Focus onPersecution Ministering to Persecuted Christians around the World

A monthly Newsletter FocusOnPersecution.com March 2009

We will Kill HimA Testimony Of A Pakistani Christian

2 | Focus on Persecution March 2009

Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance;

in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard

work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in

the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with

weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor,

bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as

unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always

rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Christians in the country of Bangladesh live their lives in faith and expectation that Jesus will transform their country; even-though they comprise less than 1% of the population. As this testimony illustrates, many Bangladeshi Christians risk their lives for the gospel and the love of Jesus.

Pilgrims to a massive Islamic conference near the capital city of Dhaka beat and threatened to kill a Bible school student as he distributed Christian literature on February 1.

Rajen Murmo is a 20 year-old student who wants to follow Jesus and share the good news of the gospel. He attends Believ-ers’ Church Bible College and along with other students was distributing a 32-page Bible tract among area Muslims. The incident took place near the school in Uttara, a town in northern Dhaka, just a few kilometers from the banks of a river in Tongi, where the government claimed that 4 million Muslim pilgrims had gathered. They had massed for the annual, three-day World Muslim Congregation (Bishwa Ijtema).

Rajen said that a man with a group of men approached him and some of the other students. The seemed to be led by a man that had a ragged beard and dressed in loose white clothing. He told the students that Muslims did not abide by the Bible because the Koran had superseded it, rendering it outdated.

“Suddenly some of his outrageous entou-rage grabbed me and asked where I got the books and who gave me the books. They wanted to know the address of my religious leaders and mission, but I did not give them the address,” said Rajen. “If I had given them the address of the Bible college, they would have destroyed it. My blank denial to give information to them made them enraged, and they started beating me. They told me if I do not give the address of the religious leaders and mission, they would kill me.”

A throng of more than 50 raucous Mus-lims kicked, slapped and punched him, he said, leaving him with a split lip. Clutching his collar and tearing his shirt, they insist-ed that he give them the school’s address and that of his mission and Christian lead-

Beaten for the

Gospel

Focus on Persecution March 2009 | 3

2 Corinthians 6:4-10

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ers; as he continued to refuse, their anger further flared, he said. A patrolling vehicle from the elite force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) consisting of army, navy, air force and police appeared and rescued him, Rajen said.

Later the mob persuaded the elite force to send him to a nearby police station, he said, and principal Amos Deory of the Bible college went to release him. Deory told Rajen that police officers expressed concern that if the RAB agents had not arrived in time, the angry pilgrims would have killed him.

Pastor Kiron Roaza of Believers’ Church said that the Bible students were distrib-uting the tracts as part of their regular evangelistic tasks. He said the beating was unwarranted as Bangladesh’s consti-tution provides for the right to propagate one’s faith.

Bangladeshi Muslims equate the annual World Muslim Congregation or Bishwa Ijtema with the hajj, the pilgrimage to Islam’s birthplace in Mecca, Saudi Arabia that last year was held Dec. 6-10. The Bangladeshi gathering, just north of Dhaka, at which Muslims pray and listen to Islamic scholars from around the world, was first held in the 1960s.

The event was launched by Tabligh Ja-maat, a missionary and revival group that shuns politics and urges Muslims to follow Islam in their everyday lives. Its’ stated purpose is to revive the tenets of Islam and promote peace and harmony. More than 10,000 foreigners from 108 countries attended the event, according to media reports, but most of the worshippers were rural Bangladeshis. Bangladesh is the

world’s third-largest Muslim-majority na-tion, with Muslims making up 83 percent of its population of 150 million.

The Koran calls on all Muslims to make the pilgrimage to Mecca if they have the means. The date changes from year to year based on the Islamic lunar calendar. The official SPA news agency of Saudi Arabia reported the total number of pil-grims to Mecca at nearly 2.4 million, about 1.73 million from abroad and 679,000 from within the kingdom, mostly foreign residents.

Please pray for Rajen, his fellow students, and the Christians in Bangladesh. They need your prayer support as they face such challenges.Source: Compass Direct

Please pray for Bangladeshi Christians as they minister in country racked by poverty, disease and constant flooding. Bangladesh population is 83% Muslim and 16% Hindu. Christians comprise less than 1% of the population.

Focus on Persecution March 2009 | 5

Pr ayer PointsFrom Beaten for the Gospel:

• Please pray that Rajen Murmo and his fellow students will continue to witness among the Muslim population.

• Pray for the Muslim people who were in the mob that as-saulted the students. Pray that their interest in Jesus would be peaked because of this incident and that they would seek the one true living God.

• Also pray that the Christians in Bangladesh will remain bold and wise in their witness among not only the Muslims, but also the Hindus.

From We Will Kill Him:

• Please pray for Hector Aleem and his family during this ordeal. Pray that Hector would be acquitted of all charges and that he and his family would be safe.

• Pray also that Jesus would give Hector’s attorney the words to say during the trial.

• Pray for the police, judge and otherofficialstoseetheclearwitness that Hector and other Christians are living out in front of them.

• Pray that the laws in Pakistan would be changed.

• Finally, pray for the other Christians in Pakistan to main-tain a good witness in the face of such persecution.

Last month more than 100 protestors surrounded a Pakistani courthouse and chanted death threats against a Punjabi Christian said to be framed for sending a “blasphemous” text message on his cell phone.

On January 22, Pakistani police arrested Hector Aleem, and detained him on charg-es of sending a text message that insulted the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Five days later at his hearing crowds gathered and began shouting death threats.

His attorney, Malik Tafik, said that a lo-cal man allegedly framed Hector for the charges because Hector has made legal challenges on behalf of Christians involved in a land dispute. Hector directs a small agency that often defends the rights of Christians.

Last November, a scholar associated with the national Islamic political movement Sunni Tehreek, received a text message claiming to have come from Hector. The religious scholar registered blasphemy charges against Hector on November 28 at the Rawalpindi police station.

“In the past, only a superintendent of police could file blasphemy charges,” attor-ney Malik said. “But now a private person can register a case of blasphemy and it can be misused because anyone can use it.”

Police raided Hector’s house at 1:30 a.m. on January 22 and assaulted him, his wife, and his two daughters. They also stole 50,000 Pakistan rupees (about $630) worth of valuables and broke pictures of Jesus hanging on their walls, according to a report from the Center for Legal Aid As-sistance and Settlement (CLAAS).

Authorities charged him with violating sections 295c and 109bb of the Pakistani criminal code. Both sections were en-acted in past years to enforce Islamic law on all Pakistanis. Section 295c prohibits blasphemy of the profit Mohammed and carries a death penalty. Section 109bb covers the assisting of anyone in such act.

Blasphemy has been used frequently in Pakistani law as a tool to silence or intimi-date non-Muslims.

Hector was transferred to a Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court for a second hear-ing on January 30, where an even larger crowd of protestors gathered shouting that his life would not be spared. Many of those who came to protest were associated with Sunni Tehreek, which has been involved in violent sectarian clashes with other Islamic movements in the last decade.

“There were about 150 people protest-ing that Hector should be handed over to them,” Malik said. “And there were many journalists, two news stations, and lawyers

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We Will Kill HimA Testimony Of A Pakistani Christian

who came out to protest against him.”

Hector is detained at the Adiyala Jail in Rawalpindi. During his imprisonment, police have mistreated him and denied him adequate food and access to medicine for his heart condition. He told lawyers that police have not allowed him to meet with his family. They have called him a “choohra” which means sweeper, a derogatory term for Pakistani Christians to designate them as the lowest rung of society.

At a hearing at an anti-terrorism court on February 2, Judge Sakhi Mohammad Ko-hut exonerated him of blasphemy charges but did not clear him of abetting. A govern-ment official said that the judge’s decision was heavily influenced by Islamic extrem-ists attending the open court hearing who told the judge, “If you release [Hector], then we will kill him outside.”

At the hearing, the judge implicated the man who allegedly framed Hector – Bashar Kokar, previously charged multiple times with fraud – accusing him of using his cell phone to send a blasphemous message against Muhammad. Kokar was charged with blasphemy and arrested later that day. But court evidence shows the original text message came from an unregistered mobile number that pertained to neither Kokar nor Hector, sources said – exonerating Hector, but also making it difficult to prove that Kokar framed him. Khushdil Khan Malik, Deputy Secretary of Pakistan’s Ministry of Human Rights, said he believes the judge implicated Kokar as a scapegoat for the blasphemy charges in order to appease the extremists.

The next hearing will be held in March. Fo-cus is asking people to pray that Hector be released in such a way that brings glory to God. Attorney Malik said he believes Hec-

tor will be cleared of all charges because there is no evidence against him.

Targeted for defending Christian rights, sources said they believe Hector was framed due to his social activism as Director of a small Non-Governmental Organization that lobbies for the rights of Pakistani Christians in Islamabad.

In November, he became involved in a land dispute between a congregation and a local municipality that wanted to demol-ish their church building. He has been wrongfully implicated in the past for minor offenses, a government deputy said, par-ticularly for his advocacy work against the Capital Development Authority, a municipal works agency that has been charged with unlawful confiscation and destruction of Christian property.

Hector has been cleared of these minor offenses. The seriousness of the blas-phemy charge, however, puts him and his family in danger. Besides his attorney, other legal advocates said they believe he will be cleared of all charges as there is no evidence that he sent the original text message.

Until then, his family is hiding underground due to threats of violence by Muslim ex-tremists, said Joseph Francis, National Di-rector of CLAAS. And once he is released, it will be hard for Hector to return to a normal life in Rawalpindi with the stigma of even unproven charges of blasphemy hanging over his head.

“What will happen after [the trial] is a mat-ter of concern,” said Malik of Pakistan’s Human Rights Ministry. “There have been many incidents of the sudden deaths of people charged with blasphemy.”

Source: Compass Direct & Focus on Persecution

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THE PROBLEMAnnually over 250,000 Christians are brutally killed for their faith in Jesus Christ. Millions more are actively persecuted by governments, neighbors, and family members.

WHO WE ARE Focus on Persecution is dedicated to min-istering to persecuted Christians around the world. We also believe their testi-monies must be shared to glorify God’s faithfulness.

WHY WE SERVE Motivated by our faith in Jesus Christ and scriptures like Hebrews 13:3, we believe Christians are to encourage, equip, and embolden our brothers and sisters who are persecuted for their faith.

HOW WE SERVE Focus provides Christian educational op-portunities, Bibles, Christian literature, and other forms of media to help strengthen and encourage the church on the “front-line” of the gospel.

YOU CAN MINISTER Partnering with Focus on Persecution provides tangible ways to honor God and minister to those Christians who are undergoing persecution for their faith. You can minister to these faithful.

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