by Melissa Nordell 
Organizations such as Open Doors International, Voice of the Martyrs and International Christian Concern work to defend the human rights of persecuted Christians around the world, to send financial assistance, to advocate for their rights and release from imprisonment, to create awareness of their plight, and to send Bibles and food to the oppressed and refugees.
Filed under end times, missions, persecution, prayer, recruitment
Earthwork on the site at Midyat, Turkey, where thousands of Syrian Christians may live.
The Mor Gabriel monastery is in the background, at right.
Photo: Saima Altunkaya for World Watch Monitor
Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the violence in Syria live in camps just inside Turkey. So, the April 10 news item from Reuters, announcing the creation of two more camps in Turkish town of Midyat, just beyond Syria’s northeastern border, didn’t seem like much.
But something caught my eye: A camp specifically for Syrian Christians? This was new. Of all the Syrian refugees in Turkey, only a few hundred are Christian. Now they need a camp?
Filed under missions, persecution, prayer
President Sein of Burma
International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that the European Union (EU) has announced it is lifting all remaining economic sanctions against Burma despite regular incidents of violent discrimination against Christians and other religious minorities.
The European Union and other Western governments had maintained sanctions against the Burmese government for years due to concerns over massive human rights violations until the nominally civilian government promised to begin making reforms in 2010.
Filed under missions, persecution, prayer
By Melissa Nordell
Experts are warning of possible targeting of Christians in many Middle East countries. The danger is especially apparent in Syria after the so-called “Arab Spring.” In Syria, the conflict still continues between government forces and rebels, and the government itself is quite unstable, according to a report by CNN.
“In the past, they [Syrian Christians] have had (a) great outpouring of piety in the public squares on Easter,” said Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute. “This time, I suspect it is going to be vastly different. They are fearful,” she told CNN.
Filed under end times, missions, Muslim conversions, persecution, prayer
China’s Christians felt a noticeable rise in persecution in 2012 as the
House church gathering
Communist government began the first of a three-phase plan to eradicate unregistered house churches, a new report says.
Incidents of persecution of Christians in China rose by about 42 percent last year compared with 2011, according to the report by human rights group China Aid. In total, the number of individual persecuted Christians rose by roughly 14 percent and total individual detentions increased by nearly 12 percent. China Aid said overall total persecution in six categories, including groups, was about 13 percent worse than in 2011—though China Aid termed its statistics just “the tip of the iceberg.”
Filed under evangelism & outreach, missions, persecution, prayer
Kidnapped Missionaries in Guatemala with Poster Advertising the Event
By Michael Ireland
The pastor of a small church in the upper Midwest and his missions team were kidnapped, beaten and robbed on the first day of a 14-day missions trip to Guatemala. Rev. Bill Hieb of Riverside Church in Somerset, Wisconsin, and a team of eight others, five members of his church, including three women, were likely followed from the airport in Guatemala City while driving to the home of their host five hours away, on Wednesday, January 23rd.
Filed under encouragement, evangelism & outreach, miracles, missions, persecution, prayer, teaching, testimonies
by Jeremy Reynalds
The brutal massacre of three Christian missionaries who operated the Zirve Publishing House in the city of Malatya in 2007 was planned well ahead of time and in a highly calculated manner, documents found on a computer belonging to a suspect in the killings have revealed.
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Relatives of the Zirve massacre victims walk to Malatya 3rd High Criminal Court to attend the 55th hearing |
According to a story by “Today’s Zaman”, the most widely circulated newspaper in Turlkey, police have found a large number of documents that serve as evidence of how the murders were premeditated over a long period of time on a computer seized from the house of gendarmerie intelligence officer Maj. Haydar Yesil — one of the suspects in the Zirve trial. The hard drive of the computer includes video footage of the victims, phone conversation recordings belonging to them and a chart that details the organizational structure of Christian missionaries in Malatya.
Filed under evangelism & outreach, missions, persecution, prayer
By Elizabeth Kendal
In 1992, during its war against South Sudan, Khartoum declared a jihad against the ‘rebellious’ Nuba: the African tribes of the north’s Nuba Mountains who, along with the southerners, were resisting Islamization and racist Arab supremacy. A government-sponsored fatwa legitimized the jihad by labeling Muslim ‘rebels’ as ‘apostates’ and Christians as “kaffirs” (infidels/unbelievers) standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and affirming that “Islam has granted the freedom of killing both categories”.
Nothing has changed — same genocidal regime, same racial and religious hatred, same jihad, same aim: genocide.
Filed under evangelism & outreach, missions, persecution, prayer
Christians in India’s most religiously intolerant state have witnessed heightened violence in the past several weeks, including Hindu
Pastor Samuel Kim, attacked in hospital
extremists attempting to slit the throat of a pastor as he lay hospitalized from a previous attack, sources said.
Karnataka State led India in attacks against Christians from 2009 through 2011, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI). Christians or their property are attacked an average of three times per week in Karnataka, Christian Legal Association Senior Advocate S. Nova Bethania told Morning Star News.
Filed under persecution
Now acquitted and freed, but in hiding and in fear of her life
Arrest photo
By Dan Wooding
It was around midnight on a fateful August night when a young Christian girl was brought into the Ramna Police Station and accused of blasphemy and then sent to jail.
She is Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old illiterate and mentally-challenged girl, was foraging around her area in search of paper that could be used for heating and cooking in her poverty-stricken home in a Christian enclave of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital city.
Filed under persecution
