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China bans 1,000-member Shouwang church in Beijing, demands members vow not to attend

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An influential house church in Beijing was shut down Saturday after 20 government and police officials raided Bible classes at two different locations, changed the locks and demanded congregants vow never to worship as a congregation again.

China’s crackdown against underground house churches continued last Saturday with the forced closure of Beijing’s Shouwang Church.

Shouwang Church is one of the most prominent among thousands of unregistered house churches in the city and is said to be attended by over 1,000 people.

As the congregation has suffered through years of challenges and persecution at the hands of the government for refusing to join the state-sanctioned church, it was accused of refusing to register with the government as a “social organization.”

But according to the nonprofit run by prominent Chinese human rights leader Bob Fu, the church had previously submitted an application to the Haidian District Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau in 2006 but was rejected because founding Pastor Jin Tianming was not officially ordained by the state.

Christians attending the Bible classes had planned to meet around 1 p.m. but instead were taken by policy to a nearby school where they were held for hours, questioned and told that the church had been shut down.

The nonprofit NGO International Christian Concern reports that another group of Christians affiliated with the church were detained from another location and also taken to the school. Officials reportedly switched out the locks at both locations of the raids.

The number of Christians detained by police for hours before being released is believed to be between 20 and 30, reports.

According to ICC, officials read out a document formally banning Shouwang Church and demanded that those in attendance sign a letter vowing that they will no longer attend the church. However, the detainees reportedly refused.

Additionally, authorities were said to have demanded that Pastor Zhang Xiaofeng sign a document admitting that the church conducted activities as an organization without registering with the government.

The closing of Shouwang Church comes after authorities made headlines last September for banning Beijing’s largest house church, Zion Church, and confiscating “illegal promotional materials.”

Zion Church had previously rejected requests from government authorities to install closed-circuit cameras. Officials in Beijing argued that the church had held events without registering.

Shouwang Church in the past has been forced to meet in outdoor locations as government pressure made it difficult for the congregation to secure rented or purchased space. As previously reported, the church’s founding pastor was placed under house arrest in 2011 and many church members were arrested after the church began worshiping outdoors after its eviction from a building.

Last July, at least 34 house churches in Beijing signed a joint statement to China’s Communist Party officials decrying what they called an ongoing and worsening crackdown against believers.

“The normal religious lives of believers have been violated and obstructed, causing serious emotional harm and damage to their sense of patriotism, as well as causing social conflict,” the statement read.

Beijing churches are not alone in facing persecution as dozens upon dozens of members of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu have been arrested for worshiping after government officials closed the church last December.

China ranks as the 27th worst nation in the world when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA’s World Watch List. This ranking reflects the increasing implementation of regulations on religion in China that are now “much harsher across the country.”

During his trip to Hong Kong earlier this month, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, said he believes the Chinese government “is at war with faith.”

“It’s a war they will not win,” Brownback declared during a speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club. “The Chinese Communist Party must hear the cry of its people for religious freedom.”

The former Kansas governor and U.S. senator criticized the Chinese government’s treatment of Christians as well as its imprisonment of as many as 1 million Uighur Muslims in internment camps.

ICC Regional Manager Gina Goh stated in a press release that China’s disregard of religious freedom “is deplorable.”

“Christians outside of the state-sanctioned churches can no longer worship without fearing of harassment, detention, or even imprisonment,” Goh stressed. “Even official churches face increasing pressure to exalt the Communist Party over God. The international community should continue to press China over its human rights abuses until it is willing to make positive change.”

China Aid’s Fu had previously warned members of Congress that religious freedom in China has reached the “worst level that has not been seen since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution by Chairman Mao in the 1960s.”

He also warned about a five-year plan to make Christianity more compatible with socialism. That plan, he says, features a “rewrite” of the Bible to “reflect Chinese ethics of Confucianism and socialism.”

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13-year-old Christian girl abducted, forced into Islamic marriage in Pakistan

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A Christian father in Pakistan is looking for justice after his teenage daughter was recently kidnapped and forced into marriage.

On April 4, 2024, 13-year-old Sania Ameen was abducted near her home in the remote village of Anjotar Sialkot in Punjab, Pakistan. The girl’s father, Ameen Masih, said his daughter was forcibly taken by a local man and two accomplices while on her way to shop for groceries for the family.

Masih reported that on the day of the abduction, he and his wife received a distressing call from another daughter about Sania’s disappearance. They hurried back home and immediately began searching for their missing daughter. Several eyewitnesses in the area said that Sania was unwillingly abducted by a man named Saif Ali and his associates. Masih quickly filed a complaint against Ali with the authorities, but it was not registered by the police, who instead blamed Masih for being an irresponsible father who failed to protect his daughters.

Despite Masih’s desperate appeals, local law enforcement has not a First Information Report (FIR) against the alleged abductors. Authorities justified the kidnapping by stating that Sania willingly married and converted to Islam, despite her status as a minor, and closed the case within three days.

In response, Ameen submitted another written application to the police station house officer, officially requesting the registration of a complaint against Ali and the two others for multiple crimes, including kidnapping, harassment, religious conversion and the fabrication of documents to alter her age. The complaint also states Ali and his partners abducted Sania for the purpose of sexual assault and exploitation. However, the police have yet to file a report on Masih’s behalf.

“We urge the authorities to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrator with the full force of the law, setting a precedent that dissuades any would-be kidnappers and exploiters from preying on the daughters of vulnerable communities like ours,” Masih said. “His punishment may help the majority community understand the gravity of these issues and empathize with the pain of parents who are powerless as their daughters are abducted and forcibly converted before their very eyes. These are girls who are not even physically or mentally prepared for such atrocities. They are naive and underage.”

Masih also said that regardless of the religious bias that Christians face in Pakistan and the social support of the culprits, this marriage of a minor is undoubtedly a crime and a violation of Pakistani law.

“We urge the government authorities, treating us as equal citizens of this land, to assist us in retrieving our daughter,” said Masih. “She has been forcefully detained and physically abused by her abductors before our very eyes, under the watch of law enforcement.”
Sources:Christian Post

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Christian Prisoner Denied Medical Care in Iran

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Iran — Mina Khajavi, a 60-year-old Christian convert serving a six-year prison sentence in Iran, is currently being deprived of necessary medical attention within Tehran’s Evin Prison.

Despite suffering from arthritis and walking with a limp caused by an untreated broken ankle sustained in a car accident shortly before her imprisonment, Khajavi is being denied medical care by Iranian guards. This neglect has resulted in significant suffering for Khajavi, particularly as she must put pressure on her injured ankle when climbing to the second level of her bunk bed in her cell.

Agents with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard arrested Khajavi in part of a string of coordinated raids against house churches in June 2020. Authorities charged Khajavi with “acting against national security by promoting ‘Zionist’ Christianity,” and she began serving her sentence at the beginning of this year. Khajavi was arrested alongside several Christian converts, including Malihe Nazari and Joseph Shahbazian, both of whom have had their sentences reduced due to retrials — hope that Khajavi clings to as she seeks a retrial of her own.

The conditions for Khajavi in Evin Prison, however, remain grim.

Widely referred to as a “torture factory” and “hell on earth,” Evin Prison houses roughly 60% of Christians detained in Iran. Rather than house the scoundrels and dregs of society, the prison serves as punishment for anyone deemed a threat to national security and the Islamic regime: Christians, politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and artists. Or, more specifically, anyone who is a threat to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader who squashes any faith or dissent that challenges the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Prisoners incarcerated in Evin live in dismal conditions. Wards are overcrowded and lack necessities. Inmates have reported more than 70 types of torture, according to a report published by the U.K. Those with health conditions, like Mina Khajavi, report medical neglect and abuse.
Sources:persecution

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ദക്ഷിണ കൊറിയയിൽ പാർലമെന്റിലേക്ക് തെരഞ്ഞെടുക്കപ്പെട്ട കത്തോലിക്കരുടെ എണ്ണത്തിൽ റെക്കോർഡ്

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സിയോള്‍: ചരിത്രത്തിൽ ഏറ്റവും കൂടുതൽ കത്തോലിക്കരായ ജനപ്രതിനിധികൾ ഇത്തവണത്തെ ദക്ഷിണ കൊറിയയുടെ പാർലമെൻറിലേക്ക് തെരഞ്ഞെടുക്കപ്പെട്ടു. തെരഞ്ഞെടുക്കപ്പെട്ട 80 പേരിൽ ഭരണപക്ഷത്തുള്ളവരും, പ്രതിപക്ഷത്തുള്ളവരും ഉൾപ്പെടും. ഏപ്രിൽ പത്തിന് നടന്ന ഇലക്ഷനിൽ ഡെമോക്രാറ്റിക് പാർട്ടി ഓഫ് കൊറിയയുടെ പ്രതിനിധികളായി 53 കത്തോലിക്കരാണ് തെരഞ്ഞെടുക്കപ്പെട്ടത്. അതേസമയം ഭരണപക്ഷത്തുണ്ടായിരുന്ന പീപ്പിൾ പവർ പാർട്ടിയുടെ പ്രതിനിധികളായി 16 കത്തോലിക്കർ തെരഞ്ഞെടുക്കപ്പെട്ടു.

ഇതുകൂടാതെ ന്യൂ റിഫോം പാർട്ടിയുടെ പ്രതിനിധികളായി 11 കത്തോലിക്കരാണ് പാർലമെൻറിലേക്ക് വരുന്നത്. ഇലക്ഷനിൽ ഡെമോക്രാറ്റിക് പാർട്ടി 161 സീറ്റുകൾ നേടിയപ്പോൾ പീപ്പിൾ പവർ പാർട്ടിക്ക് 90 സീറ്റുകളാണ് ലഭിച്ചത്. 2020ൽ 300 ജനപ്രതിനിധികളുള്ള പാർലമെൻറിൽ 25 ശതമാനം കത്തോലിക്കരാണ് ഉണ്ടായിരുന്നതെങ്കിൽ ഇപ്പോഴത് 27% ആയി ഉയര്‍ന്നിരിക്കുകയാണ്.

രാജ്യത്തെ ആകെ ജനസംഖ്യയുടെ 28 ശതമാനമാണ് ക്രൈസ്തവ വിശ്വാസികള്‍. മൊത്തം ജനസംഖ്യയുടെ 11% കത്തോലിക്കാ വിശ്വാസികളാണ്. കത്തോലിക്ക വിശ്വാസം സ്വീകരിക്കുന്നവരുടെ എണ്ണത്തില്‍ ഉണ്ടായ വര്‍ദ്ധനവും ദൈവവിളിയില്‍ ഉണ്ടായ വര്‍ദ്ധനവും കൊറിയയിലെ സജീവ സുവിശേഷവത്ക്കരണത്തിന്റെ പ്രതിഫലനമായാണ് വിലയിരുത്തപ്പെടുന്നത്.
കടപ്പാട് :പ്രവാചക ശബ്ദം

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