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At the editor’s desk, we often hear from Compass Direct News about persecuted Christians around the world. As religion remains a dominant force in world politics today, tensions invariably arise. Here is a brief look at what our brothers and sisters in Christ faced in 2007:
- CHINA – The Communist Party waged a secret campaign against unregistered house churches for nearly six months, from mid-June until the end of November, in an attempt to diminish dissident voices ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games. A leaked July 24 document from Jingmen City in the province of Hubei, first disclosed by the China Aid Association (CAA) on Nov. 13, revealed that leading central government figures called for a crackdown to “fight against infiltration by hostile overseas forces under the guise of Christianity and to safeguard the stability of society in the religious field.”
- INDIA – A series of Hindu extremist attacks beginning Christmas Eve in Orissa state’s Kandhamal district made 2007 the most violent on record for Christians, with more than 800 incidents reported throughout the year. Over a period of 10 days in Orissa state, Christian leaders said, at least nine people were killed, close to 90 churches burned and about 600 houses were torched or vandalized, leaving 5,000 people facing hunger and fear. A fact-finding mission’s preliminary research indicated that India’s largest-ever spate of anti-Christian violence was preplanned.
- ERITREA – Authorities tortured a woman to death on Sept. 5 for refusing to recant her Christian faith, the fourth such killing in less than a year. Eritrea outlawed independent Protestant churches in May 2002, closing their buildings and banning them from meeting even in private homes. Since then, Eritrea has officially recognized only Islam and the Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran Christian churches. At the same time, Amnesty International noted, religious persecution has also affected the Orthodox and Catholic churches. More than 2,000 Eritrean Christians are imprisoned in Eritrea. All have been denied legal counsel or trial, with no written charges filed against them. Eritrean authorities have also ordered that all Catholic schools, clinics, orphanages, and women’s vocational training centres be turned over to the government’s Ministry of Social Welfare and Labour.
- NIGERIA – A Muslim rampage in Tudun Wada Dankadai in the northern state of Kano resulted in the killing of 10 Christians and the destruction of nine churches, according to eyewitnesses. Another 61 people were injured and more than 500 displaced in the Sept. 28 disturbance, touched off when Muslim students of Government College-Tudun Wada Dankadai, a public high school, claimed that a Christian student had drawn a cartoon of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, on the wall of the school’s mosque. Kano state government has led the implementation of sharia (Islamic) law throughout northern Nigeria. All area homes, shops, and businesses owned by Christians were looted and burned, said eyewitnesses.
- LAOS – Soldiers, police, and others killed at least 13 Christians in Laos in July in a swarming crackdown on Hmong villagers falsely accused of stirring rebel dissent. In the sweep, encouraged by communist village leaders and others who falsely accused the Christians of being separatist rebels, authorities arrested and imprisoned about 200 members of the 1,900-strong Laos Evangelical Church in Ban Sai Jarern village, Bokeo province, in northwestern Laos.
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