..
Chinese court jails Christian pastor for 8 years:
‘Fraud for preaching the Gospel’
By Anugrah Kumar,
Christian Post Contributor|
Sunday, February 27, 2022
A court in China’s Hubei province has sentenced a female Christian pastor to eight years in prison on charges of “fraud for preaching the Gospel” after her house church refused to join the state-controlled body that regulates Protestant churches, according to reports.
The Ezhou Echeng District People’s Court sentenced Pastor Hao Zhiwei of Egangqiao Church in Ezhou city to eight years in prison earlier this month, UCA News reported.
The 51-year-old pastor had been charged with fraud for preaching the Gospel and receiving donations from church members without approval from the state-run Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches and the Christian Council, her lawyer, Si Weijiang, was quoted as saying.
The lawyer added that Hao, who was arrested in July 2019, is the first pastor of a house church in the country who has been implicated in a fraud case, and added that she will appeal her sentencing, watchdog group Church in Chains said.
Hao’s church building had been demolished in August 2019 and was facing ongoing persecution, the group said, adding that after the pastor’s arrest, the authorities arrested several more house church pastors on the same charge, including Elder Zhang Chunlei of Guiyang Renai Reformed Church and Elders Hao Ming and Wu Jiannan of Deyang Early Rain Qingcaodi Church.
The Chinese Communist Party uses the new Regulation on Religious Affairs, which took effect in 2018, to persecute house churches in various ways, Elder Li Yingqiang of Chengdu Early Rain Covenant Church wrote in an article last November.
Those ways include "Sinicization," or seeking to align Christianity to China’s culture, religious and political ideology; “removing crosses, sealing up and demolishing church buildings; and banning church offerings.”
“Other charges include: ‘illegal business operations,’ ‘inciting subversion of state power,’ ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’ and so on. These charges are thorns on loyal preacher’s head and God’s crown for His loyal servants,” Li added.
Pastor Hao’s youngest son, Moses, who goes to a middle school, suffers from severe depression, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern said.
“Her husband passed away a few years ago, and her oldest son started college in 2020, so he can no longer take care of his younger brother. Moses dropped out this semester and began locking himself in a room. He refuses to interact with people and only has one meal per day,” ICC said.
Pastor Hao’s health is deteriorating in prison and she has lost a significant amount of weight, the group added. “After being detained for more than two years, she has developed acute pancreatitis four times and was sent to the emergency room. She nearly lost her life.”
Hao has “strong faith that she can be released without charge.”
With Beijing hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics, many have expressed outrage about China’s treatment of religious minority communities. While China is being accused of genocide for its detainment of Uyghur and other ethnic Muslims in western China, human rights activists have voiced concern for years about the Chinese government’s yearslong crackdown on unregistered churches and house church movements.
Open Doors USA, a watchdog organization that monitors persecution in over 60 countries, warns that the monitoring of unregistered house churches in China increased over the last year as more house churches have experienced “harassment and obstruction once their activities have been discovered.”
Open Doors warns that many unregistered churches have been “forced to split up into small groups and gather in different locations, keeping a low-profile so as not to be detected by the sub-district officer or neighborhood committee.”
Ezhou city, Hebei
Islamic terrorists kill 3 Christians, destroy church in Nigeria
By Anugrah Kumar,
Christian Post Contributor|
Tuesday, March 01, 2022
Suspected terrorists from the Islamic State West Africa Province have killed three Christians and destroyed a church in an attack in a village in northeast Nigeria’s Chibok area, according to reports.
The attack took place in the predominantly Christian village of Kautikari in Borno state on Friday evening in which three Christians were killed and the building of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria was destroyed, Morning Star News reported Sunday, citing area residents.
Nigerian newspaper the Daily Post identified the deceased as Bulama Wadir, a traditional ruler’s son, and two internally displaced persons.
The Kautikari community, which lives on the fringes of Sambisa forest, a base of ISWAP terrorists, was also attacked in mid-January, when 24 Christian women and children were captured and taken into captivity, with 20 of them still held captive. The four others managed to escape in late January.
A worship auditorium of the local Church of the Brethren in Nigeria was also damaged in the January attack.
Kautikari village is near Chibok, where over 200 girls were kidnapped from a school in 2014.
Chibok leaders were quoted as saying that their communities have been attacked more than 72 times since the 2014 kidnappings. After eight years in which 57 girls escaped on their own and others were released, 110 of the girls remain in captivity, according to the Chibok Area Development Association.
In an earlier interview with The Christian Post, Emeka Umeagbalai of the Anambra-based International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law said kidnappings of Christians happen for various reasons.
Boko Haram, ISWAP and radicalized members of the Fulani herding communities are motivated by money, while others are inspired by Islamic radicalism.
That doesn't make any sense!
Security analysts say kidnapping for ransom has become a lucrative industry in Nigeria as weapons are becoming available to militants in Nigeria thanks to war-torn Libya.
In Nigeria’s northeast, Boko Haram and ISWAP have killed thousands and displaced millions.
The U.S.-based persecution watchdog group International Christian Concern warns that the Nigerian government “continues to deny any religious motivation behind the attacks and has recently convinced the U.S. Department of State to do the same.”
The Nigerian President, Buhari, is a Muslim. I believe he not only doesn't want Islam blamed for the horror show in northern Nigeria, but I seriously doubt that he wants it to stop.
Many have raised concerns about what they perceive as the government’s inaction in holding terrorists accountable for the rising number of murders and kidnappings.
However, last November, the Biden administration removed Nigeria from the U.S. State Department’s list of “countries of particular concern,” a designation reserved for the countries that tolerate or engage in some of the world's worst violations of religious freedom. Nigeria was added to the CPC list in December 2020 during the final months of the Trump administration. ICC identified the African country as one of its 2021 “Persecutors of the Year.”
This deal was brokered by Anthony Blinken as a reward for supporting Biden's LGBTQ language at the UN. This is one of the most morally corrupt actions I can recall by a western government.
“Nigeria is one of the deadliest places on Earth for Christians, as 50,000 to 70,000 have been killed since 2000,” the ICC Persecutor of the Year report states.
According to Open Doors USA’s 2022 World Watch List report, at least 4,650 Christians were killed between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, up from 3,530 the previous reporting year, and more than 2,500 Christians were kidnapped, up from 990 the previous reporting year.
University Orders Christian Student Not to Talk to Students
Who Disagree with Her
Michael Foust |
ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor |
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
An Edwardsville, Illinois, university violated a Christian student’s constitutional rights by ordering her not to have contact with three students who disagreed with her faith-centric viewpoint, according to a legal organization.
Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter late last month to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville after it ordered Maggie DeJong, a student in the master’s in art therapy counseling program, from having “any contact” or “indirect communication” with three students. The students, according to ADF, complained to the university that her viewpoint would not be “welcome or appropriate.”
The university offered no basis for the orders, which “limit her speech and physical presence on and off campus” through the end of the semester, the letter says. Further, the letter says the university acknowledged DeJong’s conduct did not violate university policy. According to the letter, the university said the non-contact orders were to “prevent interactions that could be perceived by either party as unwelcome, retaliatory, intimidating, or harassing,” according to the letter.
“Universities, especially classrooms where topics are supposed to be vigorously debated, should be marketplaces of ideas, not an assembly line for one type of thinking,” said Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel and director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom. “Maggie has always respectfully expressed her viewpoint in class, which every student is entitled to do under the First Amendment. The university must immediately rescind the no-contact orders and revise its policies to adequately safeguard students’ constitutional rights.”
Langhofer told The Daily Citizen that DeJong’s Christian beliefs are the source of the dispute. At one point, Maggie informed a fellow student that “her personal beliefs are grounded in objective truth by the gospel of Jesus Christ,” according to The Daily Citizen.
The no-contact orders have prevented DeJong from “fully” participating in her educational activities, the letter says. Because of the orders, she cannot fully participate in classes with the three students. She also cannot participate in group chats in which any of the three students are present.
The orders violate DeJong’s free speech protections as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the letter says. The letter says legal action is possible if the university does not withdraw the orders.
No comments:
Post a Comment