India: Police beat Christians, force them to pose
like Christ on the cross while mocking Jesus
By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Christian Post Reporter
Christians meet near their rebuilt church in Kandhamal. In 2008, almost every church in the area was destroyed
by Hindu nationalists. | John Fredricks
Christians falsely accused of forcefully converting Hindus to Christianity were brutally beaten by a drunken police officer who then ordered them to pose like Christ on the cross.
Morning Star News reports that on March 15, a group of Hindu extremists stormed a church gathering in India’s Uttar Pradesh state brandishing hockey sticks and steel rods. (I presume these would be field hockey sticks.) Accusing the Christians of forcefully converting Hindus to Christianity, the extremists threatened to beat the group of about 200 worshipers unless they dispersed immediately.
“They had already started attacking us, and the police kept looking on,” pastor Indresh Kumar Gautam told Morning Star News. “They seized the Bibles and the sound instruments, but the officers — both male and female — did not stop them.”
Instead, police forced five worshipers into police vehicles and took them to the Kunda police station, he said.
Along with the pastor, three other Christians were arrested. Another person who had only recently begun attending services also was taken into custody, but when he told police he was not a Christian, they immediately made arrangements to release him on bail, pastor Gautam said.
The four Christians remained in custody for six hours until the Sub-Divisional Magistrate agreed to release them on bail after forcing them to sign an affidavit stating that they would never again be involved in Christian conversion activities in the area.
A police officer then entered the building, asking the Christians: “Are you the religious conversions people?” Before they could reply, he began beating them with a cane, Gautam said.
“The stink of alcohol from his mouth was very strong and unbearable,” the pastor recalled. “I was howling in pain, crying out to the Lord — ‘Lord, if I have to take this torture for sharing the Gospel, I accept it, Lord. I accept it. Give me the strength. My voice was growing feeble. I kept repeating, ‘Father, give me the strength. I need your strength. I can’t take this pain.’”
Striking the pastor’s legs, the officer mocked the pastor’s caste and economic status, using obscenities, the pastor said.
“I could hear him speak ill about me, my identity and faith, but I did not say a word,” Gautam said. “He had beaten me to a point I collapsed on the floor. I was lying there almost dead watching my friends also undergo the same degree of torture one after the other.”
The officer forced the other Christians to pose like Jesus on the cross, he said.
“He said that he wanted to get that feeling that he is torturing Jesus,” Gautam said. “‘Let’s see if your Jesus would come here to save you,’ he laughed, as he continued mocking us, calling us names, casteist slurs, but none of us protested.”
As a result of the torture, one of the Christians remains in severe pain and is unable to walk, Gautam said, adding, “He is unable to sleep because of the pain and bruises.”
The torture continued for three hours, he said, but there were no CCTV cameras inside the cell to capture the violence.
“There is no evidence of it. Unless we show our scars, no one would believe us,” Gautam said. “There is severe pain in my wrist, so that I am unable to do any chores.”
Advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom-India’s Uttar Pradesh Legal Aid Cell is providing legal assistance to the Christians.
“The Christian youths were beaten badly by the drunk officer,” Christian rights activist Dinanath Jaiswar said, adding that often, lower-caste people who put their faith in Christ are often the targets of upper-caste Thakurs.
“The Uttar Pradesh police force has time and again unleashed their anger against minorities,” Jaiswar said. “It appears the Hindu extremist groups are closely working with the police officers to target Christian worship.”
India’s Freedom of Religion Act 2019, which eight out of 29 states in the country have passed, bans religious conversion as a result of force or inducement. Those who violate the forced religious conversion law face anywhere from three to seven years in prison.
Most attacks on Christians — who make up just 2.3% of the country’s population — are launched under the pretext of the alleged “forcible” conversion of Hindus.
Earlier in March, Hindu extremists beat a Christian leader falsely accused of forcing Hindus to convert to Christianity before running their motorcycles over him.
Such attacks are expected to increase: Last week, Milind Parande, the General Secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, announced a nationwide campaign against “forcible” conversions to Christianity.
“They (Christian missionaries) are destroying the ancient culture and indigenous religion of the tribals (aborigines),” Parande told the Times of India. “They are resorting to trafficking of their children. The VHP will not allow this heinous conspiracy to succeed.”
“Issues like love jihad, where Hindu girls are lured to marry Muslims, are also being brought back. Every year, we bring back at least 2,000 people who have got converted.”
This is, of course, a Muslim thing as we have reported many times. Christians don't force or greatly pressure girls to marry, except perhaps in a few African states. There are no forced conversions in Christianity, in fact it is impossible. Destroying the ancient culture of paedophilia in India might be a good thing.
Attacks on Christians have been on the rise since Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took office as prime minister in 2014.
“Since the current ruling party took power in 2014, incidents against Christians have increased, and Hindu radicals often attack Christians with little to no consequences,” noted Open Doors' World Watch List, which ranked India as the 10th worst country for Christians.
And how would it rank as the worst country for children: 2nd, 3rd, maybe 1st?
China demolishes church, removes crosses
as Christians worship at home
By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Christian Post Reporter|
A video shared by the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness documented the moment when the crane removed the red cross from the church rooftop. | Twitter
The Chinese communist government continued its campaign against Christianity during the country's coronavirus outbreak by destroying crosses and demolishing a church while people were on lockdown.
On March 13, a church in Guoyang County, Anhui Province saw its cross removed by authorities. A video shared by the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness documented the moment when the crane removed the red cross from the church's rooftop.
A Christian with the surname Chen told persecution watchdog group China Aid that this church usually has 40 churchgoers attending its services. Authorities used the lockdown as an opportunity to remove the church's cross.
Bob Fu傅希秋
@BobFu4China
Religious persecution continues even in the midst of #WuhanVirus
March 11 Xiangbaishu Church in Yixing city, Jiangsu province was destroyed by #CCP govt. Cross is our Glory
大疫当前，江苏宜兴香柏树教会,于3.11日遭到强拆.举国上下深感人民的苦难，但谁知道在十字架上那位上帝之子的苦难？
Another church in Huaishang district of the city of Bengbu, Anhui province also had its cross removed at the beginning of March, according to International Christian Concern. Ms. Yao, a local Christian, said the removal was led by the head of the local United Front Department, a Communist Party organ employed to govern religious affairs.
All online preaching be ceased and
churches that gather in secret be rooted out
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, China, most of the churches across the country, both underground or state-approved, are able to meet online as of now.
However, in China’s Shandong province, two state-run Christian organizations, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council released a statement ordering all online preaching be ceased and churches that gather in secret be rooted out, reports China Aid.
In addition, it posits officials should “guide” Christians “in other ways, with the caveat of not gathering together!”
For the past 20 years, China has been labeled by the U.S. State Department as a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom violations.
Under President Xi Jinping, the government has destroyed numerous churches and removed their steeples and crosses, reflecting the Communist Party's concerns about the growing number of Christians in the country.
More than 60 million Christians live in China, at least half of whom worship in unregistered, or “illegal” underground churches.
China is ranked as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to persecution of Christians on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List. In addition to Christians, the communist government continues to persecute and monitor members of various religious minorities, including the detention of over 1 million Uighur and other Muslims in western China over the last three years. In 2018, the government banned the online sale of Bibles.
Recently, Fu warned that over the last two years, Xi’s “war on religion” has reached its “worst” in 40 years. He accused the president of turning faith into a “tool for the indoctrination of Communist ideology.”
For example, all religious leaders must pledge to obey the Communist Party’s ideology in their pulpit before they can be allowed to practice their religion, Fu said. Additionally, millions of Chinese Christian children have been forced to renounce their faith by signing a Communist Party prepared document.
“Clearly the aim is to exterminate any independent faiths,” he said, referencing not only the Christian faith, but the faith of Muslims, Buddhists, and others.
“This is a very, very serious signal,” he said.
Fu encouraged the international community to “pay attention to the truth” and “spread true information about faith communities and persecution” on social media.
He also stressed that faith communities must unite and speak with “one voice and for each other.”
“That is a powerful message,” Fu said.
Why Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia feel under attack
by Tarrik Abatt, Ethiopia Insight
After Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office, Orthodox Christians celebrated. But the mood didn’t last long.
When two men were shot dead by police on the night of 5 February in downtown Addis Ababa amidst confrontations triggered by the construction of a church that the authorities claimed was without proper permits, many Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia saw the incident as a continuation of a growing number of attacks against their religion over the past two years.
The episode saw government officials trying to demolish the foundations of a church in the middle of the night. They were met with resistance from the faithful; tear gas and live bullets were fired in clashes that continued for hours. In addition to two deaths, numerous others sustained injuries.
Over subsequent days, people took to social media in an outpouring of anger that at first seemed temporary. But reports indicating that the plot of land in question had been given to an influential evangelical preacher with close ties to the Prime Minister contributed to continued frustration. During services in churches across Ethiopia’s bustling capital, a sentiment of being ‘under siege’ continued to be demonstrated by clerics and worshippers alike. A series of sermons titled “Wake Up Call” in which the attacks are often remembered have become increasingly popular.
More than 60 killed
These sentiments, of concern and frustration, were visible earlier. In September 2019 tens of thousands of followers of the church took to the streets in more than a dozen towns and cities denouncing attacks against the faithful as well as against churches in a number of places across the country. It took only a few weeks for violence to resurface. In late October, church leaders said more than sixty individuals belonging to the Orthodox religion were killed during a bout of clashes prompted when authorities allegedly tried to remove bodyguards of a prominent activist turned politician, Jawar Mohammed.
Since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in early 2018, Ethiopia has seen growing ethnic and religious conflicts with different religious institutions including mosques and Pentecostal places of worship attacked. But many belonging to the country’s largest faith group, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, believe they are particularly embattled.
Dwindling dominance
For hundreds of years, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church held sway over a succession of imperial regimes that reigned over the East African country—an influence that inevitably translated into liturgical and cultural hegemony.
In the mid-1970s, a Marxist junta overthrew Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie I, effectively putting an end to the symbiotic marriage between the church and the state. And with that, no longer were leaders required to carve their legitimacy from the church’s blessing, meaning the church could no longer rely on the state’s preferential treatment for expansion and consolidation.
Governments that ruled the country in the following decades habitually equated the church with an unjust bygone era, but ordinary congregants nonetheless continued practicing their faith with no particular hindrance even during 17 years of a Marxist regime that was by definition anti-religion.
Followers of the Orthodox Church account for nearly half of Ethiopia’s population estimated currently to be above 110 million, making it the largest of the six Oriental Orthodox churches. This higher percentage of the population meant a higher degree of representation in government bureaucracies, which might have helped the average adherents to practice their faith in relative ease.
But there were complaints and concerns. A key one was that the authorities, especially since the late Meles Zenawi took power in the early 1990s, co-opted the church’s top leadership and facilitated the appointment of figures who were subservient to the political elite. The church’s synod split in two in the early years of Meles’ premiership with one patriarch at home and an opponent in exile.
Complicated relationship
When Abiy consolidated a new period of political and economic reforms, Orthodox Christians, like a large portion of the population, had a lot to celebrate and to hope for. The premier personally arbitrated a reconciliation between the divided synod and during his first visit to the U.S. he met and returned with a former head of the church who had been expelled from the country in 1991.
The result was that Abiy’s image adorned Orthodox celebrations; it did not seem to matter for the faithful that he had been outspoken about his Pentecostalism, a rival faith group that’s been rapidly growing in Ethiopia, largely at the expense of the Orthodox Church.
But that love affair hasn’t lasted; many Orthodox Christians now seem to have a different view of the Prime Minister. During his two years in office, attacks against the church have increased to an unprecedented degree. In areas where Orthodox Christians are a minority, followers have been killed and churches burned down with no or little protection offered from the government.
In August 2018, a senior church official told the BBC that in the city of Jigjiga, in the eastern part of the country, seven priests were killed. Six months later two other churches were attacked in the same area during violence that left twelve dead. A number of other attacks happened in Oromia. Other religions’ buildings were also attacked in outbreaks of violence. For example, one most prominent case was the burning of four mosques in Mota town in Amhara region.
But despite such incidents, many Orthodox Christians feel they are particularly under threat, and they are also concerned that they lack political representation to highlight their plight. When Abiy rebranded and restructured the coalition that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades as the Prosperity Party, some people noted that none of the seven founding signatory parties had a leader from the country’s biggest religion.
Sounds like the Canadian government!
Another point of frustration is a budding movement within the church itself in which some ethnic Oromo clerics are demanding a higher degree of autonomy. Some see the movement as politically motivated, aimed at weakening the church. The movement’s leaders have sometimes joined political rallies and are often seen with non-Orthodox politicians, making some of the faithful even more suspicious.
Ethiopia is a religious country where, according to a survey by Pew Research Center, 98 per cent of the Orthodox Christian population say their faith is very important in their life. As it’s heading to an election that is supposed to be the first democratic one in decades this August, Prime Minister Abiy’s party might need to work harder to win the votes of the country’s Orthodox Christians.
Two Pakistani Christians shot and one attacked with axe
over church construction dispute
Two Christian men were shot in the head and one was attacked with an axe on 2 February, during a church building construction dispute between the Masih family and some Muslim neighbours, in Sahiwal, Punjab province.
The Muslim attackers shot both Azeem and Sajjad in the head, and injured Razaq with an axe. All three men were admitted to the Civil Hospital Sahiwal, where Azeem was put into intensive care.
Azeem, 25, was treated in intensive care for three weeks after being shot in the head by local Muslims [Image credit: Centre for Legal Aid & Settlement]
Azeem was released from the hospital three weeks later, on 24 February. His younger brother stated, “He is unable to communicate and is paralysed from the right shoulder down. One of my cousins is recovering from the wound of a bullet that slightly hit his skull. My uncle was also injured with an axe.”
The Masih family wanted to provide a building for the local Christian community, numbering at least 120 in the Muslim-majority area. “There is no church in our village. We gather in the house of a local pastor for weekly prayers. We wanted to facilitate the women and elderly who couldn’t travel each Sunday to the nearby city,” they said.
Christians are often met with opposition when building churches in certain parts of Pakistan, especially rural areas. Local Muslims in Muzaffarabad stole building materials and cut off Christians’ water supply to halt the construction of a church, despite permission granted by local authorities.
Violence is the only way Islam can compete with Christianity. There is no place for truth or peace in the religion of peace.
Two Christians Killed in Al-Shabaab Attack
..
Another Christian Abducted by Terrorist Group in Kenya
International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that on Wednesday, March 11, two Christians were killed and another was abducted when suspected al-Shabaab militants attacked two vehicles on the road between Elwak and Mandera in northeastern Kenya. This region has become a common location for the terror group to conduct attacks, in which they target non-local Christians.
In the first incident, the Somali-based terror group ambushed a passenger bus near the Jabi-bar area, ordering all of the passengers to disembark before the militants began profiling them to identify non-Muslims.
While speaking with ICC, a Mandera security officer confirmed, “The attackers were looking for non-local passengers traveling from Nairobi in order to kill them. The current trend of terror activity in Mandera confirms that. They abducted the only Christian on the bus, the mechanic, and allowed the others to continue with their journey.”
While Kenyan forces pursue the attackers, the status of the abducted Christian remains unknown.
During the second attack, which took place an hour later in the same location, two non-local medical transporters were killed and their truck was burned. They were ferrying pharmaceutical drugs to Mandera, traversing the violence-prone region near the porous Kenya-Somalia border. In a statement, the governor of Mandera said, “Later on the same spot, a truck carrying KEMSA drugs was stopped. The driver and turn boy who are both non-locals were taken away. It was later reported that the lorry has been burnt down to ashes.”
The security officer confirmed to ICC that the “two non-locals, [the] driver and his assistant, had been killed by shooting and their bodies [were] dumped on the roadside.”
This attack comes at a time when Kenya and Somalia are engaged in a border dispute after a war involving the Somali forces and the semi-autonomous region of Jubbaland forces spilled over to Mandera. Christians are worried that, unless security is heightened, they will continue to be targeted.
A pastor in Mandera said, “Over the last two weeks, we have been living in fear because of the insecurity posed by the two forces from Somalia who are seen in town on military cars. We are not quite sure if they are forces or militants. We ask for prayers of protection over Christians in northeastern Kenya.”
Kenya has witnessed six terror attacks targeting vehicles in the last four months, leading to the deaths of 21 Christians. On December 6, 2019, 11 non-local individuals were killed when al-Shabaab attacked a passenger bus in Wajir. In total, 10 Christians have been killed in the region from different terror activities in 2020 alone.
Nathan Johnson, ICC’s Regional Manager for Africa, said, “Al-Shabaab is following through with its threat to target and attack non-local Christians. They have increased this type of attack greatly already this year. If this continues, 2020 could be one of the deadliest for Kenyan Christians in recent history. Though I commend the Kenyan government for taking this situation seriously, they must figure out a better way to stop these attacks before dozens more Christians are killed.”
