CHRISTIAN PASTOR, LAY LEADERS JAILED FOR SUBVERSION IN ...old.lff.net/resources/compass/cd11-03h.doc · Web viewTorres introduced Esquivia to concepts he had never heard. “I felt

COMPASS DIRECTGlobal News from the Frontlines

November 14, 2003

Compass Direct is distributed monthly to raise awareness of Christians worldwide who are persecuted for their faith. Articles may be reprinted or edited by active subscribers for use in other media, provided Compass Direct is acknowledged as the source of the material.

Copyright 2003 Compass Direct

**********************************************************************IN THIS ISSUE

CHINA

Bishop Ding Steps Up Attacks on the GospelCampaign aims to subordinate Christianity to Chinese socialism.

China Offers No Change in Repressive Anti-Religious PoliciesPastors and priests are sent to labor camps, and press coverage is censored.

COLOMBIA

Christian Pastor, Lay Leaders Jailed for Subversion ♦Christian lawyers association defends evangelicals against terrorism charges.

Two Priests AssassinatedNo motives are known for unrelated murders.

Presenting the Jesus Option Profile of a Christian attorney and his life-long pursuit of peace.

EGYPT

Police Protect Coptic Girl’s Kidnappers ♦ ***Christian father denied access to teenage daughter.

Egypt Cracks Down On Converts to Christianity ♦ ***Former Muslims are forbidden to change their identity papers.

ERITREA

Government Confiscates Full Gospel Church ♦

Compass Direct November 14, 2003 1

Six evangelical youth are still jailed at Sawa.

INDIA

Politicians Use Religion to Win Votes‘Religion’ is a popular campaign platform in local elections.

Hindu Fundamentalists Attack Christians in MumbaiFalse propaganda regarding conversions triggers assaults.

Mob Attacks Prayer Meeting in UttaranchalRumors of conversion spark tension in Roorkey.

INDONESIA

Christian Village Suffers Midnight Attack ♦ Violence left two dead, six missing and 38 houses destroyed.

Christians Flee Their Homes as Attacks Spread ♦Police reinforcements fail to curtail panic in Sulawesi.

MEXICO

Evangelical Pastor Assassinated in Chiapas ♦Indigenous leader dies in ambush near San Juan Chamula.

Police in Chiapas Arrest Two Suspects in Pastor’s MurderPersecutors threaten reprisals against evangelicals.

NIGERIA

Convert Attacked for Refusing to Renounce ChristianityMuslim preacher threatens Christian daughter and family.

Muslim and Christian Students Clash at Nigerian UniversityHealth commissioner closes hospital chapel, officials order church demolitions.

PAKISTAN

Christians Released on Bail ♦Defense demands new inquiry into priest’s murder.

SAUDI ARABIA

Police Fail to Obey Prince’s Order ♦Two Egyptian Christians remain jailed in Riyadh.


SRI LANKA

Christians Face Further Attacks Violence continues against churches and Christian leaders.

TURKEY

Attackers Critically Injure Christian ♦ ***Hospitalized victim slips into coma.

Christians Refused New Religious Identities ♦ ***Government bureaucracy blocks official I.D. changes.

VIETNAM

Intense Persecution Revealed Documents expose official discrimination against Christians.

♦ Indicates Former Flash News release

***Indicates an article-related photo is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

(Return to Index)***********************************Bishop Ding Steps Up Attacks on the Gospel in ChinaCampaign Aims to Subordinate Christianity to Chinese Socialismby Xu Mei

NANJING, China (Compass) -- Bishop Ding, the most influential leader of the state-controlled Chinese “Three Self” Protestant church, has significantly stepped up his anti-Christian “theological construction” campaign in recent months.

Earlier in the year, Ding gave a lecture at the East China Theological Seminary in Shanghai entitled “Theological Construction Enters a New Stage” (published in the official Three Self Tianfeng magazine in September 2003). The lecture reveals his long-term intentions and clearly shows that “theological construction” is a smoke screen for an all-out attack on the beliefs of Bible-believing Chinese evangelicals, said a respected China watcher.

In his lecture, Ding celebrates the progress made since his campaign was first unveiled five years ago at a state church conference in Jinan, northern China.

His opening statement reveals the true intentions of the theological construction campaign. “Discussions have until now centered on the question of ‘belief and unbelief.’


We Chinese Christians must unite with all the people of China and not be disunited with other people because they do not believe.” With these words, Ding re-asserted his claim that belief or unbelief in Christ is secondary to the loyalty required by the Chinese Communist Party.

Ding also attacks 19th century foreign missionaries for “linking the question of belief and unbelief with ‘heaven and hell.’” The missionaries came to China claiming that “all who believed went to heaven and all who did not went to hell. This intimidated ordinary people. Even today many pastors still use heaven and hell to persuade people to believe in Jesus and threaten people.”

Here Ding maligns the beliefs of millions of orthodox Christians worldwide and ignores the fact that it was Christ himself who most often spoke of the realities of heaven and hell in the New Testament.

Some Christian leaders in North America and Singapore believe Ding’s campaign has ground to a halt due to immense opposition from both Chinese believers and Christians in other countries. However, the reverse is true. The centerpiece in Ding’s lecture is his revelation that the campaign will now be intensified by attacking the Bible itself -- the very foundation of Christian belief.

“Today we can state that our theological construction has entered a new stage,” Ding said. “We need to turn our attention to a new theme, that is, our ‘view of the Bible.’ For example, some people confuse the Bible with God’s Word in the same breath.”

With these words, the hidden agenda of theological construction is unveiled, the China watcher said. Evangelical Christians worldwide hold that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Christ Himself held this view. But Ding openly sneers at this foundational belief, attacking both the authority and inspiration of Scripture.

Realizing that the vast majority of Chinese Christians oppose his liberal theology, Ding continues, “When some people hear this way of speaking, perhaps they feel deeply shocked. We hope they will not feel shocked. To confuse the Bible with the Word of God ... is a misunderstanding of the Bible.

“Because they have these misunderstandings, many believers consider that every paragraph, every word and every letter of the Bible are the words of God and absolutely correct,” says Ding. “The Bible is thus placed in the highest position and becomes the fourth person in the Trinity ... but we Christians have never said that there is a fourth person in the Trinity.”


The centerpiece in Ding’s lecture is his revelation that the campaign will now be intensified by attacking the Bible itself -- the very foundation of Christian belief.

Ding’s approach puts him on a collision course with millions of faithful Chinese Christians.

What is Ding’s ultimate aim? He declares, “Chinese Christianity needs a great transformation. We must help the believers to ‘love country and love religion.’ They should feel that to be Chinese is glorious. We must remold Chinese Christianity to become a Christianity which answers to the tide of history and to the needs of the broad masses. I believe this kind of Christianity will be welcomed by the Chinese Communist Party and is compatible with socialism.”

Ding’s agenda is now out in the open -- it is unashamedly political and nationalistic. He demands that every doctrine of Christianity and even the Bible itself be reshaped and made subservient to the atheistic policies of the Chinese Communist Party.

(Return to Index)***********************************China Offers No Change in Repressive Anti-Religious PoliciesPastors and Priests Sent to Labor Camps, and Press Coverage is Censoredby Xu Mei

NANJING, China (Compass) -- Any hope that the new Communist Party and state leadership in China, headed by President Hu Jintao, would usher in more liberal policies towards religious believers appears to be premature.

A senior house church leader interviewed by Compass in October confirmed that repression still continues in many areas. Unregistered house churches are harassed, their members fined, and their leaders jailed and sent without trial to “re-education through labor” camps. The house church leader saw little hope of improvement in the near future.

Underground Roman Catholics loyal to the Vatican also face continuing opposition. At the end of October, the U.S.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation reported that 12 underground priests and seminarians were detained by police after a raid on a spiritual retreat at Gaocheng, in the northern province of Hebei.

Although the new Communist Party leadership pursues economic reform, it remains adamantly opposed to genuine political reform, freedom of speech and religious freedom.

Earlier this year, some intellectuals called for modest political reform, but were promptly silenced. More recently, the state broadcasting commission told TV and radio stations to maintain orthodox Communist programming.

When Mrs. Clinton recorded her visit to a showpiece Protestant church in Beijing, her comment that religious freedom “is a right forbidden to many” was completely removed from the Yilin Press Chinese version.


Newspapers are given lists of forbidden topics and stories are heavily censored. One of the most blatant instances of state censorship was the deletion of all of U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton’s critical comments on the Chinese government from the Chinese translation of her memoirs. When Mrs. Clinton recorded her visit to a showpiece Protestant church in Beijing, her comment that religious freedom “is a right forbidden to many” was completely removed from the Yilin Press Chinese version of her “Living History.”

“Unbelievable! I was amazed and outraged that they could censor me again,” was Mrs. Clinton’s reaction.

Few in China would share her amazement. Repression and censorship, though not as all-encompassing as in the days of Chairman Mao, are still familiar features of everyday life.

(Return to Index)***********************************Christian Pastor, Lay Leaders Jailed for Subversion in ColombiaChristian Lawyers Association Defends Evangelicals Against Terrorism Chargesby David Miller

MIAMI (Compass) -- Attorneys of the Association of Christian Lawyers in Colombia have assumed the defense of a pastor and several church lay leaders arrested by security forces near the city of Sincelejo and accused of terrorism.

Deivis Manuel Carrascal, a pastor of the Association of Evangelical Churches of the Caribbean (AIEC), was arrested in a military sweep at his home in the village of Colosó at 5 a.m. on August 20.

Manuel Monterroza, a Christian school teacher from nearby Chalán; Enaldo Rodríguez, Luis Herazo, Miguel Segundo Arrieta, Eladio Pérez, Oscar Zambrano, Jaime Chamorro and Francisco Ruiz, all identified as active members of the evangelical church in Chalán, were also arrested.

In all, security forces arrested 156 residents from communities in the area of Montes de Maria and charged them with rebellion against the state and acts of terrorism. These crimes are punishable by 20 to 30 years in prison.

In recent years, Montes de Maria has been the scene of bloody massacres committed against the civilian population by paramilitary units and guerrilla groups operating in the area.

Carrascal, 23, is married and has a small daughter. In addition to pastoring the AIEC congregation in Colosó, he is currently enrolled in theological studies at CIPEC, an AIEC pastoral training program based in Sincelejo.


According to attorney Maggie Urueta, one of four lawyers who has assumed defense of the jailed pastor, Carrascal and other suspects were arrested solely upon the accusation of one ex-guerrilla informant who wore a hood over his head to conceal his identity as he led military units from house to house.

Urueta says that the informant’s testimony against her clients is itself suspect.

“This man says he trained Deivis to use explosives in a guerrilla group and that Deivis is a guerrilla commander,” Urueta told Compass. “But this was supposedly in 1983. At that time, my client was only eight years old.

“How could he even recognize Deivis after all these years? This claim alone disproves the man’s entire testimony.

“Nevertheless, my client remains there in jail,” Urueta said.

Urueta plans to raise these objections once officials begin hearing charges against Deivis and the other evangelical defendants. However, the military has not yet completed preliminary investigations, so she and her clients must wait to have their day in court.

Security forces refused to reveal the identity of their informant; however, Urueta has discovered that he is participating in a government program for “repentant” insurgents that rewards information leading to the arrest of fellow guerrillas with reduced penalties for past crimes.

Mrs. Urueta, a mother of three, served more than 10 years in the public defender’s office in her native Sincelejo before leaving that post in 2000 to form a Christian NGO to assist war refugees. Approximately 70,000 displaced persons, the vast majority of them peasant farmers, are crammed into shanty towns surrounding Sincelejo, a “sleepy cow town,” according to Urueta, that has too few resources to accommodate them.

Unable to find work locally, displaced families lack food, shelter, clean water and other basic necessities.

Three years ago, Urueta resigned her public defender position to assume leadership of the Sincelejo chapter of the Commission for Restoration, Life and Peace, a community service ministry of the Evangelical Council of Colombia (CEDECOL). Currently, the Reconciliation Commission assists 567 displaced families with meals, used clothing and primary education.


“This man says he trained Deivis to use explosives in a guerrilla group and that Deivis is a guerrilla commander,” Urueta told Compass. “But this was supposedly in 1983. At that time, my client was only eight years old.”

Urueta and her colleagues have also developed an export market for yams the farmers grow on land granted them by the municipality.

Hernando Mercado, a key worker in the yam export business, is among the 156 terrorist suspects jailed by the armed forces. The Commission of Christian Attorneys is defending Mercado against the charges.

“Hernando is a young, full-time yam farmer,” Urueta said. “He grows yams, cleans yams and markets yams. He is totally dedicated to agricultural labors in Sincelejo -- he doesn’t even work in Montes de Maria. What time does he even have to be a guerrilla?”

Due to anti-terrorism laws recently introduced in Colombia, the defendants have no possibility of bail until their case is resolved by a court of law. Nevertheless, Urueta and her colleagues are petitioning for the provisional release of Carrascal and the other evangelical defendants.

“We have asked for provisional liberty, that we are going to take responsibility for them,” she said. “Because the state recognizes us as an association of experienced attorneys, we could have custody of the men; they are not going to flee.

“However, we have not received a positive answer, as yet, as to whether they will grant them provisional liberty.”

(Return to Index)***********************************Two Colombian Priests AssassinatedNo Motives Known for Unrelated Murdersby Deann Alford

AUSTIN, Texas (Compass) -- Two Roman Catholic priests were slain in apparently unrelated incidents on November 4 in Colombia.

Rev. Saulo Carreño, parish priest of Christ the King Church in the town of Saravena, in eastern Colombia’s violent Arauca department (state), was shot after leaving a hospital where he had been ministering to sick parishioners, church and news sources reported.

According to Cali’s El Pais newspaper, a woman identified as Maritza Linares was in the same vehicle as Fr. Carreño when two gunmen opened fire on the car. Linares was also killed.

El Tiempo newspaper reported that a domestic worker found Rev. Henry Humberto López stabbed to death in his home in the city of Villavicencio, 60 miles southeast of Bogotá.


Concerning the two murders, Roman Catholic Church spokesman Rev. Hector Fabio Henao told El Tiempo, “I hope that this is a matter of acts that have different motives, not for a common, organized and orchestrated purpose.”

No motive or suspects have been found for either crime, church and newspaper sources say. However, police commander Luis Alcides Morales said that authorities attribute the Carreño murder to terrorists.

“This is a very sad act,” Morales told El Pais. “Terrorists are attacking all who collaborate in communities with the state. These are groups outside the law.”

The police commander announced a reward of 30 million Colombian pesos (approximately $10,700) for information leading to the arrest of Fr. Carreño’s murderers.

Hernando Rojas, secretary for the Diocese of Arauca, said that Carreño’s murder marked the fourth assassination of a priest in this state since 1985. The most recent murder of a priest was in 1999, he said.

Rojas said that he knew Carreño as a serious, formal, quiet man and estimated his age at 40. He had been a priest in Saravena for six years. To Rojas’ knowledge, Carreño had not been threatened or attacked before his murder.

Asked why the priest might have been targeted, Rojas said, “Only God knows.”

News sources reported that López, 44, had served eight months as priest of Villavicencio’s El Remanso parish. Like Carreño, he apparently had not received threats from possible enemies. His body was found gagged and tied to a chair, with repeated stab wounds to the neck and abdomen.

Evangelical Christian groups in Colombia, human rights watchers and government reports rate Arauca as among the nation’s most violent regions. A remote area bordering Venezuela, Arauca has lived with historically weak government authority, allowing insurgent guerrilla groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army to control the area’s rich oil resources and drug cultivation.

In recent years, right-wing paramilitary forces have had a presence in Arauca as well.

Villavicencio has also long been marked by violence. New Tribes Mission and Wycliffe Bible Translators pulled out of their bases there in the mid 1990s after FARC guerrillas kidnapped three U.S. missionaries. Steve Welch and Timothy Van Dyke of New Tribes were captured in January 1994 and died in a fire fight between their captors


“This is a very sad act,” Morales told El Pais. “Terrorists are attacking all who collaborate in communities with the state. These are groups outside the law.”

and a Colombian army unit 18 months later. Wycliffe missionary Ray Rising, taken by insurgents in March 1994, spent two and a half years in captivity before the FARC released him.

(Return to Index)***********************************Presenting the Jesus Option to ColombiaProfile of a Christian Attorney and His Life-Long Pursuit of Peaceby Deann Alford

BOGOTÁ (Compass) -- Ricardo Esquivia knows better than most people what it is to suffer persecution. Esquivia, 57, heads the Mennonite peace group Justapaz, which promotes non-violent solutions to Colombia’s decades-old war.

His family was grindingly poor. His mother was indigenous. His father was black.

As a boy, he attended a Mennonite boarding school established for children of lepers and Protestants who suffered the horrors of a bloody period of Colombian history known as La Violencia, The Violence. Evangelicals faced heavy discrimination in those days.

The worst discrimination Esquivia suffered, however, was due to his father’s leprosy. State authorities forced his parents to move to a leper sanitarium near Bogotá, leaving Esquivia and his siblings to fend for themselves in Agua de Dios, a town near Bogotá. When his father learned of the Mennonite boarding school, he enrolled the children in the program. Ricardo, who accepted Christ at age 10 while at the school, earned his high school diploma there.

But stigma continued to dog him. “At first I had many questions that arose from the problems that I was living. Why me? Why did my father have to be a leper? Why did people throw rocks at me? Why, if they gave me a glass of water, did they break the glass afterward?”

Esquivia once met the leftist Roman Catholic priest, Camilo Torres, later linked with the guerrilla group National Liberation Army (ELN). Torres introduced Esquivia to concepts he had never heard.

“I felt that the church wasn’t bothered by this social reality, that it gave no answers to sociopolitical concerns,” he said. Not even the Mennonites, who were the most involved of Colombia’s evangelicals in meeting physical needs of the people, were using political means to resolve these types of problems. That was a new concept for Esquivia and he wanted to learn more.

Esquivia attended university in the tumultuous 1960s, times rife with armed conflict as La Violencia evolved into the civil war of today. He served as student council president and studied law, eager to help solve woes he saw around him. He also followed the civil rights struggle in which blacks in the United States were engaged at the time.


Esquivia found that most proposed solutions to society’s problems centered on violence. He studied the Rev. Martin Luther King, who credited his non-violent methods to India’s Gandhi. Then he learned that Gandhi had studied Christ.

“I made it full circle and discovered precisely that Jesus offered answers, and that Jesus’ message was holistic -- a living message that could offer answers to those suffering in this situation,” Esquivia said.

“Some of us come to the church for conviction, others by family tradition,” he said. “Others of us come because God wanted it that way through difficulties that we face. Thanks to my father’s infirmity, I’m here on Christ’s mission.”

It has been a mission fraught with dangers. In 1986, he and his family moved to the Caribbean coast town of San Jacinto, where he bought a farm and taught peasants the concepts of non-violence and social action. The army accused him of being allied with a guerrilla movement and killed several peasants on the farm. The incident enraged the victims’ families, prompting many to become guerrillas. Esquivia says that it is a prime example of why poor Colombians join the insurgency -- when the army falsely accuses them of being rebels and attacks them.

Due to threats on his life, he fled to the nearby city of Cartagena and later returned to Bogotá. However, problems followed him there. He stood accused of killing 42 foreigners and a Catholic priest. He fled Colombia before authorities could detain him.

Churches around the world and Amnesty International rallied to his side. Meanwhile, the government named a commission to look into the charges, and eventually the army dropped the accusations against him.

“That’s why I say that peace must be sought through justice, and for that reason,

judicial reform is important to me,” he said.

The incident reinforced his belief that there’s no such thing as a just war. In 1989, Esquivia helped found the Christian Center for Justice, Peace and Non-violent Action -- Justapaz -- along with Mennonite missionary brothers Peter and Paul Stucky and Luis Correa. Justapaz sponsors dialogs with warring groups and also provides relief and assistance to Colombians displaced by violence.

In addition, he helped raise the evangelical church’s awareness of non-violent methods via CEDECOL, the Colombian evangelical alliance, and founded its human rights commission to push for change. The commission’s name was changed last year to


“I made it full circle and discovered precisely that Jesus offered answers, and that Jesus’ message was holistic -- a living message that could offer answers to those suffering in this situation,” Esquivia said.

Restoration, Life and Peace because many evangelicals associate human rights with leftist politics and guerrilla sympathizers.

The commission has 20 projects around the country promoting peace, reconciliation and evangelism. By raising human rights awareness among churches, the number of evangelicals working in this arena has risen from a handful of mostly Mennonites in the mid 1990s to several hundred today.

While Esquivia stands for peace, rival groups on both the left and right accuse him of allying with their opponents. He has received death threats. Even though peacemaking could cost him his life, “I like the part of the gospel that says, ‘Don’t tire of doing good,’” Esquivia said.

The morning that Compass spoke with Esquivia in Justapaz’s Bogotá office, a fax arrived for the Restoration, Life and Peace commission director from a pastor in Arauca. On the eastern border with Venezuela, Arauca is Colombia’s most dangerous department (state).

The fax reported that an evangelical on his way to work died instantly when a bomb, believed to have been planted by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), exploded on the highway he was traveling. Eliseo Camelo Ramirez left behind a wife and four children. The destitute widow was seeking help to pay for her husband’s burial.

Similar petitions constantly cross Esquivia’s desk, and CEDECOL manages to find funds to help. It’s not easy, because the evangelical church is comprised mostly of poor Colombians who themselves are suffering loss from Colombia’s long civil conflict. As world attention focuses on crises in the Middle East, the country -- and its Christians -- finds itself with fewer resources to relieve suffering in its own society.

Meanwhile, Esquivia continues to take part in government- and church-sponsored dialogues with armed groups. But the key to changing Colombia lies in the country clamoring for God.

“I believe the main need that Colombians have is the need for spirituality,” he said, “The option is Jesus, and those of us who say we live as a solution for this social problem.

“I believe that the church is advancing in covering these spiritual needs -- not enough, but it’s being achieved. If we as humans achieve the development of a true spirituality, this will transform society.”

(Return to Index)


He has received death threats. Even though peacemaking could cost him his life, “I like the part of the gospel that says, ‘Don’t tire of doing good,’” Esquivia said.

***********************************Egyptian Police Protect Coptic Girl’s KidnappersChristian Father Denied Access to Teenage Daughterby Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass) -- An Egyptian Coptic Christian teenager kidnapped in September by Muslims who claim she’s converted to Islam is being refused direct access to her Christian family, her elder brother near Cairo asserted on October 27.

Ingy Nagy Edwar, 19, is reportedly being held against her will by a Muslim couple in the Haram district of Giza governate, adjacent to Cairo. State security police officials temporarily detained her father and other male relatives a few days after her disappearance, showing them an alleged declaration of conversion to Islam signed by the girl.

According to Nagy Edwar Nagy, his sister disappeared on September 27, the day after she had celebrated her 19th birthday at their family home in El-Maryouteya El-Haram.

The girl was last seen by her father, who sent her off from the local bus station to visit an aunt living in Cairo’s Heliopolis district. When she never arrived, her family discovered the girl’s mobile telephone had been turned off. They began to search for her.

“We called all of our family members and her friends to ask about her, but in vain,” Nagy said. “For two days we searched for her in the hospitals, from Giza to Heliopolis.”

Finally, on the evening of September 28, Nagy went to report her disappearance at the local police station, where he said he was treated very rudely. The police forced him to wait four hours until they registered his report. Then he was told he had to come back the next day for the official document number.

Dismayed at the authorities’ response, Nagy’s father, Edwar Nagy Sedra, went himself to the police to report that his daughter was missing. “But he was treated in a very bad way, given that he is a 65-year-old man,” his son said. A retired English teacher and school vice-principal, the father was detained overnight on accusations of trying to interfere with his daughter’s conversion to Islam.

Sedra was shown his daughter’s conversion declaration, No. 16289 for 2003, in the El-Omraneya administrative office. The police also produced written complaints, one signed by Ingy and another by Abdel Gaber Abdel Moteleb Mohammed Kandyl, rejecting any attempted interference by her father in the girl’s decision to become a Muslim. Ingy is believed to be staying in the home of Abdel Gaber and his wife.

Although Sedra’s nephew and son-in-law who had accompanied him to the police station were released, they had their identity cards confiscated. They were ordered to


report to the prosecutor’s office the next day, where the case was transferred to the State Security Directorate.

That same day, the Giza State Security Directorate held a hearing on the girl’s case, producing Ingy dressed in an Islamic veil. “She was not in a normal mood,” Nagy stated. “When we started crying, she was laughing hysterically.”

During the session, Ingy’s father and other relatives present were treated by the authorities as suspects under accusation, rather than plaintiffs in the case, Nagy said.

During a second hearing on October 18, two Coptic priests were present to ask Ingy about her alleged decision to convert to Islam, as required under Egyptian law. But the girl did not come, sending word instead that she was very sick, bleeding from her nose and mouth.

Ingy’s family believes the girl is being given drugs which affect her moods, “making her personality different from what we know,” Nagy said. During the first two weeks of October, Ingy’s family spoke to her by phone several times, confirming this suspicion. “In each phone call, she was in a different mood,” Nagy said. “Sometimes she was very aggressive, which is inconsistent with her normal personality, and some other times very quiet.”

Nagy stated that his youngest sister had been afflicted by “an unstable psychological status” since their mother’s death two years ago. “She had a good, loving relationship with the whole family,” which Nagy said included two older sisters, “but she was deeply attached to our mother.” The girl had been living alone with her father and Nagy since the second of her sisters married last year and moved to Cairo.

“There is no reason or legal pretext under which she could be permitted to stay at this Muslim man’s house,” her brother stated. “And which law says that her own parent is not allowed to see her?”

Under Egyptian civil law, a daughter under the age of 21 cannot change her religion or marry without the legal permission of her father.

“We are not asking for anything except our right to a fair application of the law,” Nagy said. “How can the police and the state security officials enforce such a case, when all these procedures are illegal?”

“She told me by phone she wants to commit suicide,” Nagy told Compass. “She is going through a hard, hard time.”


Ingy’s family believes the girl is being given drugs which affect her moods, “making her personality different from what we know.”

“She told me by phone she wants to commit suicide,” Nagy told Compass. “She is going through a hard, hard time.”

***A photograph of Ingy Nagy Edwar is available electronically. Please contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

(Return to Index)***********************************Egypt Cracks Down on Converts to ChristianityFormer Muslims Forbidden to Change Their Identity Papersby Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass) -- In a harsh crackdown during the last two weeks of October, Egypt’s state security police arrested and tortured a Christian couple from Muslim background, along with 11 other Egyptian citizens accused of forging Christian identity papers for former Muslims.

At least 10 more Christians were detained and subjected to torture in the sweep, said to be headed by two security police officers known for illegal and cruel tactics against Christian converts.

Mohammed Ahmed Imam Kordy and his wife Sahar El-Sayed Abdel Ghany were arrested in Alexandria on October 18. The police action apparently came after the wife was implicated in a complaint extorted under police torture that she had helped another Egyptian woman secure false identity papers.

Two days after their detention, the two were transferred to a Cairo police station where they were beaten, hung by their arms, and bloated painfully with air blown into their bodies. They were denied any food while detained under intense interrogation in central Cairo’s El-Mosky police station, where they were logged under administrative case No. 3793 for 2003.

The husband and wife were not brought before the prosecutor until October 22, four days after their arrest. Under Egyptian law, the police are required to produce accused detainees before a prosecutor within 24 hours of their arrest.

The couple reportedly told the prosecutor that they had indeed changed their own names, with the husband taking the name Yousef Samuel Makari Suliman, and the wife changing her name to Mariam Girguis Makar.

However, they declared that they did not know it was illegal for them to change their religious identity. Since it was commonly known that Christians in Egypt could convert to Islam and change their identity papers, they stated, they assumed that Muslims had the same rights.


Two days after their detention, the two were transferred to a Cairo police station where they were beaten, hung by their arms, and bloated painfully with air blown into their bodies.

The couple named two Coptic priests who they said had helped them change their religious identity, both of whom have died in the past three years.

Although lawyers intervened to obtain the couple’s release on bail, the wife was sent to prison October 23 for a month while the case is under investigation. Her husband was ordered released but remains under charge. They have two teenage daughters.

Meanwhile, 11 more arrests were reported, including the arrests of three Coptic women who had converted to Islam several years ago but have since returned to their Christian faith. The three, identified as Soheir Hosni Sedky, Fawzeya Azmy Estafanos and Marina Morcos Shenouda, face charges of bribing government employees and obtaining false identity papers.

In addition, Compass has obtained the names of eight government employees known to have been arrested in connection with the case. Two of them, Reda Zaghloul and Amal Wadi’I, are women.

Another, a Christian named Aziz Zakhary Armanios, was employed in security directorate offices in Beni Swef, a governate in southern Egypt. Armanios was arrested in Cairo on accusations of preparing Christian identity papers for 2,800 Egyptian Muslims who had become Christians. His detention has been ordered extended for 45 days by the prosecutor.

Detainee Samir Sa’ad has been identified as a Coptic Christian who had converted to Islam and then tried to return to Christianity. An employee in the civil records office in Dokki, Cairo, Sa’ad was reportedly tortured to confess the names of Muslims who had converted to Christianity.

An additional 10 Christians have been detained in the widening sweep of arrests said to be organized by Lt. Sayed Zaky, a criminal investigation officer known for following illegal procedures in detaining Christians.

Although Lt. Zaky informed the prosecutor that the newly accused Christians were arrested off the street, local sources confirmed that they were taken forcibly from their homes in the middle of the night. “They were breaking down doors, searching their homes, abusing the parents in front of their children, all in a very humiliating way,” the sources said.

Those arrested are reportedly being tortured by Lt. Walid El-Dossoky, assigned to the state security police headquarters in Lazogly. Because of El-Dossoky’s long-term reputation for inflicting cruel torture upon particularly the women Christian converts, numerous complaints have been filed to human rights organizations against him.

Although Egypt’s Coptic Christians make up more than 10 percent of the national population, the government is accused of blatant “religious apartheid” for its discriminatory laws favoring the Muslim majority.


While Christian citizens who want to convert to Islam are free to adopt Muslim names and change their official religious identity, these rights are denied to Muslims who convert to Christianity. Under the law, it is not illegal for an Egyptian to convert from one religion to another, but in practice, Muslims who become Christians face arrest, torture and ongoing threats to their lives.

In the face of such persecution, many such converts have tried to change their religious status without government permission, leaving themselves open to the charge of falsifying official documents.

In the wake of this latest crackdown, a group of former Muslims who have converted to Christianity issued an anonymous declaration from Cairo on October 26.

“We are between the jaws of the constitution and the legislation,” the Christian converts stated, noting the dilemma between constitutional guarantees of freedom of belief and Islamic law demanding that unrepentant apostates be executed.

Asserting their rights as Egyptian citizens to equal treatment under the laws of the land, the converts demanded that all cases of falsified identities against Christian converts be dropped unconditionally.

“The Egyptian government is itself responsible for this illegal action,” the declaration stated, “because it has deprived us of one of our basic legal rights, to embrace a new faith and change our name, our identity and our official papers. Give us our rights, and we will not falsify these things.”

“Is it logical,” the converts asked, “that the person who chooses a religion other than Islam is accused of blasphemy, and the opposite is not applied?” In fact, the statement noted, Egypt’s Christians were all being given the freedom to change their beliefs. “But here Muslims are persecuted, because they are not enjoying that same right!”

***A photograph of Mohammed Ahmed Imam Kordy and his wife Sahar El-Sayed Abdel Ghany with their two children is available electronically. Please contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

***The complete October 26 Declaration of Egypt’s Christian Converts is available in both Arabic and English upon request.

(Return to Index)***********************************Eritrean Government Confiscates Full Gospel ChurchSix Evangelical Youth Still Jailed at Sawa


Under the law, it is not illegal for an Egyptian to convert from one religion to another, but in practice, Muslims who become Christians face arrest, torture and ongoing threats to their lives.

Special to Compass Direct

LOS ANGELES (Compass) -- Government authorities in the Eritrean capital of Asmara confiscated and sealed the complex of the Full Gospel Church, ordering the church staff and members to evacuate the building permanently.

Located in the Gaza Banda district of Asmara, the large complex had served as the Full Gospel Church’s main headquarters and meeting place for the past 11 years. The rented facility accommodated up to 4,000 worshippers.

An initial standoff over the government-owned complex began on September 17, 2002, when soldiers invaded the property at 9 a.m. and refused to leave, declaring that it was government property. Despite negotiations by church leaders, a contingent of five soldiers have remained in a section of the complex for the past 13 months.

But on October 15, the church staff and members were ordered by military officials to hand over the entire complex to the government. “They were told that as an institution, their church was violating presidential directives, that it was involved in an illegal ‘cell-group’ ministry,” a local source confirmed. “They were told that the church will not get any property.”

Government authorities sealed the premises, refusing church members any further admission. “No one from the church is allowed to enter the building since October 26,” the source said, “so the assumption is that very soon, someone else may start using it.”

Since May 2002, the Eritrean government has refused to recognize the Full Gospel Church and a dozen other independent Protestant churches representing about 20,000 members. All have been ordered to close their church buildings and stop both public and private meetings for worship.

Meanwhile, Compass has confirmed that of the 62 young people arrested and locked into metal containers last August for having Bibles in their possession at the Sawa summer military camp, all but six have now been released. None of the teenagers set free have been willing to discuss the terms of their release.

The six youths still jailed have reportedly been moved from containers to underground isolation cells, where there is no light, little air and limited food. They are allowed out once a day to relieve themselves.

Another 12 young evangelicals from Asmara’s Dubre Bethel Church arrested during a house prayer meeting on September 7 are still refusing to sign a denial of their faith to gain their release.


The six youths still jailed have reportedly been moved from containers to underground isolation cells, where there is no light, little air and limited food.

On October 5, the police at Asmara’s Police Station No. 5 again pressured the detainees’ parents to persuade their children to sign the denial. While some declined, other parents complied, admitting their jailed children were the family’s sole breadwinners.

“These arrested Christians don’t care about what happens to themselves,” a fellow evangelical noted, “but many are worried about what might happen to their parents now.”

Little information has been learned regarding the fate of 79 soldiers in the Assab military prison, where most have been jailed since March 2002 for their evangelical faith. The detainees, 16 of them women, have received harsh, life-threatening treatment and been refused any contact with their families.

Following other arrests in recent months in Massawa, Adi-Abytoo, Keren, Mendefera, Adi-kualla, Nakfa and Adi-Kihe, a total of 180 evangelical Christians are known to be jailed for their faith in Eritrea.

“The widespread and continuing arrests of prisoners of conscience, including peaceful political critics and members of religious groups, and their unlawful secret detention without charge, demonstrate a pattern of general disregard for the rule of law,” Amnesty International noted in a September 18 press release highlighting Eritrea’s human rights abuses. “Hundreds of members of minority Christian churches have been arbitrarily detained and ill-treated during 2003.”

Only four “official” religions are permitted by Eritrean authorities: Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran. Nevertheless, the government has issued a blanket denial that any religious persecution exists in the country.

(Return to Index)***********************************Indian Politicians Use Religion to Win Votes‘Religion’ a Popular Campaign Platform in Local Electionsby Vishal Arora

DELHI (Compass) -- The Election Commission of India has announced the dates in November and December for local assembly elections in five states. The announcement has spurred a fresh intensity in political campaigns -- and a growing division along religious lines as politicians use the issue of religion to polarize voters.

Elections are due in Mizoram in the northeast on November 20. Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will hold their elections on December 1.

A report in Asian Age on October 20 commented on the growing religious activity of politicians in the lead-up to the elections. Members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have stepped up their temple visits in recent weeks. Congress Party chief ministers


Digvijay Singh of Madhya Pradesh, Ajit Jogi of Chhattisgarh and Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan have also visited Hindu temples in recent weeks, seemingly to counter the BJP’s allegation that they are anti-Hindu.

In fact, Ajit Jogi is a Christian, though some in the Christian community believe his faith is nominal. Others who have the reputation of being Christian include Sonia Gandhi and A.K. Antony, chief minister of Kerala.

Since the opposition Congress Party rules four of the five states awaiting elections, there is a strong likelihood of false propaganda and political lobbying in the coming weeks.

The BJP has already used the controversial issues of conversion and the uniform civil code to divide people on religious grounds.

One of the main points of controversy is the Ayodhya temple site, claimed by both Muslim and Hindu communities. The Babri Masjid mosque built on this site was destroyed by Hindus in 1992, sparking a wave of Hindu nationalism that carried the BJP to power.

The BJP capitalized on the event by holding Hindu ceremonies on the grounds of Ayodhya as part of their current election campaign. The ceremonies were held despite ongoing court deliberations regarding ownership of the site.

A religious procession has also been organized for Chhattisgarh, to be led by BJP chief ministerial candidate Dilip Singh Judeo. Judeo is well known for his Hindu reconversion programs. The main agenda of this procession seems to be to raise the issue of “forced conversion” of tribal people to Christianity.

In more than a dozen tribal seats, minority or tribal voters make up more than five percent of the total electorate. These voters are alienated from the BJP because of the party’s stand against minorities -- particularly Christian minorities. In a close contest, these minority voters could sway the final outcome of the elections.

The BJP, which regards Christians as ardent supporters of the Congress Party, recently expelled three missionaries from Chhattisgarh for alleged violation of immigration rules. The three had worked among tribal people in the region for over 50 years.

One man, a 90-year old Belgian missionary, had lived and worked in the area for more than 60 years. This move by the BJP alienated even more of the region’s minority voters.


Since the opposition Congress Party rules four of the five states awaiting elections, there is a strong likelihood of false propaganda and political lobbying in the coming weeks.

(Return to Index)***********************************Hindu Fundamentalists Attack Christians in Mumbai, IndiaFalse Propaganda Regarding Conversions Triggers Assaultsby Vishal Arora

DELHI (Compass) -- Christians in Mumbai, India, have suffered a number of recent attacks, most of them attributed to the Hindu fundamentalist groups Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal. These organizations have links to the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

On September 17, VHP activists disrupted a prayer meeting organized by Faith Fire Fellowship in Mumbai. According to the national daily Hindustan Times, shortly before the prayer meeting was to begin at 10 a.m. at the Mangal Murti Hall in the Borivali district, a group of VHP activists entered the building and drove the Christians away. As a result, the prayer meeting could not be held. Around 150 people from Borivali and Bhiwandi districts of Mumbai were to attend.

In their complaint to the police, members of Faith Fire Fellowship stated that after they were driven out of the hall, it was locked to prevent them from continuing the meeting.

Although the assailants did not identify themselves as VHP members, a senior police officer later confirmed the fact to the prayer group.

According to Pastor Prakash Boyin of Bhiwandi, a group of 50 people came to the hall just before the meeting began and accused the Christians gathered there of converting people by offering money.

“They said we paid 5,000 rupees ($100) to each person to convert to Christianity,” Boyin told the media. “Around 100 people had already come for the prayers. They asked them to get out of the hall and locked the hall.”

The VHP also lodged a complaint with police against the organizers of the prayer meeting, saying that they suspected the Christian group had plans to convert participants to Christianity during the meeting.

Surendra Pandey, joint secretary of the VHP Borivali unit, alleged that organizers had distributed pamphlets before the meeting promising miraculous healings for various diseases. “The prayers should have been held in a church and not in an area where there are no Christians,” Pandey said.


“They said we paid 5,000 rupees ($100) to each person to convert to Christianity.”

According to a local police officer, an investigation into the respective complaints is underway but no arrests have been made. Police suggested that the Christians were at fault for the incident because they did not have permission to use loudspeakers and an orchestra in the hall.

A trend is emerging in the various incidents of violence against Christians in Mumbai. Fundamentalists first spread false propaganda against Christians and then inflict violence on them -- with the support of local residents who are influenced by the propaganda.

For instance, Pastor Boyin and two other members of Faith Fire Fellowship were attacked at the New Year’s gathering in a municipal school in Bhiwandi. The three sustained injuries and were admitted to the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital.

Commenting on the incident, Deputy Commissioner of Police Sahebrao Patil said the false allegation that the pastor was offering 5,000 rupees to people who converted to Christianity provoked the violence.

Boyin maintains that no one was to be converted that day. The New Year’s gathering followed a simple agenda of prayer and lunch together. Boyin said that the Faith Fire Fellowship church only offered prayers to heal the sick and did not pressure anyone to convert.

In a similar incident, three families in the tribal settlement of Bharadpada in Kutan village, Wada taluka, were socially ostracized and beaten for embracing Christianity.

“The police did not take any action, even when we were roughed up by our neighbors in the presence of sub-inspector S.K. Amule and constable Rathod,” alleged Suresh Sutar, a convert.

“Inaction on the part of the police has emboldened people to take the law into their own hands,” said Abraham Mathai, a member of the State Minorities Commission.

In the run-up to the assembly elections in five states, Christians fear that more such incidents of false propaganda followed by violent attacks could occur.

(Return to Index)***********************************Mob Attacks Prayer Meeting in Uttaranchal, India Rumors of Conversion Spark Tension in Roorkeyby Vishal Arora


In a similar incident, three families in the tribal settlement of Bharadpada in Kutan village, Wada taluka, were socially ostracized and beaten for embracing Christianity.

DELHI (Compass) -- An angry mob attacked a group of about 80 Christians participating in a prayer meeting in the northern state of Uttaranchal, India, on October 26. According to reports in the Hindi national daily Amar Ujala, the mob was incited by rumors that Christians in the meeting were responsible for the conversion of Hindus.

The angry mob stormed the Vaishali Guesthouse in Ramnagar colony in the city of Roorkey, Uttaranchal. The guesthouse was hosting “Mahasabha 2003,” an annual Christian convention.

The mob tore apart banners, posters and tracts. They burned Bibles and damaged equipment used for the meeting.

A few people in the mob suggested that members of the Hindu and Christian communities should hold a meeting and resolve the matter through dialogue. However, as these suggestions were being made, others untied the ropes supporting the tent where the Christians were meeting, causing the structure to collapse. They also vandalized the nearby guesthouse.

The Christians, who had come from different parts of the city as well as neighboring states, panicked and tried to jump over the boundary wall of the guesthouse. Several women and children suffered injuries trying to escape the compound. Some who had traveled many miles to the conference left their belongings in the guesthouse and fled to save their lives.

Vinod Tyagi, a local pastor who witnessed the incident, said the organizers changed the venue from Vaishali Guesthouse to a Church of North India facility to continue the prayer meeting. However, some of the mob followed them, so the venue was changed yet again to a nearby Methodist hostel. When the mob attacked a third time, the meeting disbanded.

Intervention of the police finally brought the situation under control. After the incident, officials from the district administration deployed policemen to Ramnagar and other parts of the city, due to religious tensions.

Mahasabha 2003, held from October 23 to 26, was organized by the House of Fellowship, an organization recently formed by local Christians to arrange Christian seminars and conferences in Roorkey and other parts of India.

Hindu fundamentalists spread rumors that the Christian organization planned to convert Hindus to Christianity during the four-day program, thus fueling the attack. The organizers denied that conversion was the motive behind the event, saying the gathering was simply an opportunity for Christians to pray together.


Some who had traveled many miles to the conference left their belongings in the guesthouse and fled to save their lives.

(Return to Index)***********************************Christian Village Suffers Midnight Attack in IndonesiaViolence Left Two Dead, Six Missing and 38 Houses DestroyedSpecial to Compass Direct

LONDON (Compass) -- Indonesian Christians who have lived in the village of Old Beteleme (Bethlehem), Central Sulawesi, since being displaced by a three-year wave of religious violence suffered a night-time attack that left two people dead, six missing and 38 houses destroyed.

Shortly after midnight on October 11, villagers heard disturbing sounds in the street as assailants in all-white attire cried, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar!” as they attacked the quiet village.

One resident, Mrs. Wedlrina Mbae, a 55-year-old teacher, reportedly heard a knock at her door and went to see if anyone was in trouble. She was struck by a bullet and died within a few minutes.

Another Christian villager, Oster Tarioko, 40, died on the way to the hospital after suffering gunshot wounds. A third, Mr. Deki Lingkua, 20, is critically ill with stab wounds, and several more are hospitalized. The right arm of Mr. L. Malo, 46, was reportedly shattered by gunshot.

Other villagers fled into the nearby jungle and watched helplessly as 38 of their houses were looted, set on fire and burned to the ground. Three cars, seven motorcycles and an Assembly of God church were also burned.

A group of volunteers trekked to the village from Tentena to search the jungle for missing persons.

The attack resembled violence that Indonesian Christians suffered in Poso, the center of past troubles with Muslim extremists. Witnesses said the attack lasted precisely one hour, after which the assailants disappeared into the jungle.

Some villagers claimed that young people hardly older than children were among the attackers. Their role was to set the houses on fire.

For its Christian residents, Old Beteleme offered an opportunity to start again after their crops, livestock and belongings were either stolen or destroyed in previous violence. Located far from Poso and nearer to the predominantly Christian town of Tentena, Old Beteleme seemed safe. Even the name “Bethlehem” was comforting.

However, Compass has learned that since the signing of the Malino agreement between Christians and Muslims on December 21, 2001, the Indonesian government has


ignored many violations of the agreement. Almost all the religiously motivated aggression has been directed against Christians.

“More than 99 percent of the victims of this senseless violence since the Malino agreement have been Christians,” Mona Saroinsong, coordinator of the Protestant Church Crisis Center in Manado, reported via email from Sulawesi. “To date, none of the aggressors have been found or brought to trial. No one knows who they are or why they are doing it.”

As special commemorative services were being held to remember those who died in the Bali nightclub bombing a year earlier, Christians were again paying the price of living in a region dominated by Muslim officials unwilling to protect them. Many suspect these random attacks could be sanctioned by people in positions of authority.

“As with previous attacks, there is a pattern,” Saroinsong said. “The attacks are always at night and are well organized. The attackers operate in several small groups, each with a specific task and area to cover, and they wear black masks to avoid being identified.

“They use automatic weapons that can only be legally held by the armed forces. They target a village far away from any source of help. Tentena (the nearest major city) is 88 miles from Old Beteleme. The roads are so bad it can take up to eight hours to reach Old Beteleme from the nearest town.

“A further similarity with previous attacks is that the head of the police was occupied elsewhere,” Saroinsong added.

While the eyes of Western nations are turned toward Bali because foreign tourists died there in last year’s tragic bombing, Saroinsong asks Christians throughout the world to be aware that believers of Central Sulawesi are being killed, maimed and threatened because some people believe there is no place for them in a Muslim Indonesia.

“We ask for your prayers and for renewed pressure from abroad on the Indonesian government to put an end to these violent attacks,” Saroinsong said.

(Return to Index)***********************************Christians in Indonesia Flee Their Homes as Attacks SpreadPolice Reinforcements Fail to Curtail Panic in SulawesiSpecial to Compass Direct

LONDON (Compass) -- Villagers in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, are once again fleeing for their lives, reacting to recent attacks on four villages in the Poso district by bands of


“More than 99 percent of the victims of this senseless violence since the Malino agreement have been Christians.”

masked raiders armed with automatic weapons. Even the deployment of extra armed forces to secure the area has had little effect upon the worried inhabitants.

“People are too scared to remain in their isolated villages,” said Mona Saroinsong, coordinator of the Crisis Center of the Protestant Church in North Sulawesi. “They have been walking through the jungle to the coast or making for Tentena, the nearest Christian town. When I questioned them, they said they did not trust the authorities to protect them.”

Following the October 11 attack on the village of Old Beteleme, a further assault was launched in the early hours of Sunday morning, October 12, on three villages closer to the town of Poso.

Saatu, Pantangolemba and Pinedapa all had large Christian populations. The attackers sought out the homes of known Christians and forced them into the street where they were shot. Police reported that nine people lost their lives and 11 more were hospitalized.

Investigating the attacks, police have discovered bullet casings and weaponry which match illegal arms confiscated in Poso during violence in 2000.

National police chief General Da’i Bachtiar was shocked by the attack on Old Beteleme and the other villages. In particular, Old Beteleme was considered to be in a relatively peaceful area that had avoided much of the violence.

In Koroworu, a village not far from Old Beteleme, the local police encountered a group of 20 armed intruders. Shots were exchanged and at least one man is believed to have been killed, but his body fell into the river and was not recovered.

Two additional companies of police have been moved into the Morowali and Poso districts, bringing the number of armed police in the area to more than 2,000.

Some Christian men have agreed to return to their villages, which are now under heavy police protection, but have left their women and children elsewhere, fearing new attacks. Especially vulnerable are villages such as Malewa and Galuga, where Christians have resettled.

In Lembomawo village near Poso, the police advised the Christians to evacuate their women and children after receiving several reports of strangers gathering behind the village.

In another incident, a young Muslim fish-seller was found drowned in the Poso river, his body covered by a rice sack and weighed down with a stone. The authorities are


The attackers sought out the homes of known Christians and forced them into the street where they were shot. Police reported that nine people lost their lives and 11 more were hospitalized.

saying he was killed near Pandiri, a majority Christian village, with the implication that Christians have begun to retaliate.

“This is very troubling for the Christian people who worry that isolated incidents like this will be blown out of all proportion, and that the violence will be blamed on them when they are the innocent victims,” said Saroinsong.

“The chief of police added insult to injury when he attended this man’s funeral but ignored the funerals of the 11 Christians in the villages,” added Saroinsong.

“There is growing chaos and unabated fear spreading throughout the Christian community. Please continue to petition the Indonesian government to do something about the root cause of the violence -- rather than patch over the cracks -- and make both sides adhere to the Malino agreement. Please keep praying for us here.”

(Return to Index)***********************************Evangelical Pastor Assassinated in Chiapas, MexicoIndigenous Leader Dies in Ambush near San Juan Chamulaby David Miller

MIAMI (Compass) -- An evangelical Christian pastor was assassinated near the town of San Juan Chamula in Mexico’s troubled southern state of Chiapas while on his way to a prayer service.

Mariano Méndez Díaz, 38, a minister of the indigenous Tzotzil Evangelical Church, was traveling near the village of Botatulán around 3 p.m. on October 24 when heavily armed assailants stopped his automobile. Witnesses said it appeared that Méndez got out of the car and attempted to evade his attackers before they shot him to death.

Police investigating the murder discovered spent cartridges from AK-47 assault rifles at the scene.

Méndez is the second evangelical pastor to die in the space of two weeks. According to sources in Chiapas, Jairo Solís López was killed in the municipality of Mapastepec on October 17.

The circumstances of Solís’s death were not clear, but sources in Chiapas believe the murders are the most recent chapter in a 30-year saga of severe persecution of evangelical Christians by local caciques, or powerful community chieftains. Caciques practice “traditionalist” religion, a semi-pagan mix of Roman Catholic beliefs and ancient Mayan religion.


Since the advent of evangelical Christianity in the Chiapas Highlands in the 1960s, caciques have used violent tactics to discourage its spread in indigenous regions. Scores of evangelicals have died and hundreds more have suffered injury. About 35,000 evangelical Christians live in ghettos surrounding the district capital of San Cristóbal de las Casas, having been driven from their ancestral homes by caciques and their henchmen.

Caciques have enjoyed near impunity while carrying out the anti-Christian campaign. In three decades, only six caciques and their accomplices have been punished for these crimes.

The Chiapas newspaper Cuarto Poder reported that Méndez’s funeral procession, in which about 500 evangelical Tzotzils participated, turned into a march calling upon authorities to put an end to the aggression.

Leaders of the Regional Organization for the Welfare of Evangelicals of the State of Chiapas (ORBECH in Spanish), a non-governmental organization that defends the rights of evangelical Christians, issued calls to Mexican officials to capture and punish Méndez’s murderers.

ORBECH director Agustín Gómez Patishtán told mourners that the state’s justice attorney should conduct an exhaustive investigation to solve the case, else, “I think we are going to take other action.”

“But we trust in God and the authorities, that they will get to the bottom of this,” Gómez said. “I believe they have the power to do justice according to the law.”

At the same time, Gomez lamented official failure to protect evangelicals against continuing attacks. He reminded officials that caciques had issued threats in San Juan Chamula.

“(They said) that our leaders are going to fall one by one. I think they are carrying out those threats; I think we are seeing that with clarity.”

Veteran human rights attorney Esdras Alonso expressed fears that the caciques are stepping up attacks against evangelical Christians.

According to the report in Cuarto Poder, Alonso told mourners, “These are messages that they (caciques) are sending to the evangelical community in Chiapas. The conflict is radicalizing, and violence is seeking to resurface.”


About 35,000 evangelical Christians live in ghettos surrounding the district capital of San Cristóbal de las Casas, having been driven from their ancestral homes by caciques and their henchmen.

Veteran human rights attorney Esdras Alonso expressed fears that the caciques are stepping up attacks against evangelical Christians.

Alonso called upon the justice attorney’s office to renew investigations into recent cases of aggression against evangelicals in the communities of Mitzitón and Flores Magon (see Compass Direct, “Arsonists Strike Evangelicals in Chiapas,” March 2003.)

“This aggression must not go unpunished,” Alonso said. “Years ago, (Chiapas governor) Pablo Salazar was one of the first to witness, as a lawyer, these assaults in Chiapas and become acquainted with the background of this situation.

“As leaders of social organizations, we are awaiting official action. We want to see results.”

Méndez is survived by his wife, the former María Pérez Gómez, and a daughter, Rosa.

(Return to Index)***********************************Police Arrest Two Suspects in Pastor’s Murder in Chiapas, MexicoPersecutors Threaten Reprisals Against Evangelicalsby David Miller

MIAMI (Compass) -- Mexican police arrested two men suspected of participating in the October 24 slaying of Mariano Mendez Diaz, a pastor of the indigenous Tzotzil Evangelical Church.

On October 28, officers raided a village in the San Juan Chamula district of Chiapas and took Manuel Hernandez Gomez and Manuel Gomez Perez into custody, according to press reports from the district capital of San Cristobal de las Casas.

Rev. Mendez, 38, died the afternoon of October 24 while on his way to a prayer service in the village of Botatulán. According to witnesses, heavily armed men intercepted Mendez’s automobile on the road. The pastor left the car and attempted to evade his attackers, before they shot him dead in a nearby cornfield.

Police investigating the murder discovered spent cartridges from AK-47 assault rifles at the scene, prompting suspicions that powerful caciques (traditional community chieftains) were behind the killing.

Aureliano Lopez Lopez, a spokesman for the Organization of Evangelical Communities of the Chiapas Highlands (OPEACH in Spanish) told a local press conference that he believes caciques perpetrated the Mendez killing because they openly deal in the type of illegal weapons used to murder the pastor.

“There is no peace in Chamula because the municipal authorities are financing and purchasing arms ... in coordinated action with community caciques,” Lopez said in statements that appeared in the Chiapas newspaper Cuarto Poder. “Our companions have


witnessed them carrying ‘goat horns’ (local slang for the AK-47) with them while patrolling in their pickup trucks.”

For his part, Chamula mayor Jose Gomez denied any involvement in the shooting.

“If those are the people, then apply the full weight of the law,” Gomez told reporters from the Associated Press. “We don’t know anything.”

Mendez was the second evangelical pastor to die in the space of two weeks. According to sources in Chiapas, someone broke into Jairo Solis Lopez’ house and killed him on October 17 in the municipality of Mapastepec, Chiapas.

Solis pastored the First Nazarene Church of Mapastepec and had been a Nazarene pastor only five years. His baby was only 18 months old. His young wife, school teacher Airel Maria del Rocio Angeles, has continued ministering with the group, states pastor Joaquin Ocaña, superintendent of the Nazarene churches in Chiapas.

On November 4, authorities claimed to have found the guilty man, but his testimony did not harmonize with the facts. The investigation continues.

“Traditionalist” caciques practice a semi-pagan religion composed of Roman Catholic belief and ancient Mayan ritual. Since the advent of evangelical Christianity in the Chiapas Highlands in the 1960s, caciques have employed violence and intimidation to discourage its spread.

According to official records, 100 evangelicals have died in the religious violence. Thousands more have suffered beatings and loss of property. Between 30 and 35 thousand Presbyterian and Pentecostal believers have been forced to flee their homes and now live in refugee communities on the outskirts of San Cristobal.

Caciques have carried out their anti-Christian campaign with near impunity. Before the two arrests in the last week of October, only six caciques or their accomplices had been brought to justice for crimes committed against evangelicals.

Despite unrelenting persecution, evangelical Christianity has grown at a rapid pace in Chiapas, a troubled state that has also confronted a guerrilla uprising led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Evangelicals today comprise nearly 35 percent of the state population (up from 4.8 percent in 1970), giving Chiapas more Protestants per capita than any state in Mexico.


Since the advent of evangelical Christianity in the Chiapas Highlands in the 1960s, caciques have employed violence and intimidation to discourage its spread.

Sources in San Cristobal fear persecution may spread to other districts of the Chiapas highlands, as recent repression has intensified.

On October 25, three evangelicals ordered to be present at a town meeting in Colonia Marcos E. Becerra were beaten. The three men, Carmelino and Guadalupe Lopez Hernandez and Antonio Santis Lopez, were also threatened with expulsion from their homes in the municipality of Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas. They were told that their children would not be allowed to attend school and that they could no longer plant their land unless they agreed to deny their evangelical faith. The town meeting was led by Esteban Hernandez Lopez, second rural judge, and Antonio Lopez Gomez.

The men refused to return to traditionalist Catholicism, which includes drinking “posh” liquor and paying for local festivals. Lawyer Abdías Tovilla Jaime of San Cristobal de las Casas fears other consequences will not be long in coming.

In the first week of November, a local judge issued an arrest order for several caciques in connection with a July assault on Christians in the community of Flores Magon. In that attack, one evangelical man lost an eye and an elderly woman lost two teeth from beatings and a stoning.

When they learned of the arrest order, caciques responded by threatening to abduct evangelical Christians and hold them to exchange for any cacique that is apprehended by local police.

(Return to Index)***********************************Nigerian Convert Attacked for Refusing to Renounce ChristianityMuslim Preacher Threatens Christian Daughter and Familyby Obed Minchakpu

JOS, Nigeria (Compass) -- A Muslim convert to Christianity narrowly escaped death when he was attacked by a Muslim fanatic on September 15 in the city of Jos, central Nigeria.

Mr. Lucky Kadri converted to Christianity in 1984 in Jos. Since then, Muslims have trailed him, vowing to kill him because he abandoned Islam.

Kadri related his story to Compass from his hospital bed in Jos. “It was on Monday around 5 p.m. that my elder brother called me to say that somebody was looking for me in my store. I went there but could not find anybody looking for me. So I decided to pack up my things because it was already getting late.

“As I bent down to pack my things, I felt a blow on my head and I fell down. I raised my hands to defend myself from what I realized were blows from an iron rod. My assailant was tearing at my stomach with a sharp object. Before I knew it, I saw my intestines spilling out. Then I fainted.”


Kadri told Compass that the attacker was unknown to him. “I have not seen him before, but I have been told that he has been arrested by the police and that he confessed that he was sent to kill me because I left Islam to become a Christian.”

Born into a Christian home, Kadri temporarily became a Muslim as an adult due to pressure from his landlord. Ultimately unhappy with that decision, he prayed to God “to help me and He did. I got a house and moved out, and then gave my life to Christ totally.”

The Muslim community in Jos, disturbed about his Christian conversion, sent a Muslim leader regularly to Kadri’s shop to convince him to renounce Christianity and return to Islam.

“Before this incident, the sponsor was in my store. He was challenging me concerning my faith, asking me questions,” Kadri said. He believes his refusal to recant provoked the attack.

His assailant stabbed Kadri eight times. Rev. Kenneth Eze, pastor of Living Spring Christian Assembly where Kadri worships, told Compass that it was a miracle that he was still alive. “The assailant cut through his abdomen. But we thank God that he survived.” Eze said.

Kadri underwent surgery and is presently recuperating in the hospital. The doctor who operated said that what saved Kadri from death was that he had not eaten at the time of the incident, leaving his intestines nearly empty.

Plateau state police commissioner Innocent Ilozuoke, in an apparent attempt to defuse religious tensions in the city of Jos, announced on state radio and television that police had arrested the perpetrators of the crime. He called for calm and promised that the attackers would face the wrath of the law.

Meanwhile, the decision of a Muslim woman to convert to Christianity 10 years ago against her parents’ wishes has forced her into hiding. She says her Muslim father has sent death squads after her.

Folashade Olalekan told Compass in the southwest city of Ibadan that she became a Christian in northern Nigeria in 1993 and soon afterward informed her parents of her desire to marry a Christian man.

According to Mrs. Olalekan, her father, Alhaji Mohammed Suleiman Gusau, “vehemently opposed my conversion to Christianity and marriage to a Christian. He argued that it was wrong for him as a Muslim cleric to allow me to become a Christian.


He confessed that he was sent to kill me because I left Islam to become a Christian.”

“He sent me out of our house and vowed not to have anything to do with me as a daughter. My father also threatened my husband and warned him not to marry me.”

In 1993, Mrs. Olalekan and her husband were forced into hiding in southwestern Nigeria. “Recently, my father sent me a letter in which he cursed and disowned me,” she said. “I am now very afraid because he threatened that he will make sure that my husband, children and I are killed, unless I embrace Islam again.”

She told Compass that she has reported the threat to police authorities.

“I am not bothered by his disowning me, knowing that Jesus Christ is with me,” she said. “I am only concerned about my children and husband.”

(Return to Index)***********************************Muslim and Christian Students Clash at a Nigerian UniversityHealth Commissioner Closes Hospital Chapel, Officials Order Church Demolitionsby Obed Minchakpu

LAGOS, Nigeria (Compass) -- Over the past nine months, violent clashes between Muslim and Christian students at educational institutions across Nigeria have increased, with the latest incident occurring at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in the northern state of Kaduna.

A female Christian student was attacked and critically injured on September 23 after Muslim students accused her of blasphemy against the prophet Mohammed. That attack sparked a violent clash between Christian and Muslim students that resulted in more injuries, although no deaths were reported.

Prof. Abdullahi Mahdi, the Muslim vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, told Compass that the clash occurred when two female students, a Muslim and a Christian, engaged in a religious discussion which degenerated into a heated argument. The Muslim student then went around campus announcing the alleged blasphemy to other Muslim students, who began attacking Christians.

Mahdi called police to the campus and they curtailed the violence before it spread.

“We are happy that the vice-chancellor drew our attention to the incident,” said Kaduna state police commissioner Mohammed Yusufu. “We reacted swiftly. Normalcy has been restored and academic activities are on as usual.”

Religious violence became prominent on Nigerian campuses three decades ago. In 1981, Muslim students at the University of Ibadan pulled down a statue of Jesus Christ at the university’s chapel, leading to a fight between Muslim and Christian students.


In 1987, a major clash occurred at the Kaduna State College of Education, Kafanchan, when a female Muslim student attacked a Christian preacher, alleging that he had blasphemed the prophet Mohammed. The crisis escalated, engulfing major towns and cities in northern Nigeria. Hundreds of Christians were killed and many churches were destroyed.

Kaduna has suffered more inter-religious tension on campuses in recent years than other Nigerian states. Clashes have occurred at Ahmadu Bello University, the Federal College of Education, Kufena College and Kaduna State Polytechnic, all in Zaria city. The Federal Government College and Queen Amina College in Kaduna city have also witnessed violence between Muslim and Christian students.

In other incidents, the government of the state of Osun, southwestern Nigeria, has ordered an immediate halt to Christian worship in the chapel at the Comprehensive Health Center in Iree.

While on an official visit to the facility on October 23, Lanre Afolabi, Osun state commissioner for health, ordered the closure of the chapel and stopped Christian worship there.

The commissioner justified his action by saying that Christian worship disturbs patients.

“It is wrong for the Christian community here to turn the health center into a religious ground,” Afolabi told journalists. “Hospitals are not places of worship.”

The health commissioner said that any attempt to reopen the chapel or conduct Christian worship at the health center would attract punitive action.

Finally, the government of the state of Lagos has demolished two church buildings belonging to the Four Square Gospel Church and the Global Evangelical Ministries in the capital city.

Bishop Lanre Obembe, President of the Lagos state chapter of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), characterized the church demolitions as “a betrayal of trust on the side of the government of Lagos state.”

“It was a surprise when we discovered that two more churches were demolished yesterday (October 26) without due regard to normal procedure,” Obembe told Compass. “The governor had assured us that he would put a stop to the exercise after we protested over such demolitions in the past.”


“We were taken unawares when a team of Lagos state government officials accompanied by fierce-looking, fully armed policemen invaded our church and demolished it.”

“We were taken unawares when a team of Lagos state government officials accompanied by fierce-looking, fully armed policemen invaded our church and demolished it,” said Rev. Adebisi Olaoye, pastor of Global Evangelical Ministries in the district of Ikeja. “We lost property worth over $25,000 dollars.”

(Return to Index)***********************************Pakistani Christians Released on BailDefense Demands New Inquiry into Priest’s Murderby Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass) -- Four Christians accused of killing a Roman Catholic priest were ordered released on bail by a Pakistani lower court in late September, 11 weeks after they were arrested by local police.

In a September 24 hearing, the Okara Additional Sessions Court accepted a bail petition to release Christians Sharif Masih, Naimat Masih, Aslam Masih and Parveez Masih, along with Muslim suspect Mohammed Afzel, from judicial lock-up in Okara.

Although all five were set free the following day, they still face charges of attempted armed robbery and the murder of Fr. George Ibrahim in Renala Khurd, a village near Okara 180 miles south of Islamabad. No date has been set for their trial hearings to begin.

Attorneys representing the four Christians have appealed to the courts for a new inquiry to be conducted into the priest’s unsolved murder. “We are trying for this, and asking the government to go after the real culprits,” a church source stated. “They must drop the case against these men because they are all innocent.”

Arrested during the week after Ibraham’s murder, the Christian suspects all denied any involvement in his death. Ibrahim, 38, was shot to death on July 5 by six gunmen who forced their way into his home in the middle of the night. There was no evidence of any attempted theft during the attack.

Ibrahim had received death threats over the past year from Shahzina Sadique, the former Muslim headmistress of a local Catholic girls’ school denationalized last fall and returned to church control under Ibrahim. Together with local education officials and activists of the banned Anjum Sipah-e-Sahaba terrorist group, Sadique had fought the government decision, denouncing Ibrahim before a local court as an “enemy of Islam” who should be killed.


The accused Christians told the court that although they had nothing to do with Fr. Ibrahim’s murder, they finally “confessed” to the crime while under torture and heavy beatings by officials at the local police station.

The accused Christians told the court that although they had nothing to do with Fr. Ibrahim’s murder, they finally “confessed” to the crime while under torture and heavy beatings by officials at the local police station.

“They were beating them from morning to night,” a church source told Compass. “Finally we forced the authorities to give them a medical exam, but they were tortured in such a way that by that time no evidence was left on their bodies. They used electrical shocks and thrashed them badly. One of them still cannot walk properly.”

Local police have reportedly tried to frame Sharif Masih as the main culprit. Formerly a watchman for the church, Sharif Masih had worked for Ibrahim for two years before taking employment nearby as a school watchman. He often returned to visit the priest in Renala Khurd.

“The police are trying to say that Sharif and these other men came for the purpose of robbery, and when the Father resisted, then they killed him. But that’s not true,” a church source said. Rather, the local Christian community insists, Ibrahim was a deliberate “target” of terrorism.

“The priest’s cook, Pervez Pyara, is also very scared, because he is the only eyewitness of the murder,” noted a Catholic cleric who met with him. The killers had threatened to kill Pyara if he resisted or sounded an alarm while they shot the priest and then made their escape.

According to a Christian activist following the murder inquiry, a sixth suspect has been arrested as a possible accomplice in the murder. Identified as Kali Angraz, an elderly man apprehended in previous theft cases, the suspect was said to be a Christian who had converted to Islam about five years ago.

“This fellow is still under detention,” the source said. “But we are not too sure what the charges are against him. We only came to know after the others were released on bail that they have caught this suspect also.”

(Return to Index)***********************************Saudi Police Fail to Obey Prince’s OrderTwo Egyptian Christians Remain Jailed in Riyadhby Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass) -- On November 10, six days after the third-ranking official in the Saudi government ordered their release, two Egyptian Christians remain in police custody in Riyadh.

Arrested on October 25, Dr. Sabry Awad Gayed and Eskander Guirguis Eskander were reportedly accused of evangelism and establishing a non-Muslim place of worship. The two Coptic Christians were active in a house church of expatriate Christians meeting


privately for worship in the Saudi capital. Gayed, a pediatrician working in a clinic in El Bat’ha for the past four years, and Eskandar, employed as a carpenter, were reportedly questioned on the day of their arrest about Bibles in their possession. “Each one of us has our own Bible,” the men explained.

Two years ago, their house church was investigated by a Muslim organization which came to inquire why they were staying at home and not attending Friday prayers. When the vigilante group found that the 150 people meeting together were all Christians, they left them alone.

Prince Sultan, who holds the title of Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, had ordered the two men set free on the morning of November 4.

The prince was reportedly alerted to the men’s arrest by a written complaint signed by one of their friends, Gamal Ramzy, who declared the two men were being jailed without a valid reason. After personally reviewing the file of charges lodged against the Coptic physician and carpenter, Prince Sultan issued orders for their immediate release from a Riyadh jail.

But according to Dr. Salwa Khalil, wife of the imprisoned doctor, family friends in Riyadh confirmed on November 9 that the two men are still being held.

“Nobody knows why,” said Gayed’s wife, who was visiting Cairo with their two small daughters when the arrests occurred.

Known for his moderate stance on religious freedom issues inside Saudi Arabia, Prince Sultan has repeatedly insisted that non-Muslims living and working in the conservative kingdom have the freedom to worship privately within their own homes.

Just a week before Gayed’s and Eskandar’s detention, Prince Sultan was questioned by journalists, asking if the Saudi government planned to allow Americans to build churches in the Kingdom.

The prince was quoted in Riyadh’s official newspaper as replying, “There will be no church built in the land of Saudi Arabia. But everybody has the freedom to worship in his own home.”

Under the strict Islamic laws followed in Saudi Arabia, Christians and other non-Muslims are forbidden to meet for public worship.

According to Khalil, her husband and Eskandar were treated “in a respectful way” by the Saudi police during their imprisonment.


After personally reviewing the file of charges lodged against the Coptic physician and carpenter, Prince Sultan issued orders for their immediate release from a Riyadh jail.

“I was able to call Sabry almost daily through the cell phone of some friend visiting him,” she said, “and the police allowed him to answer.”

It is unclear whether Saudi authorities plan to allow the two Coptic Christians to continue in their job contracts, or if they will deport the men back to Egypt.

(Return to Index)***********************************Christians Face Further Attacks in Sri LankaCampaign Continues Against Churches and Christian Leadersby Sarah Page

BANGKOK (Compass) -- Attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka have intensified over the past few weeks, prompting the National Peace Council (NPC) of Sri Lanka to call for a government investigation into the attacks.

The latest attack reported by the Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (EASL) took place on November 6 in Udugampola, Gampaha. A grenade was thrown at the Calvary Worship Center while members were praying at the church, damaging a car parked outside and one wall of the building. An incident report was filed with local police.

On October 30, two Buddhist monks threatened members of an Assembly of God (AOG) church in Homagama, Colombo. Intruders broke into a church meeting in a private home around 3:30 p.m., dragging out the pulpit and hymn books and setting them alight in the yard.

A church celebrating their 7th anniversary was also attacked on October 26 as they gathered in a community hall in the small town of Rajagiriya. Approximately 150 people attended the celebration service. According to reports, a large crowd including a few Buddhist monks arrived at 6:30 p.m. and disrupted the service, demanding that the pastor worship a statue of Buddha which they placed on the floor in the center of the church. When the pastor refused, he and another worshipper were held hostage for over an hour until the police came and rescued them.

Two further incidents occurred on October 19 in Athurugiriya and Batuwatte. In the first incident, the members of New Covenant Life Center of Athurugiriya were meeting in a reception hall when a Buddhist monk accompanied by about 50 young men arrived and demanded that the believers vacate the building within 10 minutes.

The church had already received threats from a leading Buddhist monk in the area, who warned the Christians they would no longer be permitted to meet in the village. In response, the church had suspended services for two weeks prior to the attack, hoping to avoid conflict.


On the morning of October 19, Pastor Dushantha De Silva and his congregation left the building as requested and filed a report with local police, who then called for an I nquiry on October 20. However, the attackers failed to show up for the inquiry.

Another mob comprised of 1,000 Catholic Church members, a Catholic priest and four Buddhist monks attacked the AOG church in Batuwatte on October 19. The Catholic priest demanded that the Christians worship only in the Catholic Church and accused the Assemblies pastor of “unethical conversion” and financial corruption.

A week earlier, on October 12, seven Buddhist monks accompanied by a small crowd of villagers interrupted the Sunday service of an AOG church in Embilipitiya. The monks told the Christians to leave the area and practice their faith elsewhere. They also produced a bottle of poison, challenging the pastor to drink it as proof that his God was real -- citing the verse in Mark 16:18 where Jesus told his disciples that poison would not harm them. The pastor responded by saying that the Scripture also says not to test God.

A congregation of 350 believers in Kadawatha was attacked on October 12 by a crowd armed with rocks and sticks. Women and children were injured in the attack. The pastor was kicked and beaten. Bibles were torn apart and spat on, and the roof, furniture and other fittings in the church were destroyed.

Three members of the congregation immediately went to file a report at the local police station, but the police told them they had no paper to record the complaint. They refused to take action until one of the complainants showed his service ID, proving he was an officer in the Air Force. Two more complaints were later made by church members, but the police ignored vital evidence such as the registration numbers of vehicles involved in the attack.

The EASL has now issued guidelines encouraging pastors and Christian workers to avoid the visible presence of foreigners in their churches, and to maintain a low profile in their villages. Evangelists are encouraged not to use loudspeakers or any form of publicity that might draw unwanted attention.

Article 9 of the Sri Lankan Constitution declares that Buddhism is the state religion, and claims it is the duty of the government to foster it and ensure its primacy.

The NPC recently called on Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to conduct an investigation into the attacks.

“In a plural and multi-religious country, the protection of the right of people to enjoy freedom of conscience and religion is a very important one. The right is both enshrined in the Sri Lanka Constitution and in international covenants. Therefore the government has


They also produced a bottle of poison, challenging the pastor to drink it as proof that his God was real.

a duty to investigate these incidents and take action to ensure that they will not recur,” the NPC stated in a mid October press release.

(Return to Index)***********************************Attackers Critically Injure Turkish ChristianHospitalized Victim Slips into Comaby Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass) -- A Turkish convert to Christianity who was severely beaten for distributing New Testaments has slipped into a coma and remains in critical condition.

Yakup Cindilli, 32, was hospitalized on October 23 after a savage attack in his hometown of Orhangazi in northwestern Turkey. Three individuals inflicted heavy blows on his head and face. Although he was initially coherent and able to talk with his family, he went into a coma during his second day in the hospital.

According to doctors attending him at the Bursa State Hospital, Cindilli’s coma has resulted from a blood clot that formed in his brain from his injuries.

Local police have identified and apprehended three suspects in the crime, all jailed by order of the public prosecutor reviewing the case. No date has been set for a hearing on the expected criminal charges against the accused.

Both Cindilli and a colleague identified in local Turkish newspapers as Tufan Orhan were reportedly distributing New Testaments at the time of the attack. One news headline declared, “Two Youths Beaten for Doing Missionary Work.” Both were left semi-conscious in an open lot in Orhangazi after their attackers fled.

According to an October 26 account in the national Milliyet newspaper, Cindilli and Orhan were beaten for “doing missionary propaganda.” One of the suspects, Metin Yildiran, is president of the local chapter of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Milliyet reported. The other two men were identified as Huseyin Bektas and Ibrahim Sekman.

A far-right political party accused of “neo-fascist” activities during Turkey’s violent 1970s, the MHP has historically linked its platform with an Islamic-tinged version of nationalism.

According to local believers, Cindilli first expressed interest in Christianity about two years ago when he made a telephone call to “Alo Dua,” a prayer hotline ministry begun by local Protestant Christians after Turkey’s devastating 1999 earthquake.


One news headline declared, “Two Youths Beaten for Doing Missionary Work.” Both were left semi-conscious in an open lot in Orhangazi after their attackers fled.

After reading the New Testament and coming to faith in Christ, Cindilli began writing poems and songs. “He was a very faithful believer, living by himself out there,” an Alo Dua staff member told Compass. “He went on with the Lord, and we would talk and pray with him over the phone.”

Cindilli occasionally traveled to Bursa, about 30 miles from Orhangazi, to visit the Protestant fellowship there. His family was opposed to his new faith, throwing out all his Christian books and warning him that he must give up his new beliefs.

Earlier this year, Cindilli transferred to Istanbul, where he found a job and attended the Maltepe Protestant Church for several months. In mid August, he returned home to Orhangazi, where he began to work on interior construction jobs.

When Cindilli last visited the pastor of the Bursa Protestant Church about a month ago, he had asked for some New Testaments for distribution. “I don’t know Yakup very well,” the pastor told Compass, “but he is a very courageous man. We are very upset that this has happened to him, and we are praying that he will recover.”

***A photograph of Yakup Cindilli is available electronically upon request. Please contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

(Return to Index)***********************************Turkish Christians Refused New Religious IdentitiesGovernment Bureaucracy Blocks Official I.D. Changesby Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass) -- Two months after Deniz Kasan and Turgay Papakci said their wedding vows before 200 relatives and friends at the Istanbul Presbyterian Church this summer, the bride went to her local population bureau to update her registration data.

Along with confirming her new marriage status and changing her surname, the bride had another application to submit: changing her religious identity from Muslim to Christian, just as her new husband had done two years earlier.

But to Kasan’s shock, her routine application was refused by the Kadikoy kaymakam, or presiding district official. In a notice issued that same day, September 29, the official declared that her church was “not recognized as an official house of worship” and thus her baptismal certificate could not be considered valid.

Begun nine years ago, the steadily growing Presbyterian Church congregation has met in the historic All Saints Anglican Church in Istanbul’s Moda district since late 1997. This year, it started a new satellite church in Ankara as well.


When the mailed notice reached Kasan on October 7, her husband eyed it in amazement. Along with a number of other converts, he himself had changed his religious I.D. after being baptized in the same church, where he now serves on the pastoral staff.

“After I got the wording right, my application was accepted the same day I submitted it,” Papakci told Compass. “So I cannot understand why now they are refusing this right to my wife.”

But another new Christian in their church, 21-year-old Beyza Gun, received an identical refusal the same week.

“It is ridiculous to send our church members such a notice,” declared their pastor, Rev. Turgay Ucal. “Any Turkish citizen over the age of 18 has the legal right to change his religious affiliation by signing a simple statement to that effect.”

Accordingly, Ucal’s congregation has hired a local lawyer to contest the rejection of both applications. After filing a case before Istanbul’s administrative courts on October 30 against the Kadikoy kaymakam and population bureau, lawyer Erol Dogru told Compass he expected the case could take some months to resolve.

Meanwhile, in Istanbul’s Altintepe district where the Istanbul Protestant Church’s 70-plus congregation meets, two other Turkish Christians reported similar difficulties.

Significantly, in July 2000 this church became the first new Protestant congregation to be granted official “foundation” status in the history of modern Turkey.

For Timur Topuz, 29, this was the second time the bureaucracy had blocked his formal application for Christian identity. Now employed in the textile industry, Topuz first applied for a new identity in 1998, four years after he came to faith in Christ.

After months of waiting, he was told that his applications to the population bureau in Konya where he was registered with his family, as well as to the Kadikoy district of Istanbul where he now lives, were both “missing.” Local officials claimed they had no record that Topuz had ever even applied for such a change.

So three months ago, Topuz decided to try again. When he went on September 17 to pick up his newly issued I.D. card, he was given a written notice declaring that his identity could not be revised as requested. Citing an Interior Ministry directive dated October 14, 2002, the office ignored his objections and issued him a new card identifying him as a Muslim.


“It is ridiculous to send our church members such a notice,” declared their pastor, Rev. Turgay Ucal. “Any Turkish citizen over the age of 18 has the legal right to change his religious affiliation by signing a simple statement to that effect.”

When asked if he planned to open a court case over his denied request, Topuz confirmed that his church was considering it. “But it seems it could be very expensive,” he noted.

Another Altintepe church member, Emrah Unver, was verbally rebuffed two months ago when he went to the same Kadikoy bureau. A carpenter and furniture maker, Unver told Compass he had become a Christian two years ago. When 27-year-old Unver told the officials he wanted to change his identity from Muslim to Christian, they told him it was not allowed and refused to accept his application.

More than a decade has passed since the Turkish state liberalized its administrative laws, making it a routine matter for Muslim citizens who convert to Christianity to change their official religious identity. Recent attempts to refuse such applications have taken the country’s 70 or more Protestant church fellowships by surprise.

“It appears that whoever is applying these last few months is facing difficulties,” one Turkish Protestant leader told Compass.

But on the success side, one woman convert in Ankara’s expanding Salvation Church stood her ground for six months after local administrative officials refused her application this past April. A Christian since 1996, she finally won her petition last month without opening a full-blown court case. As an economist and state employee, the woman was subjected to repeated pressures and delays by both police and government officials.

“My petition was under investigation by the security police alone for two months,” she told Compass, “and I was called in many times to the police station or other offices. At first I was a bit afraid, but I learned we just have to stand up against all these pressures, and in the end, the officials have to allow us to change.”

According to lawyer Dogru, the core problem is that Turkish law contains no statutes regarding the formation or legal status of non-Muslim religious groups, apart from the traditional ethnic institutions of its Armenian, Greek and Jewish citizens.

“Turkish law does not adequately define this,” Dogru said. “But in a secular country, the constitution and laws must approach all religious groups equally. Here the police are saying this church is not a sufficiently official church. But who is going to clarify this? Right now there is no ‘official’ definition.”

Since other members of the Istanbul Presbyterian Church had previously changed their religious I.D. without incident, he said, the recent refusals appeared to be based on a “political attitude,” possibly reacting to allegations against Christians doing “missionary


When 27-year-old Unver told the officials he wanted to change his identity from Muslim to Christian, they told him it was not allowed and refused to accept his application.

work” in Turkey. “But from a legal standpoint, this refusal absolutely cannot be accepted,” he concluded.

Several hundred Turks who have become Christians are believed to have changed their official identities under the country’s secular laws over the past 15 years, although no confirmed statistics are available.

“Without question,” Dogru commented, “Turkey’s laws and constitution guarantee freedom of religion. But in order to win this, our citizens have to fight for it in the courts of law.”

***A photograph of Turgay and Deniz Papakci is available electronically upon request. Please contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

(Return to Index)***********************************Intense Persecution Revealed in VietnamDocuments Expose Official Discrimination Against ChristiansSpecial to Compass Direct

BANGKOK (Compass) -- A researcher who is analyzing new materials just received from Vietnam says he has found a “smoking gun” that shows religious rights are still restricted in the Southeast Asian country, despite official claims to the contrary.

The researcher came across the original copy of a request from a Christian family of the Hre minority in Quang Ngai province asking for residence papers. The request was returned to the applicant stamped with an official seal over the words: “The People’s Committee of the commune recommends that only when the applicant signs an affidavit recanting his religion will we consider granting official residence.”

The statement, dated August 4, 2003, appears on the document bearing the Son Thuong commune seal and is signed by the commune’s vice-chairman, Dinh Tran Ben.

“It would be impossible to have a clearer expression of discrimination based on Christian belief than this,” the researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, told Compass.

“What makes this even more poignant is that this refusal to grant a family a residence paper comes after six years of brutal persecution of Dinh Minh Hoang’s family and numerous previous attempts to force the family to give up Christianity.”

Along with the application and the incriminating government reply, researchers obtained a detailed testimony of the Hoang family’s experiences since 1997, when they became Christian believers. Signed by Hoang and witnessed by four other Christian men, the account details various abuses. The incidents are carefully dated and officials who perpetrated them are identified.


The list of mistreatment includes several public people’s court “trials” where Hoang was humiliated and beaten; at least four forced moves of residence, and imprisonment without charges or trial. He and his wife were forced to drink pig’s blood in an animistic ceremony and their home was invaded. Their children were beaten and Hoang underwent numerous interrogations. Twice, officials ordered his home burned.

In one incident, Hoang recalled being summoned by officials on May 16, 2002. He said all the village elders and war veterans were there. Before they began the interrogation, officials drank until they were completely intoxicated.

“They asked my wife and me if we were ready yet to abandon our religious beliefs. My wife, Dinh Thi U, answered, ‘No!’ I, Dinh Minh Hoang, answered, ‘No.’ Then they beat me and my wife until there was blood all over the place. In spite of this, my wife and I and our children faithfully believe in the Lord and have asked Him to help us and heal our wounds.”

Hoang reported that on July 6, 2002, commune and district officials and military and police officials gathered to take action against him.

“Mr. Cao Trong Tin, secretary of Son Tay district, and Mr. Dinh Van Quang of the Son Tay district police ordered my house burned. It was burned clean to the ground -- not a thing left. While they burned our house, they cheered, ‘Burn the house! Burn the house! This is the Christian religion which is causes problems and wants to overthrow the government.’

“After our house was burned there was nothing left – absolutely no possessions and household essentials. Then, two of them, Dinh Van Cung and Dinh Van Vo, asked my wife and me again if we were ready to abandon our faith.

“I, Dinh Minh Hoang, answered, ‘Absolutely not. I will not abandon my faith in God. My family has been believers for six years now and this has had no (negative) influence on the Party, the people or on myself. I, my wife and children will accept death before we abandon the Lord.’

“Dinh Van Vo, commune cadre and deputy commander of the local militia, incited young thugs to drive us away and to not let us live in Son Tinh Commune anymore. So we returned to a plot of land in Son Thuong Commune, my wife’s native home.

“But the cadre of Son Thuong commune also did not let us stay there and build a home. They would not let us have any land. Until now, we have no home and have not been granted legal residence papers.”


“They beat me and my wife until there was blood all over the place. In spite of this, my wife and I and our children faithfully believe in the Lord and have asked Him to help us and heal our wounds.”

Mr. Hoang concludes his testimony by appealing to God and to Christians everywhere to “please help us in love.”

Vietnam continues to consistently deny well-documented incidents of religious persecution. In July, Freedom House released details of the beating and murder of a Christian Hmong leader in northern Ha Giang province on October 1, 2003.

According to an October 6 article in the Bangkok Post, Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted to an AFP reporter in Hanoi who inquired about the story that the murdered man, Mr. Vang Seo Giao, had drowned “while crossing a stream at night while drunk.”

Compass has since acquired a taped interview in which the murdered man’s brother, Vang Seo Su, clearly describes the murder. Su also details several attempts by officials over a period of time to get his brother, an influential Christian leader, to abandon Christianity.

Giao was a former member of the Communist Party who converted to Christianity.

(Return to Index)**********************************************************************COMPASS DIRECTGlobal News from the Frontlines

David Miller, Managing EditorGail Wahlquist, Editorial AssistantSuzi Quinones, Design

Bureau Chiefs:Barbara Baker, Middle EastSarah Page, Asia

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Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted to an AFP reporter in Hanoi who inquired about the story that the murdered man, Mr. Vang Seo Giao, had drowned “while crossing a stream at night while drunk.”