stitches.

An Egyptian photographer was detained by police for carrying a bottle of water on 5 June during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Hani Shamshoun Girgis, 31, arrived at Giza railway station to continue his way to the office of the Tahrir newspaper where he works, when he was approached by a police officer and asked to present his ID. As soon as the officer found out through his ID that he was a Christian, he started searching his bag.

Christians coerced into an out-of-court settlement following an Islamist attack on a church building in May, saw their church closed.

Members of an armed Muslim mob that attacked a church building in Meinin village, were acquitted of mobbing, fighting and possession of unlicensed firearms based on a ‘conciliation’ settlement calling for the church site to close. Nine Christians were arrested – with five held illegally for a month – and charged with failing to have a church building licence in a country where officials are slow to approve licences, if at all.

A church in Puducherry was set ablaze in late May, after upper-caste Hindu neighbours objected to worship services in the area.

Pastor David Santosham, of the Bible Presbyterian Church in Karaikal District, on his way home after concluding fasting prayers, got an anonymous call informing him that the church was on fire. The church’s roof, made of tar sheets and bamboo supports, was reduced to ashes. Christian literature and musical instruments costing the equivalent of around $4,500 were also burned. Since the fire the church has met in a tent.

As a Christian couple prepared to marry on 28 May, police arrested the bride, groom and pastor after the bride’s father had filed a false complaint of forcible conversion against them.

In his complaint, the bride’s father alleged that Christians beat him and threatened to kill him if he did not convert to Christianity. He later withdrew the complaint. The family supported the girl’s decision to marry a Christian. Only her father has not become a Christian.

Falsely accused of running a brothel, a badly beaten pastor in Tamil Nadu state jumped out of a moving car on 20 June to save himself from Hindu extremists who were threatening to kill him.

The hard-line Hindu mob had attacked Pastor Jayaseelan Natarajan as he and his son visited their church construction site in the Thozilpettai area, Karur District. There has been opposition to the building of the church. Police refused to register an FIR [First Information Report] based on Pastor Natarajan’s complaint.

Lord Alton of Liverpool questioned the British Government on 12 June over its response to attacks on Kachin Christians by the Myanmar (Burmese) military.

The Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Lord Ahmad, stated that the government had expressed ‘deep concern’ and called upon the Burmese military, and all parties, to cease hostilities and allow humanitarian access to the displaced peoples. He said: ‘We have certainly seen ethnic cleansing taking place … there is no better term for it.’

Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed two Christians on 10 June and seriously wounded another as they made their way home from a church service.

Ibrahim Weyi, 45, and Larry More, 53, were said to be hacked to death when herdsmen ambushed them as the Christians were going home on a motorcycle from an evening worship service. A third Christian, 23-year-old Samuel Weyi, was wounded in the attack.

At least 50 Christians died when the villages of Razat and Ganaropp were attacked on 26 June by an armed ethnic Fulani Muslim militia.

Gunfire first rang out in Razat in the early afternoon, and then the attackers moved on to the nearby village of Ganaropp where they joined forces with other Muslim groups. Some of the people killed had taken refuge inside a local church. The pastor was stained with the blood of a wounded woman he was helping. The woman later died of her injuries.

An Assemblies of God pastor, his wife and

son were among at least 218 people killed in Muslim Fulani herdsmen attacks on predominantly Christian areas near Jos on 23-25 June, a denominational leader said.

Two days after the General Superintendent of the AG-Nigeria denomination, the Revd Chidi Okoroafor, reported the deaths of the Revd Musa Choji and family members in the Barkin Ladi area near Jos, the federal government ordered the arrest of a pastor who had organised protests of the killings.

Cattle rustlers attacked the home of Archbishop Benjamin Kwashi on 30 June, days after he was announced as GAFCON’s General Secretary.

He was caring for 60 orphans when the raiders struck. He has experienced four attacks. The church and vicarage were burnt down, and on one occasion, when would-be assassins found him absent, they took their revenge on his wife Gloria, leaving her partially blinded. Each time the attackers come, Archbishop Kwashi says it just makes him more resolved to preach the gospel.

Local Muslims in Muzaffarabad, northern Pakistan, stole building materials and cut off Christians’ water supply in an effort to halt the construction of a church, it was reported on 3 July.

The Christian community were granted permission by local authorities to build a church on a plot of land in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the semi-autonomous region of Azad Kashmir. But local Muslims started a campaign on social media against the church building. Church elders reported the intimidation to police, but have had no official response.

Two African students from a Nizhny Novgorod Pentecostal Church were fined and ordered to be deported for appearing in videos of worship services, it was reported on 25 June.

The church was also fined. ‘The charges of illegal missionary activity are completely unlawful,’ Pentecostal Union lawyer Vladimir Ozolin said.

Timothy Rogers, a popular Arkansas evangelist and singer, came under fire after he declared at a funeral in June that Hell is a ‘fairytale’ no different than Santa Claus.

He said: ‘You can talk about a Hell that you don’t know nobody went to. For a billion years ain’t nobody ever came back and told you that they were hot.’ The choices made by individuals in their personal lives, he said, will determine whether they experienced heaven or hell.

A court in the southern city of Karshi [Qarshi] punished four members of a Baptist congregation for meeting for worship without state permission in May.

One Baptist was jailed for five days after pointing out that he and his fellow Baptists did not break the Constitution or international human-rights law. The other three were fined several days’ average wages. The judge, illegally, did not specify exactly what part of the law the Baptists had broken. The judge said the men should ‘do their prayers at home’.

CMS-Africa appointed a new international director to deliver a programme to transform the lives of 50 million Africans. He is to commence his role on 1 September.

The Revd Canon Moses Bushendich takes over the leadership of CMS-Africa from the Revd Dr Dennis Tongoi, who is retiring. Canon Bushendich will be based at CMS-Africa’s office in Nairobi, Kenya. Fondly known as Canon Bush, he has been an Anglican priest since 2002

Sexual violence against women is the most common means globally of putting pressure on Christian communities and families, it was reported on 19 June.

The story of a woman in CAR, raped and then ostracised by her community after her baby was born, highlights the way women are attacked as the family honour is seen to rest on them and then abandoned by the people who are offended by the attack on her. Church leaders are being trained in trauma care for women like this.