World in Brief

On 9 August, the Argentine Senate rejected a bill which would have legalised abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

After a marathon debate, 38 senators voted against it and 31 in favour. Its defeat means lawmakers must wait until next year to resubmit legislation. Some pro-choice campaigners started fires and lobbed missiles at police in Buenos Aires after the vote. Demonstrators on both sides of the debate had rallied outside parliament as voting took place.

The three top faith leaders of the Central African Republic, who have won international recognition for efforts to end its conflict, pledged in late August to work with Russians in order to foster reconciliation in CAR.

At a meeting organised by Valery Zakharov, a Russian diplomat and security advisor to CAR’s President, the men, one from the CAR Evangelical Alliance, another from the Catholic Church and an Imam, reiterated that CAR’s crisis is not primarily an interfaith clash, but is a political power struggle.

On 30 July, a referendum on constitutional reforms declared Sunni Islam the ‘religion of the state.

‘The state draws from this religion the principles and rules of Sunnite observance,’ the Constitution now reads. This is expected to have a tough impact on the country’s small Christian minority of only a few thousand in the country’s roughly 825,000 population.

A Coptic diocese in Upper Egypt saw its eighth church closed in late August following attacks by villagers protesting against the church building being legally recognised.

A law to give churches the same rights as mosques has resulted in many churches waiting for years to be legalised. This gap has created space for local pressure groups to close churches which are as yet ‘unlicensed’.

A mission resource produced earlier in 2018 by a variety of evangelical organisations in French-speaking Europe is available free with English subtitles.

It could be used as part of an awareness-raising mission event or as part of a small group programme looking at what mission is and how all are called to be involved in it. Envoyé-s is a very engaging two-part film lasting just over 50 minutes.

In August, the German cabinet approved proposals to allow people to be identified as diverse on their birth certificates.

The move to add a third ‘gender option’ in addition to male and female was to comply with a ruling by the country’s highest court. The Federal Constitutional Court said in November 2017, while considering a high-profile case involving an intersex person, that people must be allowed to be entered in records as neither male nor female.

A pastor who could have faced life in prison after police falsely charged him with leading a tribal rebel movement, was providentially granted bail on 8 August.

Christian leaders in Khunti District suspected Hindu extremists were behind the sudden, baseless accusations against Pastor Jidan Herenz, when he was charged with sedition for allegedly leading the rebellious Pathalgadi, a movement by tribal Adivasis to fight for indigenous rights.

A nine-year-old girl from an Indian family that had recently converted to Christianity was gang-raped and murdered on 5 August, in Punjab state.

Anjali Masih was playing with her friends, when a group of men lured her away by showing her a guava. She was then gang-raped and strangled with a telephone wire. Local Christians said there has been a rise in anti-Christian feeling in the area, which is predominantly Hindu and Sikh, since a number of families converted to Christianity.

It was reported in August that 12 Iranian converts from Islam to Christianity were each sentenced to one year in prison for propaganda against the state.

The converts were originally arrested in the Iranian port city of Bushehr in 2015 and were released on bail while the case against them was processed. The sentencing judge found all 12 guilty of propaganda activities against the Islamic Republic of Iran and of holding house churches, and inviting people to Christianity.

A law criminalising religious conversions and the hurting of religious feelings came into force in August.

The Christian minority fears the law will be abused by those seeking to settle scores. After the bill was passed, Nepali MP Lokmani Dhakal asked for the removal of the sections criminalising conversions, saying: ‘It seems very clear to me that this country, when preparing the civil code, has forgotten it is a signatory to international treaties that protect the freedom of religion and human rights.’

On 23 August, the bodies of three men, one of whom was a pastor, were found north of the capital Managua.

Although police said the men were all members of a gang and the violence was crime-related, it is thought that they were victims of the regime. Authorities are clamping down on Christians who the government has labelled ‘coup plotters’ and ‘enemies of the regime’. An analyst said that churches, church leaders and even bishops have been targeted as though they were terrorists.

A pastor, his wife and three children were burnt alive when their house in Abonong village, Plateau State, was set on fire by Fulani on the night of 28 August.

‘The attackers armed with machetes and AK-47 rifles stormed the village at about 8pm shooting sporadically and burning houses including part of the reverend’s house,’ a source told journalists. Pastor Adamu Jang and his wife died, along with their three children.

Police in Gujranwala, Punjab, intervened to stop a Muslim mob from setting fire to the homes of Christians on 2 August, after a 25-year-old Christian was accused of sending blasphemous text messages.

A phone registered to 25-year-old Christian Farhan Aziz was used to send a number of text messages. Although Farhan purchased it, he said it was not in his possession and denied sending the text messages. After news of the allegations spread, the mob, armed with steel rods and petrol cans congregated in the city.

A Christian man lost the sight in his eye when a mob attacked him on 18 August as they didn’t want a Christian living in their neighbourhood.

The second-year chemical engineering student, Mehmoodabad Karachi, was badly beaten by a mob of young Muslim men accompanied by an Islamic cleric. They then stoned him outside his home.

The President of the Philippines called, on 6 August, on all communities in the southern Mindanao region to support the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) that is to facilitate the creation of an autonomous Muslim region.

One local church worker said that while Christians, a minority in Mindanao, understand the desire of their Muslim neighbours for independence, they remain apprehensive about the potential knock-on effects.

The criminal case against the elected President and senior leaders of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) was dismissed on 9 August.

Eight leaders of the SCOC were arrested in 2017 and charged with trespassing on the church headquarters. They were also accused of refusing to hand over administrative control to an unelected church committee led by Mr Angelo Alzaki and appointed by the government. In his ruling, the judge commented that the case centred entirely on an administrative dispute which was not criminal in nature.

Kurdish militia closed down four Christian schools in north-east Syria on 28 August, the latest of a number of acts apparently targeting Christian ethnic minorities in the region.

The self-proclaimed administration of the Kurdish YPG militia, which is in control of parts of north-east Syria, shut down the schools. It is understood they were closed because they refused to move to teaching the administration’s ‘ideologically-saturated’ curriculum. Christian residents and church leaders took to the streets to demonstrate against the closures in Qamishli.

A church outside Kampala closed on 4 August after many months of Muslims pelting its gatherings with rocks.

A stone thrown through a window struck Pastor Moreen Sanyu of Greater Love Church in Namasuba Para Zone, Wakiso District, and knocked her unconscious. Members of the church fled when the attack took place. Based in a predominantly Muslim area, it had grown to 400 people, but out of fear for their lives, the congregation diminished. The church had been accused of ‘stealing’ Muslims, to join ‘the infidels’ church’.