News and prayer alert from Release International, featuring China, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam
Jul 21 2008
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News each fortnight on persecuted Christians around the world.
 

CHINA

Beijing activist and house church leader Hua Huiqi has been evicted from his home. It’s been interpreted as a move by officials to keep him away from next month’s Olympic Games.

Public Security Bureau officers used a hammer to break into Hua’s rented flat and threw the family – including Hua’s 90-year-old father, Hua Zaichen – into the street with their furniture. Hua’s brother sustained serious injury to his eye after officials beat him.

Hua’s elderly mother, Shuang Shuying, remains in Beijing’s women’s jail, serving a two-year sentence on disputed charges of ‘damaging government property’. Officials have told Hua she will be freed if he gives up his human rights work and church activities.

The Voice of the Martyrs Canada reports that the authorities have expressed their intention either to detain Hua during the Games, ‘until September 20’, or remove him and his family from Beijing. The family is currently staying with Christian friends.

Hua and his mother were arrested last year after Hua petitioned the National People's Congress over people being evicted by force without adequate compensation. He was jailed for six months, his mother for two years. Hua’s family has been harassed systematically ever since.

Meanwhile, in Shandong, Pastor Zhang Zhongxin has been sentenced to two years’ ‘re-education through labour’ for taking part in ‘cult activities’. Pastor Zhang is reported to have been involved in a wide range of church activities, from preaching to training. His appeal is due to come up before the Jiaxiang County Detention Centre on August 14.

(Sources: Assist News Service, China Aid, The Epoch Times, The Voice of the Martyrs Canada)

·        Pray for Hua Huiqi and his whole family. Ask God to protect and sustain them, particularly during the Olympic Games, when officials will keep a close eye on so-called dissidents.

·        Pray that Pastor Zhang Zhongxin’s appeal on August 14 will be successful.

INDONESIA

Hardline Islamic groups are wielding ever-increasing influence over Indonesia’s politics, according to a new report. 

The study by the International Crisis Group (ICG) considers why the authorities in Jakarta have issued a decree ‘freezing’ the activities of a minority Muslim sect, the Ahmadiyah. And it concludes that hardliners have leant on government officials to sideline the Ahmadiyah, who have lived in Indonesia since 1925.

ICG sees the decree, which orders Ahmadiyah to stop practising their faith, as a worrying development for non-Muslims as well as for any Muslim not conforming to conservative orthodoxy. 

Hardline Muslims have campaigned for the Ahmadiyah to be outlawed for decades – so the timing of the government decree is seen as significant. One of the main catalysts for the decree is the huge influence of the Islamic Scholars Council (Majelis Ulama Indonesia or MUI) over President Yudhoyono’s administration.

Ultra-conservative Islamic groups are not well represented in parliament but this is no obstacle to their political ambitions. ICG claims these groups have close links with certain officials and are using other radical groups at grassroots level to lobby for policy reform.

ICG also says that, in the run-up to next year’s national elections, President Yudhoyono will not want to risk upsetting the coalition of Islamic parties which helped him win the 2004 ballot. Recent polls suggest he is losing ground to his main political rival, former president Megawati Sukarnoputri.

(Sources: BBC, International Crisis Group, Spero News)

·        Pray that the democratic process would prevent unelected Muslim clerics from gaining further influence over the current Indonesian administration.

·        Pray for Christians in Indonesia, increasingly sidelined under the growing influence of these clerics. 

PAKISTAN

Government troops have attacked extremists in north-west Pakistan responsible for kidnapping a group of Christians – but churches now fear a backlash.

Within a week of the Taliban snatching 32 Christians from Academy Town in Peshawar, government soldiers had bombed the home of the commander of one outlawed group. Several suspects were also arrested.

Churches now fear that militants may see the bombing as retaliation for the kidnapping – and may seek revenge by attacking Christians again. Local Muslims in Peshawar presume that the government has been pressured to take action by the US government, according to an RI source. Any such presumption is inflammatory in an extremist heartland.

Earlier, the Taliban made a public apology for the abduction of 16 of the Christians, who were freed within a matter of hours. But the militant group has yet to release the other 16 believers and their Muslim landlord seized in the same raid. The Christians all rented property in a compound which was once an Islamic seminary.

The abducted Christians and their families have now had to resettle in accommodation closer to the centre of Peshawar for their own safety.

Federal and local governments have agreed to cede some territory in North-West Frontier Province to militants who have been given leave to introduce Sharia law in some areas in return for a ceasefire. 

Other groups, such as the Lashkar-e-Islam Mangal Bagh which was bombed by the government last month, have refused to surrender their weapons.

(Sources: Compass News Direct, Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan)

·        Pray for Christians in the Peshawar area who are fearful of extremist reprisals.

·        Pray especially for the 16 Christians and their landlord still reportedly held by Taliban militants close to the Afghan border.
 

VIETNAM

Two Montagnard Christians were killed in the Central Highlands when Vietnamese officials ambushed a group on their way to a prayer vigil and pelted them with rocks.

The group, from Plei Kuk Gyer village in Gia Lai province, had canoed across a lake and were about to get out of their boats when security police appeared on the shore and began to throw boulders at them.

Two men – A Lat and A Brin, aged 61 and 46 – were hit on the head: they fell into the lake and died. Their families were denied their wish to bury them at the site of the prayer vigil – and were forced to carry the bodies back to their village for the funerals.

Ethnic minority Montagnards, many of whom are Christians, are regularly harassed by the authorities who suspect them of separatism and Western sympathies.

(Source: The Montagnard Foundation)

·        Pray for the families and friends of the two Montagnard Christians killed in the assault by security officials. Pray they will have justice.

·        Pray for the officers involved in that assault: ask God to convict them that what they are doing is unjust.

Through our international network of missions, RI serves persecuted Christians in 30 countries around the world by supporting pastors and Christian prisoners, and their families; supplying Christian literature and Bibles; and working for justice. RI is a member of the UK organisations Global Connections, the Evangelical Alliance and the Micah Network.