Release International

India: the body of a 29-year-old pastor has been pulled out of a canal near his home in Andhra Pradesh. Pastor Goda Israel had been stabbed to death – following threats on his life by Hindu extremists.

A Christian teenager in Northern Iraq has been imprisoned for five years for defending herself against her Muslim uncle who was beating her for converting to Christianity.

Fourteen-year-old Asya Ahmad Mohammed stabbed her uncle to death and pleaded ‘unintentional killing’. According to her father, his brother had also tried to kill him no fewer than five times when he discovered that he had become a Christian.

Muslims who leave the faith are considered apostates, and in some Islamic nations they could face the death penalty.

Despite pleas from Asya’s grandparents that the 14-year-old should be killed, the teenager was given a five-year sentence. Her family has now gone into hiding.

In China, the authorities have jailed the elderly mother of a house church pastor for two years, for ‘wilfully damaging public property’.

Police arrested 77-year-old Shuang Shuying when she tried to find out what had happened to her son, a house church pastor, who has recently been arrested. 

Observers say her trial was invalid. It took just one hour. And because it was held on Chinese New Year’s Day, her lawyer was unable to collect any evidence to defend her. China Aid say the authorities jailed the 77-year-old as a way of further punishing her son for working in the underground church. (China Aid; Prayer Watch).

In Kazakhstan, Baptist and Pentecostal churches are being treated in the same way as an Islamic organisation linked to two of the July 7th London bombers.

Local authorities have forbidden imams from Tablighi Jamaat from preaching in mosques. And, over the last month, police raided two Baptist churches and a Pentecostal congregation. It means the authorities are lumping churches together with an organisation widely regarded as having links with Al-Queda. It’s part of a widespread crackdown against all non-registered religious groups in Kazakhstan (Forum 18).

Release International serves the persecuted Church in 30 nations. For video reports download our monthly webcast ­ - World Update - available from the Release International website: www.releaseinternational.org

 ENDS

Notes to the Editor