BEIJING – Leaders of underground Chinese Protestant churches condemned the government's persecution of a fellow congregation, while Catholics voted under the watchful eye of security forces for a new government-approved bishop, reports said.
The developments illustrate growing tensions between Communist authorities and increasingly assertive Christian groups whose memberships are growing rapidly.
While China's Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, Christians are required to worship in churches run by state-controlled groups. However, tens of millions of Christians are believed to worship in unregistered "house" churches which receive varying degrees of harassment.
In Beijing, underground Protestant church leaders issued a petition to the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp legislature, calling for an end to persecution of Shouwang Church and its 1,000 members who have been blocked from their worship place in Beijing in recent weeks.
Members who have sought to hold worship services have been briefly detained or confined to their homes.
Asked about the authorities' actions, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu on Thursday avoided details, but said church members had been "gathering illegally many times and in order to keep social order, public security departments have adopted relevant measures."
The petition, drafted by senior underground church leaders Xie Moshan and Li Tianen and signed by 17 church leaders from six cities, is a strong indication of nationwide support for Shouwang's plight.
"With the incessant growth of the number of urban Christians and the continued expansion of the church, the conflict between state and church of this sort is likely to continue to break out," said the petition, dated Tuesday. It demanded that a law be passed to protect religious freedom.
The expansion and growing influence of house churches has unsettled China's rulers, always suspicious of any independent social group that could challenge Communist authority.
In southern Guangdong province, many security officers accompanied priests and lay people to cast votes Wednesday for Huang Bingzhang, 43, as the new bishop of Shantou, said ucanews.com, a news service that covers the Catholic church in Asia.
Huang, the only candidate, received 66 of the 72 votes, its said. Huang is a member of the National People's Congress and head of the government-controlled Guangdong provincial Catholic Patriotic Association.
Calls to the local religious affairs bureau rang unanswered Friday.
Local authorities had sought to appoint Huang for several years, but had been thwarted by opposition from local Catholics, ucanews.com said. The website is run by the Union of Catholic Asian News, based in Bangkok.
The Vatican-appointed bishop of Shantou, Zhuang Jianjian, has never been recognized by Beijing and has been under house arrest for over a month, it said.
China and the Vatican have no formal relations and even informal contacts have recently been testy. That is largely due to Beijing's insistence that it has a right to assign bishops through carefully orchestrated elections in defiance of the pope's authority to make such appointments.
An accommodation in which most new bishops received tacit approval from the Vatican appeared to break down last year. Chinese officials responded to criticism by accusing the Vatican of seeking to undermine the independence of the Chinese church and interfering in the rights of Chinese Catholics to practice their faith.
China says about 6 million Catholics worship in 6,300 official congregations across the country, although millions more are believed to worship outside the official church. China says almost half of the country's 97 dioceses lack bishops and that it intends to move quickly to fill them — with or without Vatican approval.
In a further sign of that determination, Li Zhigang — a priest with close government ties — was elected bishop of the southwestern diocese of Chengdu on Tuesday, ucanews.com said.
Tuesday 31 May 2011
29/5/11 - Algerian Christian Given Five Year Prison Sentence for Blasphemy
Algerian Christian Given Five Year Prison Sentence for Blasphemy
Washington, D.C. (May 27, 2011) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that an Algerian Christian was sentenced to five years imprisonment for blasphemy in Oran on Wednesday after sharing his Christian faith with a neighbor. The verdict came days after authorities forced the permanent closure of seven Protestant churches in Algeria’s Béjaia province.
Siagh Krimo was charged by the Criminal Court of the Djamel District in Oran, who based their decision on Article 144 bis 2 of the Penal Code which criminalizes acts that “insult the prophet and any of the messengers of God, or denigrate the creed and precepts of Islam, whether by writing, drawing, declaration, or any other means.” Krimo has ten days to appeal the sentence.
Krimo, who is married with a nine month old child, was arrested on April 14, along with another Christian, Sofiane, after sharing his Christian faith with a neighbor. Sofiane was released soon after the arrest, while Krimo was detained for three days. Krimo was known to hold weekly prayer services at his home, which Algerian Christians suspect were being closely monitored by the police.
Tuesday 24 May 2011
24/5/11 - Christian Woman in Darfur, Sudan Arrested for Evangelizing
KHARTOUM, Sudan (CDN) — Sudanese National Security Intelligence and Security Service agents have arrested a Christian woman in a Darfur camp for displaced people, accusing her of converting Muslims to Christianity, said sources who fear she is being tortured.
At the same time, in Khartoum a Christian mother of a 2-month-old baby is wounded and destitute because she and her husband left Islam for Christianity.
In Darfur Region in northwestern Sudan, Hawa Abdalla Muhammad Saleh was arrested on May 9 in the Abu Shouk camp for Internally Displaced Persons in Al-Fashir, capital of North Darfur state, sources said.
Abdalla has yet to be officially charged, but authorities have accused her of possessing and distributing Bibles to others in the camp, including children. Sources said she could also be tried for apostasy, which carries the death sentence in Sudan.
Abdalla has been transferred to an unknown location in Khartoum, sources said, adding that they fear she could be tortured as she was detained and tortured for six days in 2009. Intelligence agents, they said, have been monitoring her movements for some time.
“There is no guarantee of her safety,” said one source in Darfur.
The U.S. Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report 2010 notes that while Sudan’s Interim National Constitution provides for freedom of religion throughout the country, it establishes sharia (Islamic law) as a source of legislation in the north.
The arrest comes as northern Christians become more vulnerable to official and societal pressure with South Sudan set to split from the predominantly Muslim north on July 9. Adding to tensions was the north’s weekend military attack on Abyei Town, located in a disputed, oil-rich region to which both South Sudan and the north lay claim.
Knife Attacks
In Khartoum, the Christian couple with the newborn said they have come under attack for converting from Islam to Christianity.
Omar Hassan and Amouna Ahamdi, both 27, said they fled Nyala, 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of El-Fashir, for Khartoum in June 2010, but knife-wielding, masked assailants on May 4 attacked the couple after relatives learned that they had converted from Islam to Christianity. Hassan told Compass that he and his wife were renting a house from her uncle in Khartoum, but he ordered them to leave after learning they had left Islam.
His wife was injured trying to protect him during the May 4 attack, he told Compass.
“I have been in Khartoum for six months, with no job to support my sick wife,” Hassan said. “Muslims invaded our house and, in an attempt to kill me, they knifed my wife in the hand.”
The knife pierced the palm of Ahamdi, who said her brother had stabbed her three times in the stomach nine months ago, seriously injuring her spleen, after she told him she had become a Christian.
“I feel pain, but my husband is alive, and we are praying that we get money for treatment for both my hand and the spleen,” she said.
In the violent outburst, her brother also broke her left leg. She was rushed to a local hospital, where personnel were reluctant to treat her because of her conversion, sources told Compass. Ultimately she was hospitalized in Nyala Teaching Hospital for three weeks – where she met Hassan, a recent convert who had also suffered for his faith who visited her after hearing how her family hurt her.
He said he found no one caring for her even though she was in agony. He called an Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) pastor to help her, and she was discharged after partial recovery – to the hostile home where she had been attacked.
At the same time, in Khartoum a Christian mother of a 2-month-old baby is wounded and destitute because she and her husband left Islam for Christianity.
In Darfur Region in northwestern Sudan, Hawa Abdalla Muhammad Saleh was arrested on May 9 in the Abu Shouk camp for Internally Displaced Persons in Al-Fashir, capital of North Darfur state, sources said.
Abdalla has yet to be officially charged, but authorities have accused her of possessing and distributing Bibles to others in the camp, including children. Sources said she could also be tried for apostasy, which carries the death sentence in Sudan.
Abdalla has been transferred to an unknown location in Khartoum, sources said, adding that they fear she could be tortured as she was detained and tortured for six days in 2009. Intelligence agents, they said, have been monitoring her movements for some time.
“There is no guarantee of her safety,” said one source in Darfur.
The U.S. Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report 2010 notes that while Sudan’s Interim National Constitution provides for freedom of religion throughout the country, it establishes sharia (Islamic law) as a source of legislation in the north.
The arrest comes as northern Christians become more vulnerable to official and societal pressure with South Sudan set to split from the predominantly Muslim north on July 9. Adding to tensions was the north’s weekend military attack on Abyei Town, located in a disputed, oil-rich region to which both South Sudan and the north lay claim.
Knife Attacks
In Khartoum, the Christian couple with the newborn said they have come under attack for converting from Islam to Christianity.
Omar Hassan and Amouna Ahamdi, both 27, said they fled Nyala, 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of El-Fashir, for Khartoum in June 2010, but knife-wielding, masked assailants on May 4 attacked the couple after relatives learned that they had converted from Islam to Christianity. Hassan told Compass that he and his wife were renting a house from her uncle in Khartoum, but he ordered them to leave after learning they had left Islam.
His wife was injured trying to protect him during the May 4 attack, he told Compass.
“I have been in Khartoum for six months, with no job to support my sick wife,” Hassan said. “Muslims invaded our house and, in an attempt to kill me, they knifed my wife in the hand.”
The knife pierced the palm of Ahamdi, who said her brother had stabbed her three times in the stomach nine months ago, seriously injuring her spleen, after she told him she had become a Christian.
“I feel pain, but my husband is alive, and we are praying that we get money for treatment for both my hand and the spleen,” she said.
In the violent outburst, her brother also broke her left leg. She was rushed to a local hospital, where personnel were reluctant to treat her because of her conversion, sources told Compass. Ultimately she was hospitalized in Nyala Teaching Hospital for three weeks – where she met Hassan, a recent convert who had also suffered for his faith who visited her after hearing how her family hurt her.
He said he found no one caring for her even though she was in agony. He called an Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) pastor to help her, and she was discharged after partial recovery – to the hostile home where she had been attacked.
Saturday 14 May 2011
Tuesday 10 May 2011
8/5/11 - Church burning deepens tumult of Egypt transition
Church burning deepens tumult of Egypt transition
AP Photo/Khalil Hamra
Egyptian Army soldiers stand guard outside the burned Virgin Mary church in the Imbaba neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, May 8, 2011. More photos »
CAIRO – Relations between Egypt's Muslims and Christians degenerated to a new low Sunday after riots overnight left 12 people dead and a church burned, adding to the disorder of the country's post-revolution transition to democracy.
The attack on the church was the latest sign of assertiveness by an extreme, ultraconservative movement of Muslims known as Salafis, whose increasing hostility toward Egypt's Coptic Christians over the past few months has met with little interference from the country's military rulers.
Salafis have been blamed for other recent attacks on Christians and others they don't approve of. In one attack, a Christian man had an ear cut off for renting an apartment to a Muslim woman suspected of involvement in prostitution.
The latest violence, which erupted in fresh clashes Sunday between Muslims and Christians who pelted each other with stones in another part of Cairo, also pointed to what many see as reluctance of the armed forces council to act. The council took temporary control of the country after President Hosni Mubarak was deposed on Feb. 11.
After the overnight clashes in the slum of Imbaba, residents turned their anger toward the military. Some said they and the police did almost nothing to intervene in the five-hour frenzy of violence.
Analysts warned of signs of Coptic violence, especially with reports that some Christians have opened fire at Muslims.
"The Coptic volcano is exploding," Coptic expert Youssef Sedhom said. "How would Copts respond if they find their back to the wall facing guns? They would have no option but self defense," adding, "don't blame Copts for what they do."
Six Muslims were among the dead, according to Egypt's state-run news agency.
The bloodshed began Saturday around sundown when word spread around the neighborhood that a Christian woman who married a Muslim had been abducted and was being kept in the Virgin Mary Church against her will.
Islamic extremists declared the crowded district a state within a state in 1990s, calling it "the Islamic Republic of Imbaba," one of the country's hottest spots of Islamic militancy.
The report of the kidnapping, which was never confirmed by local religious figures, sent a large mob of Muslims toward the church. Christians created a human barricade around the building and clashes erupted. Gunfire sounded across the neighborhood, and witnesses said people on rooftops were firing into the crowd.
The two sides accused each other of firing first.
Crowds of hundreds of Muslims from the neighborhood lobbed firebombs at homes, shops and the church. Residents say Christians were hiding inside. Muslims chanted: "With our blood and soul, we defend you, Islam."
Rimon Girgis, a 24-year-old with a tattoo of a Coptic saint on his arm, was among the Christians who formed a human shield around the church.
"They were around 40 bearded men chanting slogans like 'There is no God but Allah.' After rallying Muslim residents, they opened fire," he said. "We Copts had to respond, so we hurled stones and pieces of broken marble."'
Some of the wounded were carried to the nearby St. Menas Church, where floors were still stained with blood hours later.
"Every five minutes, an injured person was rushed into the church," said Father Arshedis. "We couldn't reach ambulances by phone. We called and no one answered. We tried to treat the injured. We used the girls' hair clips to extract the bullets."
"The army is responsible because they took no action," he said.
Later the same night, the Muslim crowd moved to a Christian-owned apartment building nearby and set it on fire. Piles of charred furniture, garbage and wood were mixed with remains of clothes, food and shoes. Shops on the ground floor of the buildings were destroyed.
Some soldiers and police did fire tear gas, but failed to clear the streets for hours.
By daybreak, the military had deployed armored vehicles and dozens of troop carriers to cordon off a main street leading to the area. They stopped traffic and turned away pedestrians. Men, women and children watching from balconies took photos with mobile phones and cheered the troops.
Across the Nile river, in downtown Cairo, clashes broke out on Sunday afternoon. Muslim youths attacked Coptic Christian protesters, said Christian activist Bishoy Tamri.
TV images showed both sides furiously throwing stones, including one Christian who held a large wooden cross in one hand while flinging rocks with the other.
Scores were injured, but an army unit securing the TV building did nothing to stop the violence, Tamri said.
Late Sunday thousands of Copts decided to camp out in front of the TV building overnight to press demands to bring the arsonists to justice and to make religious instigation a criminal offense.
Islamic clerics denounced the violence, sounding alarm bells at the escalating tension during the transitional period following Mubarak's Feb. 11 ouster by a popular uprising.
"These events do not benefit either Muslim or Copts," Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the sheik of al-Azhar, told the daily Al-Ahram.
During the 18-day uprising that ousted Mubarak, there was a rare spirit of brotherhood between Muslims and Christians. Each group protected the other during prayer sessions in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolution.
But in the months that followed, there has been a sharp rise in sectarian tensions, as the once quiescent Salafis have become more forceful in trying to spread their version of an Islamic way of life. In particular, they have focused their wrath on Egypt's Christians, who make up 10 percent of the country's 80 million people.
On Friday, a few hundred Salafis marched through Cairo to praise al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and condemning the U.S. operation that killed him.
Critics say Egyptian military authorities have done too little to stem the religious violence. But authorities arrested 190 people after the church attack, sending them to military prosecutions and threatening the maximum penalty against anyone attacking houses of worship.
Copts complain of widespread discrimination, including tight restrictions on building or repairing churches, while Muslim places of worship do not face such limits.
In one of the worst attacks against them, a suicide bomber killed 21 people outside a church in the port city of Alexandria on Jan. 1, setting off days of protests. Egypt made some arrests but never charged anyone with the attack.
Tensions have been building for the past year as Salafis protested the alleged abduction by the Coptic Church of a priest's wife, Camilla Shehata. The Salafis claim she converted to Islam to escape an unhappy marriage — a phenomenon they maintain is common.
Because divorce is banned in the Coptic Church, with rare exceptions such as conversion, some Christian women resort to conversion to Islam or another Christian denomination to get out of a marriage.
Shehata's case was even used by Iraq's branch of al-Qaida as a justification for an attack on a Baghdad church that killed 68 people and other threats by the group against Christians.
On Saturday just before the violence erupted in Imbaba, Shehata appeared with her husband and child on a Christian TV station broadcast from outside of Egypt and asserted that she was still a Christian and had never converted.
"Let the protesters leave the Church alone and turn their attention to Egypt's future," she said from an undisclosed location.
In the Egyptian Sinai desert, hundreds of Bedouins forced authorities to set free a prisoner after laying siege to the main courthouse, firing gunshots in the air and burning tires, witnesses said.
The attack on the church was the latest sign of assertiveness by an extreme, ultraconservative movement of Muslims known as Salafis, whose increasing hostility toward Egypt's Coptic Christians over the past few months has met with little interference from the country's military rulers.
Salafis have been blamed for other recent attacks on Christians and others they don't approve of. In one attack, a Christian man had an ear cut off for renting an apartment to a Muslim woman suspected of involvement in prostitution.
The latest violence, which erupted in fresh clashes Sunday between Muslims and Christians who pelted each other with stones in another part of Cairo, also pointed to what many see as reluctance of the armed forces council to act. The council took temporary control of the country after President Hosni Mubarak was deposed on Feb. 11.
After the overnight clashes in the slum of Imbaba, residents turned their anger toward the military. Some said they and the police did almost nothing to intervene in the five-hour frenzy of violence.
Analysts warned of signs of Coptic violence, especially with reports that some Christians have opened fire at Muslims.
"The Coptic volcano is exploding," Coptic expert Youssef Sedhom said. "How would Copts respond if they find their back to the wall facing guns? They would have no option but self defense," adding, "don't blame Copts for what they do."
Six Muslims were among the dead, according to Egypt's state-run news agency.
The bloodshed began Saturday around sundown when word spread around the neighborhood that a Christian woman who married a Muslim had been abducted and was being kept in the Virgin Mary Church against her will.
Islamic extremists declared the crowded district a state within a state in 1990s, calling it "the Islamic Republic of Imbaba," one of the country's hottest spots of Islamic militancy.
The report of the kidnapping, which was never confirmed by local religious figures, sent a large mob of Muslims toward the church. Christians created a human barricade around the building and clashes erupted. Gunfire sounded across the neighborhood, and witnesses said people on rooftops were firing into the crowd.
The two sides accused each other of firing first.
Crowds of hundreds of Muslims from the neighborhood lobbed firebombs at homes, shops and the church. Residents say Christians were hiding inside. Muslims chanted: "With our blood and soul, we defend you, Islam."
Rimon Girgis, a 24-year-old with a tattoo of a Coptic saint on his arm, was among the Christians who formed a human shield around the church.
"They were around 40 bearded men chanting slogans like 'There is no God but Allah.' After rallying Muslim residents, they opened fire," he said. "We Copts had to respond, so we hurled stones and pieces of broken marble."'
Some of the wounded were carried to the nearby St. Menas Church, where floors were still stained with blood hours later.
"Every five minutes, an injured person was rushed into the church," said Father Arshedis. "We couldn't reach ambulances by phone. We called and no one answered. We tried to treat the injured. We used the girls' hair clips to extract the bullets."
"The army is responsible because they took no action," he said.
Later the same night, the Muslim crowd moved to a Christian-owned apartment building nearby and set it on fire. Piles of charred furniture, garbage and wood were mixed with remains of clothes, food and shoes. Shops on the ground floor of the buildings were destroyed.
Some soldiers and police did fire tear gas, but failed to clear the streets for hours.
By daybreak, the military had deployed armored vehicles and dozens of troop carriers to cordon off a main street leading to the area. They stopped traffic and turned away pedestrians. Men, women and children watching from balconies took photos with mobile phones and cheered the troops.
Across the Nile river, in downtown Cairo, clashes broke out on Sunday afternoon. Muslim youths attacked Coptic Christian protesters, said Christian activist Bishoy Tamri.
TV images showed both sides furiously throwing stones, including one Christian who held a large wooden cross in one hand while flinging rocks with the other.
Scores were injured, but an army unit securing the TV building did nothing to stop the violence, Tamri said.
Late Sunday thousands of Copts decided to camp out in front of the TV building overnight to press demands to bring the arsonists to justice and to make religious instigation a criminal offense.
Islamic clerics denounced the violence, sounding alarm bells at the escalating tension during the transitional period following Mubarak's Feb. 11 ouster by a popular uprising.
"These events do not benefit either Muslim or Copts," Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the sheik of al-Azhar, told the daily Al-Ahram.
During the 18-day uprising that ousted Mubarak, there was a rare spirit of brotherhood between Muslims and Christians. Each group protected the other during prayer sessions in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolution.
But in the months that followed, there has been a sharp rise in sectarian tensions, as the once quiescent Salafis have become more forceful in trying to spread their version of an Islamic way of life. In particular, they have focused their wrath on Egypt's Christians, who make up 10 percent of the country's 80 million people.
On Friday, a few hundred Salafis marched through Cairo to praise al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and condemning the U.S. operation that killed him.
Critics say Egyptian military authorities have done too little to stem the religious violence. But authorities arrested 190 people after the church attack, sending them to military prosecutions and threatening the maximum penalty against anyone attacking houses of worship.
Copts complain of widespread discrimination, including tight restrictions on building or repairing churches, while Muslim places of worship do not face such limits.
In one of the worst attacks against them, a suicide bomber killed 21 people outside a church in the port city of Alexandria on Jan. 1, setting off days of protests. Egypt made some arrests but never charged anyone with the attack.
Tensions have been building for the past year as Salafis protested the alleged abduction by the Coptic Church of a priest's wife, Camilla Shehata. The Salafis claim she converted to Islam to escape an unhappy marriage — a phenomenon they maintain is common.
Because divorce is banned in the Coptic Church, with rare exceptions such as conversion, some Christian women resort to conversion to Islam or another Christian denomination to get out of a marriage.
Shehata's case was even used by Iraq's branch of al-Qaida as a justification for an attack on a Baghdad church that killed 68 people and other threats by the group against Christians.
On Saturday just before the violence erupted in Imbaba, Shehata appeared with her husband and child on a Christian TV station broadcast from outside of Egypt and asserted that she was still a Christian and had never converted.
"Let the protesters leave the Church alone and turn their attention to Egypt's future," she said from an undisclosed location.
In the Egyptian Sinai desert, hundreds of Bedouins forced authorities to set free a prisoner after laying siege to the main courthouse, firing gunshots in the air and burning tires, witnesses said.
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