July 2015 Persecution Magazine (1 of 4)

Plightof Pakistani Christians

The

A mother and father remember their son who saved hundreds by detaining a suicide bomber

JULY 2015WWW.PERSECUTION.ORG

PERSECU ION.orgINTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN CONCERN

PERSECU ION

2PERSECU ION.orgINTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN CONCERN

Pakistan. . .

It truly is “Persecution Central.” There are other bloodier spots currently, but year-in, year-out, this country is the poster boy for Islamic persecution of Christians.

I have been to almost 60 countries, and it is the only place I’ve visited where I walked around in fear. I was on edge the whole time. You could feel something in the air … a presence. It was the opposite of what you encounter when you walk into a room or church and the presence of God is there.

The Word talks about the evil spirits controlling large regions of the earth. I am convinced the presence I and others have sensed is that controlling spirit of the region.

Christians have been brutalized there for 1,000 years, ever since the Muslim kings traveled eastward in their campaigns start-ing around the year 1,000. Reaching India and Pakistan, their firsthand accounts tell of mind-boggling numbers of deaths as they slashed their way through these lands.

Reputable historians have estimated they may have killed as many as 70,000,000 people in an attempt to subjugate these lands.

It is hard to describe the culture of extreme oppression and subjugation that Christians live under in Pakistan. Think of the old South on steroids, with the hatred fueled by religious zeal, and you will begin to get a feel for the place.

This is why we work extensively in Pakistan, and you should target it in prayer and with your giving. I can tell you that there are some very exciting large-scale developments going on there that must stay private. Let me just say that I feel “Aslan is on the move” there.

Until He comes, let us take up the sword of righteousness on behalf of those behind enemy lines.

We will bandage the victims and attack the gates of Hell with the Gospel because …

They will fall!!!

Your donations will be used efficiently, effectively, and ethically.

I promise!

Jeff King

President, International Christian Concernwww.persecution.org

President’s Letter

Jeff King, President International Christian Concern

3 JULY 2015PERSECU ION.orgINTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN CONCERN

Impact Report

FUND BALANCE:

WHERE MOST NEEDED

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• ICC participated in a joint initiative withAmnesty International that led to calls by67 members of Congress for King Salmanto improve human rights and religiousfreedom in Saudi Arabia.

• ICC sent staff to Pakistan using funds fromthe Where Most Needed fund. ICC staffspent three weeks in Pakistan meeting withdozens of persecuted Christians across thecountry, recording their testimonies anddeveloping projects to meet their needs.

• ICC held high-level talks with U.S.Embassy officials in Cairo on behalfof Bishoy Armia Boulous, an EgyptianChristian jailed on blasphemy charges, anddelivered a letter from 18 human rightsorganizations calling for the Egyptian gov-ernment to release Bishoy.

2015 Q2ICC Assisted:

INDIVIDUALS

IN 3 COUNTRIES

20,000

FUND BALANCE:

SUFFERING WIVES and CHILDREN

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INDIVIDUALS

IN 4 COUNTRIES

187

• ICC partnered with China Aid to support10 families of church pastors or humanrights lawyers working on behalf of perse-cuted Christians in China.

• Ten families of imprisoned church leadersin Vietnam were each given a drove ofpiglets to start a small business.

• ICC provided vital food aid to 28 Christianfamilies affected by the bombings of Christ Church and St. John’s Catholic Church inYouhanabad, Pakistan. ICC is planningon following up this initial aid with otherprojects aimed at assisting these families inthe long term.

• Children who lost a parent in the All SaintsChurch bombing in Pakistan receivedassistance to attend school.

FUND BALANCE:

COMMUNITY REBUILD

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INDIVIDUALS

IN 3 COUNTRIES

1,630

• For the Christian communities of Iraqand Syria, the growth of Islamic jihadistshas forced them from their homes andleft them in need of everything — frombasic needs like food, water and shelterto seasonal needs like warm coats in thewinter or increased access to water andcool shelter as the summer heat sets in onthe region. Your donations continue to helpus care for these suffering brothers andsisters as they struggle to survive as peopledisplaced from their homes.

• Using funds from its Community Rebuildfund, ICC was able to help repair twochurches in India damaged in attacks byHindu radicals. With these funds, ICC wasable to replace many of the items damagedby the radicals, including sound systems,musical instruments and chairs.

PROJECTS PROJECTS PROJECTS


Impact Report

FUND BALANCE:

BROADCASTS

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INDIVIDUALS

IN MANY COUNTRIES

32,000

• Through supporting follow-up teamsworking with evangelistic satellite minis-tries, ICC is helping to see true transforma-tion happen across the Middle East. Everyday, people from some of the world’s mostdifficult to reach places, including SaudiArabia, Iran and Yemen, are hearing theGospel preached over television and radio,and, with your help, have someone theycan call and talk to who is able to explainto them what it means.

• ICC has continued to fulfill its commit-ment to spreading the Gospel to all cor-ners of the earth by using funds from itsBroadcast fund. ICC support to variousradio and television ministries in SouthAsia continues to bring many to Christwho would otherwise have no access toChristianity.

FUND BALANCE:

UNDERGROUND PASTORS

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INDIVIDUALS

IN 13 COUNTRIES

1,700

• Through your donations, ICC continues tosupport Pastor Yoel for his ministry withother pastors of Christian congregationsfacing persecution by bands of radicalMuslims. Pastor Yoel is now working as apart-time representative in Indonesia andreceives support to continue his ministry.

• ICC supports Yayasan Terang Nusa, achurch-planting ministry in easternIndonesia’s Sulawesi. Donations to ICC’sUnderground Pastors fund support fivechurch planters with food assistance, hous-ing and other necessities.

• ICC has continued to support many pas-tors facing persecution across South Asia.In Bangladesh, ICC has continued to fundfour pastors willing to reach out to thecountry’s Muslim-majority population.

FUND BALANCE:

BIBLES

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INDIVIDUALS

IN 6 COUNTRIES

9,000

• ICC partnered with Autumn RainInternational, based in Hong Kong, fortheir delivery of Bibles and teachingmaterials primarily into China, as well asVietnam and Laos. ARI has reported thecontinued need for Bibles in China, despiteofficial pronouncements to the contrary.

• ICC’s project to provide a printing pressto produce the Scriptures in a closedNorth African country is producing greatresults. More than 25,000 copies of theGospels have been printed and distributedto churches across the country.

• ICC provided 50 Urdu Bibles to perse-cuted Christians in Pakistan. Many of these Christians are unable to afford purchasinga Bible of their own due to poverty causedby persecution and discrimination.

PROJECTS PROJECTS PROJECTS


News

ISIS Continues to Hold Hundreds of Christians Hostage in Syria1 | SYRIA More than 230 Christians in northeastern Syria are still being held captive by ISIS militants. Abducted in February, negotiations for their release between church leaders, local Muslim leaders and the jihadist group are ongoing, but ISIS has rejected an offer of more than $1.1 million for their freedom.

The jihadist group is demanding more than $23 million for their release, an average of more than $100,000 USD per person. ISIS says that the demand is the jizya, a tax required of religious minorities if they are to live under Islamic control.

The war in Syria has been ongoing for nearly four and a half years, and Islamic jihadists, especially ISIS, have capitalized on the chaos and gained control of large por-tions of the country. When ISIS militants swept into the Khabour River region of Tel-Tamar, they captured dozens of villages, sending more than 3,000 of the remaining resi-dents fleeing and abducting at least 230 more.

Sudanese Pastors Could Face Death Penalty

3 | SUDAN Two South Sudanese pastors who have been imprisoned in Khartoum, Sudan, since December and January, respectively, could face the death penalty for charges related to their Christian faith.

Yat Michael Ruot and Peter Yein Reith have been charged with undermining the constitutional code, waging war against the state, and spying. Under Sudanese law, these offenses carry the possibility of the death penalty or life in prison, according to their attorney.

They also stand charged with incit-ing organized forces to complain and assaulting religious beliefs, charges that also carry prison sen-tences, if convicted.

Rev. Ruot was arrested on December 21 when he left Juba to visit Khartoum to preach at the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church.

Rev. Reith was detained the fol-lowing month while returning from a prayer meeting at the El Jereif West Bible school in Khartoum.

Religious Conflict in Southeast Asia

2 | SOUTHEAST ASIA A study conducted last year in all 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) found that blurred lines between reli-gion and nationalism, weak rule of law and politicization of religion have fueled religious persecution in 8 of the 10 ASEAN countries.

The report specifically noted that violent religious con-flicts had been documented in Malaysia, Myanmar and Indonesia, where persecution often manifests in the form of bodily attacks, forced conversions and arbitrary deten-tion. Lead researcher Jaclyn Neo, assistant professor at the National University of Singapore’s law faculty, noted that conflation of national identity with one religion in certain states had reinforced animosity toward minority groups, who are seen as “national traitors” or “outside the nation.”

In Myanmar, a Buddhist nationalist movement is responsible for promoting legislation against religious conversion, while in Indonesia, democratization and cor-responding weakening of the state have been exploited by religious majorities to exert violence against minorities.

In Malaysia, coercive practices have been used against religious minorities under the guise of protecting Islam. The Court of Appeals has upheld the govern-ment’s deci-sion to pro-hibit the use of the word “Allah” in publications released by Christians.

Assyrian Christians protest, demanding the release of 230 Christians held captive by ISIS.

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Released Christian in Eritrea Still Suffers in Silence, Trapped in Home5 | ERITREA “Alice” spent more than six years locked in an Eritrean prison for her faith in Christ under one of the most repressive regimes against Christians on the globe. She was arrested in January 2009 and held without charge. She was finally released this February, but her voice has been silenced, her mind has been traumatized, and she is left trapped in her own home under the ever-present eyes of the government that jailed her.

“When she came out, she said everything was wonder-ful and good, because she’s being controlled. Now she can’t say anything,” said “Jane,” an Eritrean friend of Alice who now lives in the United States.

Egyptian Christian Convicted of Blasphemy Over Facebook Video7 | EGYPT On May 5, Michael Mounir Beshay was convicted of blasphemy for “ridiculing or insulting a heavenly religion” in violation of Article 98 (f) of the Egyptian penal code. In November 2014, he shared a video on Facebook of two Islamic scholars debating a controversial passage in the Islamic Hadith. Some of his neighbors discovered the post and became upset. They set fire to his motorcycle and demon-strated, demanding his arrest.

The local officials gave in, and Michael was arrested in February, charged with blasphemy and convicted.

Assyrian Christian Refugees Continue to Lose Hope6 | SYRIA “We are searching for the quickest way to go to Europe or Canada, maybe America,” said Jack Zayya, an Assyrian Christian refugee from Syria who arrived in Beirut in February.

As many as half a million Christians are believed to be living as refugees across the region, but now many of them are seeking not just to escape the country, but to leave the region entirely. They are losing hope of ever being able to return home.

ISIS Releases Video Depicting the Beheading and Execution of 30 Ethiopian Christians

4 | ETHIOPIA Militant Islamic terror group ISIS released a shocking video April 19, reportedly showing the gruesome murder of 30 men ISIS claimed were Ethiopian Christians in Libya. The footage alternates between two scenes: one in northern Libya on a Mediterranean beach, where 15 men were beheaded, and one in the desert in southern Libya, where another 15 men were shot in the head, execution style.


News

Hundreds of Hostages Rescued1 | NIGERIA During the last few weeks of April, the Nigerian military rescued nearly 700 hostages from the clutches of Islamic terror group Boko Haram (BH). Most of the people rescued were girls and women, but none of them were identified as the girls kidnapped from Chibok in April 2014.

Soldiers stumbled upon groups of females during mili-tary raids against some of the last strongholds of BH in the Sambisa Forest in Borno State, northern Nigeria.

Most of the women rescued were pregnant because of the repeated gang rape they endured, in addition to beat-ings, forced marriage and pressure to recant their faith. The women were then taken to a refugee camp in Yola, Nigeria, where they were tested for sexually-transmitted diseases, provided prenatal care and given emergency food aid.

The initial images emerging from Yola were shock-ing. Many of the children rescued from Sambisa were so emaciated that witnesses described them as “little skel-

Four African Nations Named CRCs

2 | COUNTRIES OF PARTICULAR CONCERN The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) listed Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR) as “Countries of Particular Concern” in its 2015 Annual Report. This means that these nations exhibit conditions “where particularly severe violations of religious freedom are tolerated or perpetrated” and where violations are “sys-tematic, egregious, and ongoing.”

In Eritrea, the authoritarian state considers anyone who practices faith outside of the country’s four gov-ernment-sanctioned religions to be a spy and an enemy of the state. Christians are regularly jailed for their faith without charge and for indefinite periods of time. In jail, they face torture and coercion to deny Christ.

In Sudan, the Islamist government led by President Omar al-Bashir oppresses Christians, detaining pas-tors and threatening them with the death penalty for trumped-up “crimes against the state.” Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated against Christians in Darfur.

In Nigeria, while the government itself does not perpetuate religious persecution, it has not displayed the will or the capacity to stop it. Christians in Nigeria face violence from militant Islamists, like Boko Haram, all across the country’s north, and Christian farmers in central Nigeria are routinely killed by Muslim Fulani herdsmen.

In CAR, warring factions of both Christian and Muslim majorities have targeted civilians because of their faith.

“[Violations] are systematic, egre-gious and ongoing.”

Children rescued from Boko Haram were de-scribed by witnesses as “little skeletons.”

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etons.” Scores of kids and their traumatized mothers packed into trucks to embark on the three-day journey to Yola, where many required urgent medi-cal care. For many BH victims, the psycho-logical scars of their experience in captivity are even more severe than the physical pain they endured.

BH has reportedly kidnapped more than 2,000 women over the last 18 months. Over the last several years, the group has terror-ized northern Nigeria, ransacking towns and targeting Christians in their quest to estab-lish an Islamic state in Africa. Their barba-rism is extreme, espe-cially toward women.

The group has used women as human shields and employed them as suicide bomb-ers to attack northern Nigerian cities. Some former BH hostages reported that fighters murdered their wives before engaging in bat-tle so they would not marry non-Muslims if the militants died dur-ing battle.

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Religious Conflicts Continue to Sweep Nations

4 | WORLD Across the world, millions of people have fled conflicts fueled by religion. From Syria and Iraq to Nigeria, Central African Republic, Eritrea and Burma, religious identity can prove deadly as both governments and non-state actors are pursuing agendas of religious cleansing.

“Humanitarian crises fueled by waves of terror, intimidation, and violence have engulfed an alarming number of countries over the past year,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “In the long run, there is only one permanent guarantor of the safety, security and survival of the perse-cuted and vulnerable. It is the full recognition of religious freedom.”

Egyptian Court Sentences 71 Persecutors to Life in Prison6 | EGYPT In August 2013, Egypt witnessed the most intense period of persecution in the last 1,400 years. Dozens of churches were torched in attacks across the country. Hundreds of homes, schools, businesses and vehicles were destroyed.

After more than a year and a half, an Egyptian court in April convicted and sentenced 71 people to life in prison for their role in attacks on the St. Mary Church in Giza, Egypt. Two minors were also convicted, fined and sentenced to a ten year period in prison.

The attacks on churches came after public protests forced Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi out of office in June 2013. Egyptian police forces had cracked down on protests in Cairo when attacks were launched against churches across the country. Christians are still rebuilding from the destruction of these attacks.

Laotian Christians to Appeal Conviction of “Practicing Medicine Without a License”3 | LAOS Five Laotian Christians convicted of practicing medicine without a license after they prayed for a new Christian convert have confirmed that they will appeal the court’s decision. A false document was submitted to the Appeals Court without their knowledge stating that the five had decided to withdraw their appeal. However, on April 24, they confirmed with the prosecutors’ office in Savannakhet province that they intended to move ahead with the appeal, asserting that the signatures on the document were not theirs. The prosecutors’ office accepted that the document was false. The five were originally accused of murdering the Christian convert, but they had not used any material remedy. They had only prayed for her healing, in accordance with the woman’s request.

Standing in the aftermath of a bombed church.

USCIRF calls for the full recognition of religious freedom.

Raided Church to Have Sentence Reconsidered

5 | CHINA Members of the Candlelight Church in China’s far western Xinjiang Province recently won an administrative reconsideration lodged against the Hami Public Security Bureau.

The municipal government decision said the original punishment issued after the conflict in January must be revoked, but also gave 60 days for a new punishment to be invoked, provided it followed all legal stipulations.

On January 10, more than 20 officers from the local Religious Affairs and Public Security Bureaus disrupted a gathering at Candlelight Church, without showing identification or producing a warrant. Agents have now interrogated the pastor of the church on several occasions.

Churches in China continue to face raids and persecution.

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July 2015 Persecution Magazine (1 of 4)