COMPASS DIRECTGlobal News from the Frontlines

June 11, 2004

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 2004 Compass Direct

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

EGYPT

Christian Couple Escape from Egypt Coptic husband, convert wife leave separately.

Court Reverses Religious Identity CardFormer Coptic Christian regains I.D. in unprecedented ruling.

ERITREA

Eritrea Jails Prominent Protestant Leaders***Popular singer locked in shipping container.

INDIA

Six Villagers Arrested for Tonsuring Christians in Orissa***Tension continues, victims remain in temporary accommodations in Bhubaneswar.

Election Results Show Victory for Congress PartyResignation of prime minister designate, Sonia Gandhi, saddens Christians.

Tamil Nadu Announces Repeal of Anti-Conversion LawChristians will lobby to revoke anti-conversion laws in four other states.

Pastor Arrested, Charged Under ‘Freedom of Religion’ ActCivil liberty report says Orissa police are biased against Christians.

Hindu ‘Defense Army’ Fights Christian ConversionsRSS to continue ‘war’ against Christianity despite recent election results.

INDONESIA

Rev. Damanik Spared Surgery, Recovering After Treatment in Jakarta***Kidney stones disappear in answer to prayer.

Four Churches Targeted in ‘Coordinated Attack’Assaults highlight problem of churches being refused permission to worship.

IRAN

Police Arrest Christian PastorWife and teenage children also jailed.

Pastor’s Wife, Children ReleasedFour Protestant Christians still imprisoned in northern Iran.

NIGERIA

Muslim ‘Protest’ Turns DeadlyAs many as 30 dead, 300 injured in retaliatory attack on Christians in Kano.

PAKISTAN

Pastors Feared KidnappedUnknown Islamist group threatens Quetta church leaders.

Pastor Escapes Islamist Captors***Badly tortured cleric forced into hiding.

Policeman Kills Christian Prisoner***Samuel Masih attacked on his hospital bed.

Christian Granted Bail***Only indirect evidence of ‘blasphemy’ produced.

PANAMA

Panama Gathering Assesses Environment for Religious Liberty***Latin church leaders examine strategies for advancing rights.

SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Arabia Jails Indian National***Religious police tortured expatriate for ‘spreading Christianity.’

SRI LANKA

Parliament to Consider Anti-Conversion Bill***Attacks on churches continue as politicians campaign to “promote and preserve” Buddhism.

SUDAN

Anglicans Evicted from Khartoum HeadquartersDefrocked bishop at center of legal controversy.

TURKEY

Pastor Acquitted of Criminal Charges***Diyarbakir prosecutor cites precedence of European agreements.

VIETNAM

Montagnards Face the Propaganda WarRecent demonstrations sure to bring more repression for minority Christians.

Atrocities Against Montagnards ConfirmedFacts surrounding Easter incident slowly emerge.

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

***********************************Christian Couple Escape from Egypt Coptic husband, convert wife leave separately.by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, May 17 (Compass) -- Thirteen months after Egypt jailed and tortured a Coptic Christian pharmacist for marrying a former Muslim woman, Boulos Farid Rezek-Allah Awad has finally been allowed to emigrate from Egypt to Canada.

Rezek-Allah flew out of the Cairo International Airport to Canada in March, shortly before his Canadian immigration visa was due to expire. A few weeks earlier, his wife Enas Yehya Abdel Aziz had escaped the country to claim refugee status abroad.

Egyptian security police officials told Rezek-Allah last November that he was permanently blacklisted from leaving Egypt. They vowed to track down and punish his wife for her “illegal” marriage to a Christian.

In a telephone interview from an undisclosed location in Canada, Rezek-Allah told Compass that he assumed that the Egyptian authorities somehow learned that his wife had managed to slip out of Egypt without being identified and arrested.

“So after they lost hope of catching Enas, they allowed me to depart from Egypt,” he said. “But I am not sure that even now they know to which country she went, and where she is now.”

Rezek-Allah was arrested in February 2003 by security police in Cairo for breaking Egyptian law by secretly marrying a Muslim woman who had converted to Christianity. Islamic law forbids a Christian man to marry a Muslim woman in Egypt, where Muslim citizens are not allowed to change their religion.

Since Rezek-Allah and his wife had been accepted to immigrate to Canada, they kept their wedding secret, living separately while waiting for their immigration papers from the Canadian Embassy.

But before they could leave, Egyptian police authorities obtained copies of his wife’s new Christian I.D. and marriage certificate, revealing that she had been baptized three years earlier and then married Rezek-Allah in May 2002.

Rezek-Allah was interrogated under torture for weeks at Cairo’s El-Shobra police station, where officers hung him by his arms and beat him, trying to find out his wife’s whereabouts. But Enas had gone into strict hiding, foiling police attempts to track her down.

After his release from Tora Prison on June 1, Rezek-Allah was kept under continual surveillance and intimidation by the police. During his two subsequent attempts to leave for Canada, through the Cairo airport in August and across the Libyan border in November, he was turned back by Egyptian authorities.

Rezek-Allah said that he himself did not know all the details surrounding his wife’s recent escape from Egypt. But after she managed to leave the country, the Canadian government granted her refugee status, citing the religious persecution she faced in her homeland for converting from Islam to Christianity.

She has since undergone leg surgery, related to injuries in a car accident before she left Egypt. After recovering from the operation, she plans to enter English language classes in her new homeland.

Her husband, meanwhile, is studying for his final pharmacy-license exams in Canada this coming August.

Rezek-Allah admitted that it had been a long, stressful 13 months since he was arrested and separated from his wife under the threat of never being reunited. “But I think now, I begin to forget all this,” he told Compass. “God has healed my mind and my heart.”

“Enas and I know that God is good,” Rezek-Allah said, “and that He will complete doing every good thing in us and for us.”

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***********************************Egyptian Court Reverses Religious Identity CardFormer Coptic Christian regains I.D. in unprecedented ruling.by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, May 18 (Compass) -- In an unprecedented verdict, an Egyptian court has ordered the Interior Ministry to return formal Christian identity status to a Coptic Christian who had converted to Islam 11 years ago and then returned to her Christian faith.

An administrative court in Cairo resolved a six-month standoff with state security officials on April 13, ruling that the Christian I.D. card of Mira Makram Gobran Hanna be returned to her possession, as required by Egyptian law.

Now 30, Hanna had signed papers on March 29, 1993, to convert to Islam, taking the name Aya Makram Gobran. But 13 months later, she obtained the approval of the ecclesiastical council to return to the Coptic Orthodox Church.

A certificate from the church dated April 29, 1994, and approved by the State Security Directorate in Cairo confirmed her change in religious status, under the statutes prescribed in Law No. 143, Article 47/2. She was then issued a new national I.D., identifying her as a Christian named Mira Makram Gobran Hanna.

But on October 27 of last year, Hanna was called in by the Civil Records Office in Cairo, where security police forcibly confiscated her national I.D. card. According to a computer printout issued by the office, Hanna’s re-issued Christian I.D. was listed as “invalid for security purposes.”

In a formal complaint to the Minister of the Interior filed December 2, Hanna requested that her Christian I.D. be returned to her.

After waiting six weeks in vain for a response, Hanna opened an administrative court lawsuit on January 13 against the prime minister and president of the Civil Records Office, demanding her legal right to obtain a valid national I.D. card.

Under Law No. 143, all Egyptian citizens are required from age 16 to carry their national I.D. cards with them at all times. Articles 40 and 46 of the Egyptian Constitution also guarantee equality of all citizens, along with freedom of belief and religious practices.

Last month’s ruling on Hanna’s case No. 8464 was presided over by Justice Farouk Abdel Kader, together with a panel of two more judges and state prosecutor Essam el-Din Abdo.

According to Nagib Gibrael, legal counsel for Hanna, the administrative court’s verdict upholds the principle of freedom of belief enshrined in the Egyptian Constitution. “This verdict indicates the reliability of the Egyptian courts,” Gibrael told Compass.

The verdict appears to override the Egyptian government’s long-standing interpretation of Islamic law, under which Muslims are forbidden to leave their religion and convert to another faith. Moderate Islamic scholars contend that only former Muslims who speak out against the Islamic faith can be judged as “apostates.”

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***********************************Eritrea Jails Prominent Protestant LeadersPopular singer locked in shipping container.Special to Compass Direct

LOS ANGELES, June 4 (Compass) -- Eritrean police have jailed three prominent pastors and a popular Christian singer over the past three weeks, escalating a government crackdown against the country’s evangelical Christians.

To date, none of these Protestant Christians have been produced in court or charged with legal offenses, as required by law within 48 hours of arrest.

Two key leaders of the Full Gospel (Mullu Wongel) Church, one of Eritrea’s largest Pentecostal denominations, were arrested at 6 a.m. at their homes in Asmara on Sunday, May 23. During the arrests, police officials confiscated the keys to the pastors’ church offices and verbally threatened the men’s wives.

Haile Naizgi, who currently serves as chairman of the Full Gospel Church, and Dr. Kifle Gebremeskel, chairman of the Eritrean Evangelical Alliance, are being held in Asmara’s 1st and 6th police stations respectively, without access to their families or other visitors.

Naizgi, who is married with four children, previously worked as an accountant for World Vision. Gebremeskel holds a Ph.D. from a U.S. university and was a former mathematics professor at the University of Asmara. Both pastors are in their 40s.

Four days later, Pastor Tesfatsion Hagos of the Rema Evangelical Church in Asmara was arrested while visiting Massawa, Eritrea’s second-largest port city on the Red Sea. Compass has confirmed that security police failed to find Hagos at home early the previous Sunday morning, when they presumably planned to arrest him.

Hagos’ fellow church members confirmed this week in an “urgent action” appeal from Amnesty International that they have been unable to learn their pastor’s whereabouts since his May 27 arrest. Hagos is married with three children.

Earlier in May, a well-known Eritrean Christian singer was put under arrest in a Ministry of Defense operation, despite the fact that she had previously completed her required national military service.

Helen Berhane, 29, has been incarcerated since May 13 in a shipping container at the Mai Serwa military camp. A member of the Rema Church, she recently released an album that was proving popular among local youth.

Berhane has refused demands from the commanders of the defense ministry’s “Operation 5” that she sign a paper recanting her faith in Christ and that she promise to stop singing or participating in any Christian activities in Eritrea. Her detention follows the March arrest of evangelical singer Yonas Haile, arrested a month after releasing a Christian video tape and believed to still be jailed at the Sawa Military Center.

The arrest of these well-known evangelical Christians comes in the wake of specific threats issued to local Protestant leaders in mid April.

During a meeting called by the government’s Department of Religious Affairs, pastors of the banned Protestant churches were reportedly ordered, “Do not inform anyone outside Eritrea of your problems.” They were also forbidden to invite any Christian speakers from abroad to minister in Eritrea without first getting government permission.

However, the pastors present rejected the government demands on the spot. Declaring that they were in fact telling the outside world what was happening, they vowed to continue to do so until the government restored their legal, constitutional rights to freedom of worship.

In a request for prayer for the arrested pastors this week, one of their friends declared, “We ask not for their release, but that they would remain bold for Jesus.”

Meanwhile, Compass has confirmed the release of a Full Gospel Church pastor jailed for the past 13 months in the Adi-Nefasse military prison at Assab. Pastor Yohannes Oqbazgi was released on May 13. A few other members of the Protestant community under arrest have also been released in recent weeks, showing evidence of severe physical mistreatment while incarcerated.

Two years ago, President Issayas Afewerki’s government closed down all 12 of Eritrea’s independent Protestant churches, forbidding their congregations to worship even in private homes. Since then pastors, soldiers, women, teenagers, children and the elderly have been jailed when caught meeting for worship, reading the Bible or praying together in groups.

The state recognizes only four “historic” religious institutions authorized to conduct worship in the country: the Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran churches and Islam.

According to a June 1 appeal from Amnesty International, the hundreds of evangelical Christians jailed by the Eritrean government since early 2003 have been “arrested solely because of their religious beliefs” and “tortured to try to force them to abandon their faith.” Currently at least 400 members of these minority churches are known to be imprisoned for their faith.

In an April 1 interview with the U.N. Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN), presidential office spokesman Yemane Gebremeskel claimed that religious freedom criticism against Eritrea was “a new attack that we have seen coming from certain quarters in the last three months.” By contrast, he told IRIN, “There is huge religious tolerance; it’s historical. There are no restrictions on religion.”

But Amnesty International issued a 45-page report on Eritrea on May 19 that declares: “Religious persecution has intensified, targeting minority Christian religions. The authorities [have] cracked down on the minority churches, breaking into religious services in church premises or private homes, confiscating Bibles and musical instruments, arresting and beating church members on the spot, and torturing them later in military detention centers.”

***Photographs of the covers of the albums for Helen Brehane and Yonas Haile, the two Eritrean Christian singers under arrest, are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Six Villagers Arrested for Tonsuring Christians in Orissa, India Tension continues, victims remain in temporary accommodations in Bhubaneswar.by Vishal Arora

DELHI, May 19 (Compass) -- Six people were arrested on May 3 in connection with a February 10 incident regarding residents of a village in Orissa state, India, shaving the heads of a local pastor and eight Christian women in an effort to publicly mark them as Hindu converts.

The nine were dragged from their homes and forcibly “tonsured” or shaved on the crown of their heads, a mark that has religious significance in India and caused great humiliation for the Christians.

A total of 35 villagers were named in the First Information Report lodged at the Tirtol police station after the incident. Some of the perpetrators were close relatives of the victims.

An arrest was finally made after social activist Priabir Kumar Das from the state capital, Bhubaneswar, filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on behalf of the victims. In response to the PIL, the Orissa High Court sought a report from the district administration.

Despite the arrests, the atmosphere in the Dalit hamlet of Bauri Sahi in Kilipal village remains tense. Pastor Subas Samal had previously been accused of “forced conversion” in a case involving two girls, who converted to Christianity some time ago and then left home when their families pressured them to reconvert to Hinduism.

“Forced conversion” is banned under the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act. However, Pastor Samal said in his statements to a local magistrate that the charges were fabricated. The girls presented an affidavit saying they had accepted the Christian faith and left home of their own free will.

Despite these claims, an arrest warrant has now been issued against Pastor Samal, just a few days after the six people responsible for tonsuring him were arrested.

Seven of the female victims and their families are still in temporary accommodations provided by the Church on Mount Zion in Bhubaneswar. “The victims are eager, but unable, to go back to their homes in Kilipal village, as the tension between Christians and Hindus has not subsided yet,” Rev. Sonathan Mohanty of the Church on Mount Zion told Compass. “All of them are strong in their faith and growing.”

“This incident came to light only because the victims came to Bhubaneswar,” he added. “Such incidents are common in the rural areas in Orissa, but they are not reported. We are praying for a shelter home in the city, so persecuted Christians from such areas can take refuge and also report the matter.”

The People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), a secular human rights body, released a fact-finding report on the incident in April. The report confirmed that, “the fundamental rights of the Christians in the village to choose and practice their own faith, as enshrined in the Constitution, has been blatantly violated … All this has to be seen in the backdrop of the prejudices, mistrust and misgivings that people harbor against other religions, in order to make any meaningful intervention and diffuse the existing tension.”

The report also said the tonsuring was part of an ongoing campaign of religious hatred by Hindutva organizations. “The virulent campaign of communal hatred, religious intolerance and xenophobia unleashed by the so-called Hindutva forces in the state in recent times have reinforced and lent sustenance to the perpetrators of the vendetta against the hapless minorities.”

“The role of the police is questionable,” the report claimed. “Their statements to the team reveal an inherent bias against the minorities; further, they are also full of inconsistencies. The local police station was well aware of the simmering tension, but did precious little to pre-empt the untoward incidents or diffuse the tension.”

One of the tonsured women, Ms. Sanjukta Kandi, described the experience to investigators from the PUCL. “They came and forcibly dragged us to the center of the village … We protested but we were forcibly dragged,” she said. “I was in a sari only and had to cling to it when dragged … you can imagine what it was like”.

“After the tonsuring the whole day we stayed inside,” she said. “We couldn’t even collect water. How could we, when we were humiliated like this in public? How could we walk in the village with our tonsured head?”

Explaining why they had to leave the village, she said, “We could sense that the villagers were planning to do more dangerous things. They might just set fire to our house at night and we would all die.”

“One of us, Lata Samal, was spared from tonsuring because she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. She too came with us to Bhubaneswar and now she has delivered a baby girl,” Ms. Kandi added.

Mr. Pratap Chinchani, president of the Orissa chapter of the Christian Legal Association, said he planned to take further action against the perpetrators. “I have lodged a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission and the State Level Committee on Communal Harmony regarding the incident,” he told Compass. “I will also file a petition in the high court after the summer vacation.”

Action Aid, a secular organization, has also approached the victims to offer legal assistance.

However, Rev. Mohanty favors a peaceful resolution to the tension, claiming that prosecution of the villagers will only add to the tension between Hindu and Christian communities.

The All India Christian Council issued a press statement on February 20, alleging that, “Physical violence against Christians continues across the nation -- averaging over 200 recorded cases every year since 1998.”

Christians can only hope the situation will change as the newly-elected Congress Party replaces the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), elected in 1998. The BJP appeared to allow Hindus to act with impunity against Christians.

***Photos of the tonsured Christian women are available. They were taken during the press conference arranged by the All India Christian Council (AICC). Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************India’s Election Results Show Victory for Congress PartyResignation of prime minister designate, Sonia Gandhi, saddens Christians.by Abhijeet Prabhu

BANGALORE, May 20 (Compass) -- Christians in India hailed the victory of Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party in this month’s elections as a triumph for religious freedom.

Most people were stunned by the election results announced on May 13. One national newspaper used the words “shock and awesome” to describe the outcome.

However, some Christian leaders said they feared possible “revenge attacks” against Christians and other religious minorities to punish them for supporting the Congress Party. Congress is known for its more moderate, secular attitude to politics, in contrast to the deposed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), known for its support of Hindu extremists.

“One would not be surprised if such attacks took place, for example in Gujarat where the state government is still a BJP government,” said Paul Joshua, director-designate of the Mylapore Institute for Indigenous Christian Studies.

Hindu leaders had earlier predicted that Christians, particularly in the Dangs belt of Gujarat where Christians are a majority, would vote for the Congress Party. Their predictions were accurate; the vote in Gujarat state went to the Congress Party.

On May 18, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, a Hindu organization) and Mr. Govindacharya, former general secretary of the BJP, launched a Rashtriya Swabhiman Andolan (National Self-Respect Agitation) against Sonia Gandhi. They planned to recruit Mahatma Gandhi look-alikes in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh and use them as mouthpieces against the new prime minister designate.

In a surprise move on the same day, Gandhi announced her withdrawal from party leadership, nominating former finance minister Manmohan Singh as her replacement. Reuters news agency reported on May 19 that Gandhi had stepped down to protect the new government from the propaganda campaign launched by the VHP. Hundreds of Congress supporters around the country held street protests when party leaders failed to persuade Gandhi to change her mind.

Christian leaders generally were happy with the prospect of Gandhi as the new prime minister. However, Hindu militant groups complained that Gandhi, born in Italy and a Roman Catholic, would support the conversion of Hindus in India and as such was a threat to the nation.

While disappointed over Gandhi’s resignation, Christians continued to celebrate the outcome of the elections. Bishop Bosco D’Penha, auxiliary bishop of Bombay and co-ordinator of lay associations in the archdiocese, welcomed the verdict given by the people of India and called it “a miracle wrought by prayer.” He hoped the results would herald a new era of social harmony and peace, economic justice and the strengthening of relations with neighboring countries.

Dr. Joseph D’Souza, president of the All India Christian Council (AICC), recalled a statement made at the bi-annual AICC conference in Hyderabad in March 2004.

“We declared before more than 1,000 Christian leaders gathered from different parts of the country that the elections were going to be a make or break option for the nation,” D’Souza said. “We urged Christian leaders to pray and act. Around India fervent prayers went up for the nation. Incidentally, I was at a recent meeting in Chennai where 2,000 Christian leaders gathered for a day of prayer and fasting.

“Further, the BJP election manifesto of 2004 blatantly declared that they would bring a national anti-conversion law,” he continued. “Civil society is now looking forward to the rejection of the Hindutva (Hindu nation) agenda that has affected many areas of Indian life. A national anti-conversion law is now out of the question.”

The Congress Party won 217 seats in the Lok Sabha (House of Commons), a considerable majority over the BJP’s 185 seats. Four Communist parties, which together had won a considerable proportion of the vote, said they would back Congress, without necessarily joining the coalition. This gave the Congress Party the support it needed to form a majority government.

Paul Joshua, commenting on the possible effects of the Congress victory, told Compass that there was “spectacular growth of the church under persecution and a tremendous interest in mission and prayer, paradoxically at a time when mission was discouraged in the church by fundamentalist forces.

“It’s hard to say how this will affect hard-line groups and their morale,” he added. “The political and public conscience of the Indian church was greatly heightened at a time when the church was under threat … I hope we can continue to do that and continue our engagement and spiritual devotion even when the pressure is not as great as it used to be.”

Meanwhile, Bishop Percival Fernandez, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, said in a press statement issued on May 15 that he was very pleased with the victory of secular parties and looked forward to the restoration of a secular, democratic India.

He believed Hindu extremists had created an atmosphere of fear and suspicion in Christian and Muslim communities, sparking acts of violence while the BJP government seemingly turned a blind eye.

Speaking from his other position as vice-president of the Archdiocesan Board of Education, he also said the Hindutva agenda had crept into the education system during the BJP’s rule, with textbooks changed to entrench the concept of India as a Hindu nation. He hoped this trend would be reversed under the new government.

The press statement concluded, “Expectations from the new government are high and it is our hope that it will rise to the occasion and deliver its best for the people of our country.”

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***********************************Tamil Nadu, India, Announces Repeal of Anti-Conversion LawChristians will lobby to revoke anti-conversion laws in four other states.by Vishal Arora

DELHI, May 25 (Compass) – Barely a week after India’s Congress Party defeated the previous pro-Hindu government in national elections, Chief Minister Selvi J. Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu, southern India, has announced the repeal of the state anti-conversion law.

Ms. Jayalalithaa heads the local branch of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazakham party (AIADMK), which was soundly defeated in the general elections. While she maintains her current position as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu until Assembly elections in 2006, opposition members who won 35 of the 39 local seats in Tamil Nadu have called for her resignation.

On May 18, Jayalalithaa announced that she would drop the state’s anti-conversion law. “I have ordered that the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Act 2002 be repealed at once,” she said. “An ordinance for this purpose will be brought immediately.”

The Tamil Nadu anti-conversion law was enacted on October 5, 2002, despite large-scale protests by the Christian minority and opposition parties.

It contained loose definitions and required all conversions to be registered with the state government. Without proper registration, both “converter” and “converted” could be jailed and fined as common criminals.

Christians form approximately six percent of the population in Tamil Nadu. They say the law was passed with intent to harass religious minorities and restrict missionary work in the state.

Defending her original decision to enact the law, Ms. Jayalalithaa said in a five-page statement released on May 18, “It was only with the good intention of further promoting

religious harmony among all religions that my government enacted the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Act.”

She also claimed that her state government had “always been the strongest champion of the rights and welfare of every minority community, be it Christians, Muslims or others.

“This act was never intended to be used against the minorities. However, as leaders of some minority communities have requested withdrawal of this law, I have ordered that it be repealed at once.”

Hindu nationalists in the state have condemned Jayalalithaa’s move. Mr. R. Ramagopalan, who leads the organization Hindu Munnani which supported the enactment of the law, labeled the decision “saddening and painful.” He called on citizens to peacefully oppose the withdrawal of the law, and encouraged religious leaders to join hands and take further steps to prevent “unethical” conversions.

Rev. Richard Howell, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, told Compass, “This is an answer to prayers offered by Christians everywhere. We are happy she is moving away from Hindutva [Hindu nationalism].

“This decision is a result of the fact that not only Christians, but the whole state including opposition parties, revolted against the anti-conversion law,” he added. “It could be a pointer that minorities can, with the political parties, lobby for the repeal of similar acts in other states as well.”

Dr. John Dayal, general secretary of the All India Christian Council, agreed that the move had raised hopes for further legislative change. “It is now clear that Jayalalithaa enacted the law not because there was a threat of large-scale forced or fraudulent conversions, but to please her allies in the Hindutva movement,” he explained.

“We are shortly going to demand politically that the states of Orissa, Arunachal, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat repeal similar legislation. We are also considering approaching the new central government to enact central legislation which will bar any state from enacting future laws that curb freedom of faith or in any way erode constitutional guarantees to the minorities.”

Father Babu Joseph, speaking for the Catholics Bishops’ Conference of India, commented, “Ms. Jayalalithaa’s largesse seems, first of all, a move to control the damage suffered by her and her party, and secondly, to win the people back into her fold.

“However, the public today are much more discerning, and therefore her last minute attempts may not cut much ice with them.”

Jayalalithaa also reversed several other rulings made during the past three years, which the opposition had tagged as “anti-people” policies.

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***********************************Indian Pastor Arrested, Charged Under ‘Freedom of Religion’ ActCivil liberty report says Orissa police are biased against Christians.by Vishal Arora

DELHI, June 3 (Compass) -- Pastor Subas Samal and his associate pastor Dhanishwar Kandi of Kilipal village in Orissa state, India, were arrested on May 29 and charged with “conversion by inducement” under the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA). Accusers lodged several other charges against them under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

An arrest warrant was issued against Samal and six other Christians in the second week of May, following the arrest of six Hindu villagers on May 3. The Hindu villagers had been charged with forcibly tonsuring, or shaving, the heads of nine Christian villagers, including Pastor Samal, on February 10, 2004.

On June 1, the High Court of Orissa granted anticipatory bail to the accused Christians. However, they excluded Samal and Kandi, who had already been taken into police custody.

“All the accused will appear before the District Magistrate on June 3,” said Rev. Sonathan Mohanty, pastor of the Church on Mount Zion which had provided temporary shelter for the victims of the tonsuring incident. “We are also looking for a guarantor in the district to get bail for Pastor Samal and Mr. Dhaneshwar Kandi.”

Mr. Babajee Das, representing the Hindu villagers of Kilipal, lodged a First Information Report (FIR) against Pastor Samal and six other Christians in the village on February 16. The Christians named in the report were Pastor Samal; Mr. Dhaneshwar Kandi; Ms. Sumitra Kandi; Mr. Vishnu Kandi and his wife Mata Kandi, and their two daughters Kukila and Umitra.

In the FIR, Das claimed that the Christians had forcibly converted 25 Dalit villagers over a period of 10 years, taking advantage of their illiteracy and poverty by luring them with financial enticement.

He also claimed the pastor and eight local Christian women had tonsured themselves on February 10 to malign the Hindu community.

Das, an ice-cream vendor, took this action because his daughter had shown a strong interest in the Christian faith.

The police booked the accused Christians under Section 4 of the OFRA and Sections 294, 506, and 36 of the IPC.

Section 4 of the OFRA outlaws religious conversion by use of force, inducement or any other fraudulent means. Anyone convicted under Section 4 may be imprisoned for up to two years, and fined up to 5,000 rupees ($110).

Section 294 of the IPC deals with an obscene act committed in a public place, while Section 506 relates to an offense of criminal intimidation and is punishable with imprisonment for up to seven years, and a possible fine. Section 36 of the IPC relates to common culpability in a criminal act carried out by a group of people.

Advocate Bibhu Prasad Tripathi, a lawyer of the Orissa High Court who is defending Samal and the other accused, told Compass, “I filed an application in the High Court for bail for the pastor and others on May 24, 2004 (application no. 4356 of 2004).

“However, on May 29, Pastor Samal was summoned to the police station for interrogation. He was then taken into judicial custody, as the police had added Section 3 of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act (SCSTPAA) of 1989, which is a non-bailable offense, and Section 298 of the IPC.”

The SCSTPAA provides that anyone who institutes “false, malicious or vexatious suit or criminal or other legal proceedings against a member of a Scheduled Caste [Dalit] or a Scheduled Tribe … shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term, which shall not be less than six months but which may extend to five years and with fine.”

Section 298 of the IPC deals with harming the religious sensitivities of a person. This crime is punishable with imprisonment for one year and a possible fine.

“How can the police include charges under the SCSTPAA when Pastor Samal himself belongs to the scheduled caste?” said Tripathi. “I personally feel he and the other Christians are being harassed. This is unwarranted and uncalled for.”

A fact-finding report on the incident released in April by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, a secular human rights body, concluded that the police seemed to be biased against Christians.

“At the police station Samal ... got a few slaps from (police) for disregarding Hinduism,” the report said. “Samal alleges that police told him, ‘What proof is there that you are a Christian? If you want to be a Christian, why don’t you go to Australia? If you convert people, you will face the fate of Staines.’”

Graham Staines, an Australian Christian missionary working in Orissa, was burned to death along with his two sons in 1999. Several Hindu activists including Dara Singh were convicted for the offense in September 2003.

The report continued, “Subas also alleges that police and the villagers forced him to sign an agreement in which it was written, among other things, that he had agreed to return to Hinduism,” and “The allegations of custodial misbehavior, that included verbal

abuse, beating and coercing a false statement [from] Pastor Subas Samal appears credible.”

Four states in India have laws similar to the OFRA. Madhya Pradesh passed the “Freedom of Religion Regulation” in 1966 while Arunachal Pradesh passed the “Freedom of Indigenous Faith Act” in 1978. Tamil Nadu followed in October 2002 with the “Prohibition of Forcible Conversion Bill.” The most recent “Freedom of Religion Bill” was passed in Gujarat in March 2003.

Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister Selvi Jayalalithaa announced on May 18 that she would drop the Tamil Nadu anti-conversion law after her party suffered a dramatic loss of votes in the recent general elections. Jayalalithaa’s political opponents had accused her of supporting “anti-people policies.”

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***********************************Hindu ‘Defense Army’ Fights Christian Conversions in IndiaRSS to continue ‘war’ against Christianity despite recent election results.by Joshua Newton

DELHI, June 3 (Compass) -- India’s extremist Hindu organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Corps) has announced plans to establish a number of Raksha Sena or “Defense Army” groups in the tribal state of Chhatisgarh, central India. Each Raksha Sena will consist of 21 young people recruited by an RSS front organization, the Dharma Jagran Vibhag (Religious Awakening Department.)

Christian leaders say they have strong evidence that these groups will actively -- even aggressively -- discourage Christian conversions in Chhatisgarh and other parts of central India.

According to sources, the establishment of the Defense Army was supported by Dilip Singh Judeo, former Minister of Environment and Forestry.

During his term in office, Judeo led the coercive and often violent ghar wapsi or “homecoming” movement, in which Hindu extremists held ceremonies to “reconvert” tribal Christians back to Hinduism. At its peak, Hindu volunteers forcibly rounded up tribal Christians and took them to camps where, under armed guard, Judeo ceremonially washed their feet. Judeo then declared the Christians had “reconverted” to Hinduism.

Evidence of Judeo’s involvement in the reconversion campaign was clearly shown in a documentary called “Fishers of Men,” produced by Mumbai film producer Ranjan Kamath.

Judeo also attended a two-day training session for Defense Army recruits in the second week of May at a campsite in Raipur, the capital of Chhatisgarh. According to a

report in the Organiser, the monthly publication of the RSS, the recruits were given extensive training in archery and shooting at the camp.

Indresh Kumar, a top official of the RSS, addressed the recruits at the meeting. Forty groups of trainees also went on a “mass contact tour” of Raipur, where they distributed anti-conversion literature.

In the closing session, Judeo spoke about the “homecoming” movement, saying it had forced Christian missions to reconsider their activities in India. “Nuns have started wearing saffron robes instead of their traditional white ones,” he told the cheering recruits.

He also called on the trainees to “move into the interior parts of the country to check religious conversions,” and encouraged them to revive the ghar wapsi movement, even if the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was defeated in the general elections. The BJP government had supported the agenda of Hindu nationalist activists.

Election results announced on the following day, May 10, confirmed the defeat of the BJP.

John Dayal, secretary general of the All India Christian Council (AICC), is concerned about the development of the Defense Army. “We have enough evidence that they are targeting Christians,” he said. “Local RSS leaders, including Judeo, have gone on record saying their main target is Christian missionaries and the latest were the statements at their meeting on May 9, as quoted in their own official organ, the Organiser.

“The amount of hate literature we have unearthed indicates RSS and its sister organizations began preparations for a Defense Army a long time back,” he added.

Another Christian leader, who preferred to remain anonymous, agreed. “In Gujarat, they succeeded in turning the tribals against the Muslims, and in Jhabua they have been routinely attacking Christian missions,” he told Compass. “In Udaipur district of Rajasthan, the church has been so frightened that pastors would rather not complain at all.”

Launched in 1925 for the purpose of “propagating Hindu culture,” the RSS advocates a form of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, which seeks to establish India as a Hindu nation. Hindutva strongly rejects the idea of a composite Indian identity brought about by a synthesis of different cultures and faiths.

Though no official data is available, AICC sources claim that 5,000 to 20,000 Christian tribals have been forcibly “reconverted” to Hinduism over the past five years. The forced re-conversions took place in the four central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand. Re-conversion ceremonies were also reported in Gujarat and Orissa states.

Chhatisgarh is a new state, carved out of Madya Pradesh less than four years ago. The population is two-thirds tribal, including the Gonds, Santhals and Mariahs tribes. Many of the tribal people are poor and illiterate. Major industry in the state is controlled by the upper caste Brahmin community.

“I’m not surprised that this region had been chosen, as the people are poor, the church is weak, and pastoral care is stretched,” said Dayal. “The distances to cover are long and often roads don’t exist. The police are always far away, out of reach and often on the side of the Brahmins.”

In We or Our Nationhood Defined, a book written by key RSS leader Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar and often referred to as the “Bible” of the RSS, Hindus are encouraged to see their religion as the only legitimate faith in India. Golwalkar believes that Christians, Muslims and other minority communities “must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race.”

Their only other alternative, according to Golwalkar, is to “stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment -- not even citizen’s rights.”

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Rev. Damanik Spared Surgery, Recovering After Treatment in Jakarta, IndonesiaIndonesian pastor’s kidney stones disappear in answer to prayer.by Sarah Page

DUBLIN, June 1 (Compass) -- Friends and family of Rev. Rinaldy Damanik, an Indonesian pastor who was imprisoned under what many believe were false charges in June 2003, confirmed on May 28 that Damanik has had a “miraculous” recovery from serious kidney problems, according to a report today from Open Doors.

Damanik’s transfer to a hospital in Jakarta on May 4 was made possible by the intervention of a Muslim cleric, Ustadz Idrus Alhabsy.

According to Mona Saroinsong, a key member of Damanik’s support team, Alhabsy had a vision earlier this year during prayer that he was to visit Damanik in prison. Impressed by Damanik’s quiet, uncomplaining attitude, Alhabsy was incensed when he read a newspaper report about Damanik’s medical condition. He immediately went to Maesa prison to confront prison authorities on Damanik’s behalf.

Dr. Bororing of Woodward Public Hospital in Palu had said Damanik needed urgent treatment for a serious kidney condition in order to prevent further deterioration. X-rays taken at Woodward showed stones in both kidneys. However, facilities for proper assessment and surgery were available only in Jakarta.

Damanik’s friends and supporters lobbied for several days in late April and early May for permission to move him to Jakarta for treatment, but officials at the Department of Justice did not respond to their request until Alhabsy became involved.

Permission was finally granted and Damanik was flown to Jakarta on May 4, accompanied by his wife and daughter, a doctor, two policemen and two guards from Maesa prison.

At around 3 p.m. on May 4, doctors at the Cikini Public Hospital in Jakarta performed tests which showed unexpected results. The kidney stones which were clearly visible in X-rays taken at Woodward were no longer present. All that remained were marks showing that the kidney stones had been present and a long scratch in his urinary tract. Damanik was still in severe pain and required painkillers that night.

On May 5, the tests were performed again, with the same results.

On May 7, doctors concluded that minor surgery was needed to correct a problem involving his scarred urinary tract. After hearing the diagnosis, Damanik lay awake, praying that God would heal him without surgery. On the morning of May 8, Damanik told his family that around 4 a.m., he heard voices saying, “Don’t worry, there are many people praying for you.” After hearing the voices, he felt reassured and was able to sleep.

On the afternoon of May 8, the doctors performed further tests and said there was no need for surgery, as the problem in his urinary tract seemed to have corrected itself. In response, Damanik could only say, “I think God heard my prayers. God knew that I was too scared to have another pain, so He allowed me not to have an operation of any kind.”

Some symptoms of Hepatitis B were found during routine blood tests. On May 10, the doctors took further blood and urine samples and sent them to a laboratory in Singapore for analysis. They asked Damanik to remain at the hospital in Jakarta until results were known, but Damanik asked to be flown back to Palu.

“I must go back directly to the cell, because I don’t need to stay in the hospital any longer,” he insisted.

Staff at the hospital finally let him go, with the condition that further treatment and ongoing medication be provided for him at the prison.

Damanik has now served 20 months of his original 36 month sentence, which was reduced to 35 months in December 2003. Under Indonesian law, Damanik should now be in an “assimilation” period which means he is able to leave the prison during daylight hours for a week at a time. If he abides by prison laws during that week, the “assimilation” periods could be extended to a month or more. In August 2004 he will have served two thirds of his sentence and should be eligible for parole.

It is unlikely that Damanik will apply for parole until the situation in Sulawesi has stabilized.

Damanik, a prominent figure in peace negotiations between Muslim and Christian communities in Poso, Sulawesi, was convicted on charges of “illegal weapons possession” in June 2003. The charge dates back to an incident on August 17, 2002, when his relief convoy was stopped by police and his vehicle searched. Days later, police claimed they had found firearms and ammunition in the vehicle. From the beginning, Damanik maintained his innocence.

The case went to court in February 2003. During the trial, several witnesses admitted that police had pressured them to give false testimony against Damanik. Judge Somanada admitted that correct legal procedure had not been followed and the evidence was weak. Despite these anomalies, Damanik was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison.

*** A photograph of Rev. Damanik in the hospital is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Four Indonesian Churches Targeted in ‘Coordinated Attack’Assaults highlight problem of churches being refused permission to worship.by Samuel Rionaldo

JAKARTA, June 7 (Compass) -- Mobs armed with sticks attacked four churches in Banten province, Indonesia, on Sunday, June 6. Minor damage was done to church furniture and windows; and one pastor was punched in the head, although he was not seriously injured. Captain Hamdani of the local police department said the attacks were a reaction to churches meeting in unregistered places of worship.

The attacks took place in the Tangerang districts of Pamulang and Ciputat in Banten province on the outskirts of Jakarta. Several similar attacks have taken place in recent months. Hamdani told reporters from the Associated Press that the attacks on Sunday appeared to have been coordinated, but he would not comment on motives.

Under Indonesian law, all churches must apply for official permission to construct a church or to worship in privately owned or rented facilities. However in recent years, permission has been increasingly difficult to obtain. For this reason, many churches meet in public halls, office buildings, hotel conference rooms or shopping centers -- often without the required permission.

Muslim residents in Banten province have objected to the presence of unregistered church facilities. Observers believe this is the reason behind the recent attacks.

The attacks are part of a growing trend in Jakarta and surrounding areas. Similar incidents occurred in Menteng, southern Jakarta, on April 6; and in Tangerang on March 1. Those incidents also targeted churches meeting in unregistered places of worship.

The angry mob of about 1,000 people that attacked the church in Menteng accused Rev. Nainggolan of holding church services without a permit. The group included 20 members of a local Islamic radical organization called the Front Pembela Islam (FPI), which later claimed it had organized the attack.

Arriving outside the health clinic operated by the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP) church, the crowd threw stones through the front windows. Around 200 people then entered the house and destroyed property belonging to the church. Rev. Nainggolan said approximately 50 million rupiah ($5,300) worth of damage was done to the building and its contents.

Part of the building had been set aside as a health clinic operated by the HKBP church and as an auditorium for wedding receptions, under a permit given by local government in October 2001. The church also had a separate worship hall, operating with a government permit since 1980.

In November 2003, the church decided to renovate the worship hall and applied for permission to use the health clinic as a temporary facility for church services.

However, local authorities rejected the application on November 6, saying the local community had not given their consent to use the clinic as a worship facility under the terms of Decree 137, which governs permission granted to establish churches.

Asyaf Ali, secretary of a local society, said the church had used the clinic for a church-related meeting and this stirred up the community. Apparently the clinic building had been used once for a Sunday school teachers’ meeting.

A man calling himself Mr. Hermansyah told Compass that members of the community had come to him and asked for help in disciplining the church for ignoring local government regulations. According to Hermansyah, coordinator of the Front Pembela Islam, he assigned 20 members to organize the attack.

“We were asked by society because they did not have courage to make the decision themselves,” Hermansyah said.

However, local village official Saodji Ismail rejected that claim. “The attack was a spontaneous action taken because the church had broken their agreement,” he insisted.

Edi Ramelan, head of local Rukun Warga (District Society) 013/991, said he received information a few days before the April 6 incident indicating that the HKBP clinic would be attacked. He passed the information to local authorities, but no action was taken.

In a separate incident on March 1, ten churches which met at the Pujasera shopping center in Tigaraksa, Tangerang, were closed by district authorities. Local Muslim societies had objected because none of the churches had the required permit to worship in buildings designated as shops and offices. They also accused church members of using private homes for cell group meetings during the week.

Yusuf Herawan, district head of Tigaraksa, said he closed the churches at the shopping center to protect them from attack. “People were threatening to destroy and burn these buildings if the churches were not closed,” he explained. He confirmed that the churches did not have the required permits.

Several of the churches had applied for permits but were refused. Since the closures, some of the congregations in Tigaraksa have stopped meeting together while others are still searching for alternative facilities.

Meanwhile, Rev. Nainggolan of HKBP church in Menteng has said he will not demand compensation for damages. “We will only pray and hope the suspects will repent,” he told Compass. “But we do ask for freedom to worship.”

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***********************************Iranian Police Arrest Christian PastorWife and teenage children also jailed.by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, May 26 (Compass) -- Iranian police arrested a Protestant Christian pastor in northern Iran three days ago, jailing him along with his wife and two teenage children.

Pastor Khosroo Yusefi and his wife Nasrin were arrested on May 23 in Chalous, a town along the Caspian Sea coast in Mazanderan province. Together with their 18-year-old son and a daughter age 15, they remain imprisoned without known charges.

Today sources in Iran confirmed to Compass that the Yusefi family, together with four other local Christians arrested three weeks ago, have been moved to an unknown prison location outside Chalous.

“The police have found out that people have come to Christ in that city, that’s all,” an Iranian Christian told Compass. “We don’t know whether somebody was spying on them, or what. The only thing we know is that they arrested them.”

Pastor Yusefi is responsible for overseeing a number of unregistered Assemblies of God congregations in northern Iran. Now in their late 40s, Yusefi and his wife were members of the Baha’i religion before they came to faith in Christ nearly 20 years ago.

Reportedly dozens of believers from two of Yusefi’s church groups were arrested and jailed in the first week of May, when police threatened and beat them for refusing to renounce their Christian faith. The majority of these Christians meeting in secret house-church groups are former Muslims.

“They caught so many of them that the whole congregation was stopped in all their activities,” a source confirmed to Compass.

Last week most of these Christian prisoners were released, although police announced that four of the group’s “key persons” would remain imprisoned.

Local sources could not confirm how the jailed Christians had been treated while in custody, although a spokesman told Compass, “If they didn’t hit them and torture them, it would be very unusual. It’s normal for the police to do that.”

Some church members have expressed fears that severe treatment could be particularly difficult for Yusefi’s wife, who underwent considerable trauma as a teenager during the Iranian revolution, when many of her Baha’i relatives and friends were killed.

“During these last few months, it was scary for Khosroo and Nasrin,” the source said, noting they had been called in to the police many times, and at least twice fled their city to avoid arrest. “Now that they have arrested them, and especially with the children, she is even more under pressure.”

Credible reports have come in from northern Iran since the beginning of 2004, documenting the arrests of a large number of individual Christian converts in the region. But Sunday’s arrest marks the first time that the entire family of a Christian leader has been taken into custody.

Church leaders in Tehran have refused to comment on the case.

According to the U.S. State Department’s most recent religious freedom report on Iran, the government creates a particularly “threatening atmosphere” against “some religious minorities, especially Bahai’s, Jews and evangelical Christians.”

“The government vigilantly enforces its prohibition on proselytizing activities by evangelical Christians by closing evangelical churches and arresting converts,” the report noted. Under the Islamic republic’s strict laws, conversion from Islam to another faith is punishable by death.

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***********************************Iranian Pastor’s Wife, Children ReleasedFour Protestant Christians still imprisoned in northern Iran.by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, June 7 (Compass) -- The wife and children of an Iranian Christian pastor have been released from jail a week after their arrest in northern Iran, although the pastor and three other local church leaders remain imprisoned in an unknown location.

Pastor Khosroo Yusefi’s wife Nasrin and two teenage children were allowed to return home on Sunday evening, May 30, to Chalous, a town near the Caspian Sea in Mazanderan province. The couple has an 18-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter. (See Compass Direct, “Iranian Police Arrest Christian Pastor,” May 26, 2004.)

Two other church leaders arrested a month earlier on unspecified charges were also released on May 30, sources in Iran confirmed to Compass.

But the same day, Iranian police arrested another Protestant church leader off the street in Nowshahr, less than 20 miles from Chalous. The latest Christian confirmed to be put under arrest in the region is believed to be jailed together with Yusefi and two other Christians arrested earlier in May.

Iranians arrested for converting to Christianity are typically blindfolded while being transferred to separate “religious” prisons, so that the prisoners cannot identify their whereabouts.

In their late 40s, Yusefi and his wife converted to Christianity nearly 20 years ago from the Baha’i religion. As a lay pastor, Yusefi has been involved with a number of unregistered churches in northern Iran.

The current detentions follow the reported imprisonment of large numbers of Christian converts across northern Iran in recent months. Although most of the prisoners have now been released, many were reported to have been subjected to severe beatings and threats while jailed.

Under the Islamic republic’s harsh muzzling of its Christian minorities, Iranian authorities have banned the Bible, closed down Protestant churches admitting worshippers of Muslim background and jailed former Muslims for converting to Christianity.

In a detailed report released today, Human Rights Watch accused the Iranian judiciary of being “at the center of human rights violations” documented in the Islamic republic.

Over the past four years, the report said, “a small group of judges accountable only to [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]” has used vigilantes and security agents at their disposal to detain and interrogate dissidents, hiding the truth about their illegal arrests and systematic beatings in secret prisons.

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***********************************Muslim ‘Protest’ Turns Deadly in NigeriaAs many as 30 dead, 300 injured in retaliatory attack on Christians in Kano.by Obed Minchakpu

KANO, Nigeria, May 13 (Compass) -- On Tuesday, May 11, thousands of Muslims in the northern city of Kano took to the streets in protest against recent attacks on fellow Muslims in the town of Yelwa in nearby Plateau state. (See Compass Direct report, “Fresh Violence Erupts in Nigeria,” May 7.)

Sources on the scene say the confrontation turned violent. Police officials place the death toll as high as 30 and say another 300 have suffered injuries. Thousands are believed to have fled their homes.

Properties belonging to Christians were either looted or destroyed by the Muslim protesters, according to officials.

Kano state police commissioner Alhaji Ganiyu Alli Daudu told journalists yesterday that Muslim mobs were trapping Christians in their homes and setting the houses on fire, attempting to kill those inside. He said police were under a “shoot-on-sight order” issued to save innocent lives.

“The order is out of necessity because you find that houses were being burned and there are people inside,” Daudo said. “We have been compelled to shoot in order to rescue them.”

The Kano attack comes in retaliation for the violence that erupted in Yelwa on May 2, in which Christian militia attacked Muslims. The governor of Plateau state, in a radio and television broadcast on Tuesday, said about 65 persons were killed. Associated Press reports placed the death toll in the hundreds and blamed the outbreak on a bitter land dispute between the predominantly Christian Tarok ethnic group and Muslims herdsmen of the Hausa-fulani tribe.

Christian sources in Nigeria say conflict began with the February 23 attack by Muslim militants on the Church of Christ in Yelwa, which resulted in the death of Pastor Samson Bukar and 48 members of the church.

Whatever the motive, the bloodletting is claiming hundreds of lives, according to the few eyewitness reports coming out of the area. (Compass required an armed escort to get into Kano in order to file this report.) Police Commissioner Daudu said that, of the 30 Christians killed, five died on Tuesday and 25 yesterday. He estimated that as many as 10,000 Christians displaced by the attacks have taken refuge in army and police barracks.

Sheik Umar Kabo, chairman of the Kano state Council of Ulamas (Islamic

Clerics), in company of other notable Islamic leaders, reportedly led the Muslim protest that sparked the attack on Christians in Kano.

Plateau state governor Joshua Dariye said he believes the attacks on Christians are motivated by Muslim militants with an agenda to carry out jihad (religious war).

Dariye told journalists yesterday in the city of Jos that extremists with ties to the Al-Qaeda network are behind the incessant Muslim-Christian conflict in Plateau state. The governor said his administration discovered “linkage” between Al-Qaeda and the Council of Ulamas, prompting him to ban the ulamas from Plateau state last December.

“They are part of the problem,” Dariye said, referring to the Council of Ulamas.

“They [Muslims] are fighting a jihad. It is like celebrating 200 years of jihad, because [Islamic] jihad was fought in 1804 [in northern Nigeria].

“Because they know that Plateau state is a Christian state and they could not capture it through jihad, they have decided to use religious conflicts ... to make us Muslims by force.”

Meanwhile, the Council of Ulamas visited Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Tuesday in Abuja to demand he declare a state of emergency in Plateau state.

Obasanjo reportedly assured the Muslim leaders that he would do all he could to find a solution to the problem.

“Whatever will be done will be done,” he said. “We cannot allow lawlessness to be the order of the day. We have reached a stage where a permanent solution should be found.”

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***********************************Pakistani Pastors Feared KidnappedUnknown Islamist group threatens Quetta church leaders.by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, May 17 (Compass) -- After a series of handwritten threats sent to Christian leaders in the Pakistani city of Quetta last week, at least one Protestant pastor has been reported missing by his family, with the whereabouts of another six uncertain.

According to news reports which appeared in this morning’s Pakistani newspapers, Pastor Wilson Fazal of the Pakistan Gospel Assembly in Quetta has been missing since Sunday morning, when his family believes he was abducted by an unidentified group of Muslim extremists.

Fazal, 41, was reportedly enroute to Sunday morning services in Quetta’s Bashirabad suburb when he disappeared yesterday. According to church leaders who addressed a press conference in Quetta last night, a previous attempt by several bearded men to abduct Fazal three days earlier had been foiled and reported to local police.

Compass has received scanned copies of three different threat letters sent to Fazal and other Quetta church leaders, including the directors of Christian institutions in the city. One of the letters began with a penciled sketch of Osama bin Laden at the top.

In the last letter addressed to Fazal and delivered to his house five days ago, the Pentecostal pastor was told, “Christians of Quetta, you are displeasing God … Accept the faith of jihad. Stop the teaching of all schools, hospitals and churches. Join with us in Islamic evangelism.

“Get ready, ready, ready, or else,” the letter concluded, with a hand-drawn rifle for a signature at the bottom.

According to a Reuters release filed yesterday, the source of the letters was a previously unknown group calling itself “Mahaz-e-Jihad” (Frontier of the Holy War).

In other threat letters, Christian educators were warned to “stop preaching false doctrines by which they lead people astray.” If the recipients did not stop admitting Muslim students and staff into Christian institutions, one letter stated, “… we will have to resort to acts of terrorism or suicide attacks.”

Six other Pentecostal church leaders in the city are also missing, although local Christians have not been able to confirm whether they were abducted. It is conjectured that the six, four of them married men and two bachelors, may have gone into hiding to avoid capture.

According to unconfirmed reports, a local pastor has received a letter from Fazal’s kidnappers, declaring they will not release him until local churches comply with their demands to close down their Christian institutions and stop all Christian teaching and preaching in the city.

Quetta’s senior superintendent of police, Rehmat Niaz, told Reuters news agency that the authorities were investigating the complaint filed by the family of Fazal, who is married with children.

“But we are absolutely terrified that they are not handling this crisis properly,” a church leader from the neighboring Punjab province told Compass. “The Christian community there is very small and weak, so these churches and families need a lot of prayer right now.”

Capital of Pakistan’s arid Baluchistan province, Quetta is less than 80 miles from the Afghan border. Since late 2001, its population has been swollen by several hundred thousand Afghans, many of them hardliners from the Taliban movement.

Pakistan’s Christian churches and institutions have been the violent target of repeated terrorist attacks since September 2001, when the Islamabad government backed the U.S.-led offensive against the al-Qaeda movement.

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***********************************Pakistani Pastor Escapes Islamist CaptorsBadly tortured cleric forced into hiding.by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, May 19 (Compass) -- A Protestant pastor kidnapped last Sunday morning escaped from his Islamist abductors overnight Monday, some 40 hours after he had disappeared on his way to church services in Quetta, capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

Pastor Wilson Fazal, 41, managed to jump out of the vehicle in which his kidnappers were driving him to Peshawar late on the night of May 17.

“He himself said he could not believe he could escape, that he got free from those people,” a church source who met Fazal today told Compass. “It was a very big miracle.”

According to the Pakistan Gospel Assemblies pastor, his captors were driving him from Islamabad to Peshawar at high speed in a Pajero jeep when a mobile police patrol began following them.

Panicking, the kidnappers drove off the road to escape the patrol, braking enough to give Fazal a chance to jump from the vehicle and run for his life. Despite his injuries and emotional state, he escaped in the darkness, eventually finding bus transport back to Islamabad.

Fazal re-appeared early yesterday morning at the official Islamabad lodgings of a minority member of Pakistan’s National Assembly from Quetta, Asiya Nasir. In brief interviews with Pakistan dailies, Nasir confirmed from Quetta that she had spoken by telephone yesterday morning with Fazal and that he was now safe, but declined to comment further.

However, the Quetta parliamentarian told the U.N.’s Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) that the pastor “kept on crying” during his call and was “so scared that he can’t even talk.” Although Nasir said she did not yet know the full details, she told IRIN that Fazal had somehow “managed to escape near Peshawar, and caught a bus to Islamabad.”

According to a church source who met Fazal today, the pastor was badly harassed and mistreated. “He is not in a condition to give a detailed statement yet,” the source said.

Fazal was severely beaten by his captors, who also subjected him to electric shocks, stabbed him through the tongue, shaved off his hair and mustache and taunted him with savage death threats if he refused to convert to Islam.

The pastor also said he was shown photographs and diagrams and questioned in detail about Christian leaders and institutions in Quetta, clearly indicating his captors had organized plans to move against the city’s Christian community.

Reportedly, police authorities from Quetta have insisted that Fazal return for questioning in their investigation of the case. One police official even accused local church leaders of orchestrating the kidnapping scenario, describing Fazal’s “mysterious disappearance” as a deliberate “drama.”

However, those providing a safe haven for the pastor have declared that returning to Quetta would be “a huge security risk” for both Fazal and his family.

Fazal’s wife Nasreen and six sons left Quetta yesterday to be reunited with Fazal at a protected safehouse in an undisclosed location. The family’s security as well as contact with the media has been delegated to representatives of local human rights groups.

According to an Interior Ministry spokesman quoted in today’s Dawn newspaper, Fazal was given medical treatment yesterday for his injuries and provided with the police protection he requested. The unnamed official claimed it was “premature” to state whether any “religious elements” were involved in the pastor’s abduction.

Fazal was one of several local church leaders in Quetta to receive a series of hand-lettered threat letters last week from an unknown Islamist group calling itself “Maham-e-Jihad” (Frontier of the Holy War). Other Pentecostal pastors, the chairman of the Bethel Memorial Methodist Church and directors of various Christian institutions in Quetta also received threat letters.

The letters urged Fazal and other Christian leaders to “convert to Islam or face unspecified consequences,” Reuters news agency reported. The letters also told them “to stop teaching Muslim students.” Those who failed to heed the warning would be subjected to “acts of terrorism or suicide attacks,” the letters said.

Six of Quetta’s Christian leaders who had received these direct threats went into hiding the day after Fazal disappeared, in order to avoid capture themselves. Yesterday, all were confirmed to be safe and in contact with their families.

After Fazal’s disappearance was reported Sunday night, Christian churches throughout Quetta held continuous prayer meetings all day Monday for his safe recovery.

Less than 70,000 of Pakistan’s estimated eight million Christians live in Baluchistan, a sparsely populated province along the country’s southwestern border with Afghanistan.

Since President Pervez Musharraf joined the U.S. war on terrorism in the fall of 2001, fanatic Muslim extremists have killed 42 people and injured another 114 in eight terrorist attacks against Christian churches and institutions in Pakistan.

*** Photographs of Wilson Fazal are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Pakistani Policeman Kills Christian PrisonerSamuel Masih attacked on his hospital bed.by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, June 1 (Compass) -- A Pakistani police constable bludgeoned to death a Christian jailed on blasphemy charges, declaring he “wanted to earn a place in paradise” by killing the alleged “blasphemer.”

Samuel Masih died last Friday from severe head injuries inflicted several days earlier by Faryad Ali, a Muslim policeman in his late 20s.

In the early morning hours of May 24, the constable entered a Lahore hospital ward where the guarded Christian prisoner was being treated for advanced tuberculosis. Swinging a brick-cutter hammer, Ali hit Masih on the head, despite a policeman posted on duty near Masih’s hospital bed.

“Faryad was roused to attack Samuel at the call of his conscience,” a police officer was quoted as telling a fact-finding team from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) several days later, as reported in the May 26 issue of Daily Times. According to the newspaper, Ali told police, “I wanted to earn a place in heaven by killing him.”

Ali knew that Masih was on trial for alleged blasphemy against Islam, because he had been part of the police escort taking Masih to a previous court hearing. Since then, he had “expressed his hatred for Samuel” to his colleagues, the police told the HRCP team.

Ali also knew Masih had been admitted to the Gulab Devi Hospital on May 22 after suffering a tuberculosis attack at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail, where he had been imprisoned since August.

Bleeding profusely from the hammer wounds, Masih went into a coma and was transferred to the emergency neurosurgery ward of the Lahore General Hospital, where he died May 28. He was believed to be about 30 years of age.

When the injured prisoner’s family and local human rights investigators learned about the attack against Masih, police at first refused to allow them into the hospital and banned any reports on his condition from the medical staff. After initially denying knowledge of the case, one police officer claimed that Masih had injured his head by falling during an epileptic fit.

Masih’s assailant was arrested and booked for attempted murder, converted to formal murder charges after the Christian died.

Lahore police initially ordered Emmanuel Masih to take his son’s body home on Friday and bury it before dawn the next day. But at the father’s insistence, they later allowed him to take the remains to the Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral, where the funeral was held on Saturday morning, May 29. Masih’s father is a widower with three other children.

Jailed nine months ago on accusations that he had desecrated the walls of a local mosque, Masih had worked as a whitewasher and painter before his arrest last August.

Muhammad Yaqoob, librarian of the Idara Darusalam Jinnah Garden Mosque in Lahore, filed blasphemy charges against Masih on August 23 last year. Claiming he had seen Masih spitting on the wall of the mosque near the library that day, Yaqoob produced two other witnesses to confirm his story.

But according to Masih’s father, his son had in fact simply gone into the mosque to use the toilet, and bystanders who saw the Christian leaving the mosque grabbed him and accused him of committing blasphemy. Emmanuel Masih said that his son worked at jobs away from home, so he did not even learn of his arrest until five months later.

Although human rights groups who initially inquired about Masih’s arrest were told he had been released, in fact he was sent to Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail for trial. “His family did not pursue the case because they were reportedly scared of the police,” a May 29 article in the Daily Times stated.

Under the maximum penalty for violating Section 295 of the Pakistan penal code, Masih could have been jailed for two years and fined if convicted of “defiling a place of worship with the intent of insulting the religion.”

“This is a case that brings out, like nothing else, the myriad contradictions these [blasphemy] laws have infused in this state and society,” commented a Daily Times editorial the day after Masih’s death.

“The fact is that it is a bad law both in its conception and its implementation,” the editorial continued, noting that “the legislation has created a psyche that encourages vigilante behavior.”

“The blasphemy law in its present form has become more of an instrument of persecution and vendetta than of justice,” a Dawn newspaper editorial agreed the same day. “It is time Parliament thoroughly reviewed it with the aim of at least plugging the loopholes that make it so open to abuse by misguided elements.”

On May 15, President Pervez Musharraf called for constitutional amendments in the blasphemy law and Hudood Ordinances to correct their “misuse,” endemic ever since they were instituted nearly 25 years ago under the military dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq.

Pakistan’s religious minorities and human rights advocates have long called for both laws to be abolished, stating that they are “un-Islamic,” man-made laws with punishments which contradict the precepts of Islam.

***A photograph of Samuel Masih is available electronically. Please contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Pakistan Christian Granted BailOnly indirect evidence of ‘blasphemy’ produced.by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, June 7 (Compass) -- Six months after his arrest on charges of alleged blasphemy, Pakistani Christian Anwer Masih has been ordered released on bail by the Lahore High Court.

Masih, 30, was granted bail on the morning of June 4 by Justice Tassadaq Hussain Jilani. Overriding protests from the advocate general, the high court judge declared that no direct evidence had been produced against the defendant in the case.

Accordingly, Justice Jilani ordered Masih to pay a bond of 20,000 rupees ($345) for his bail surety and be set free for the duration of his trial.

Pending precautionary measures being taken for his security, Masih is expected to be released from the Lahore District Jail within the next few days.

Masih was arrested in a Lahore suburb on November 30 last year for allegedly mocking the beard of a former Christian who had converted to Islam. Naseer Ahmad, a neighbor who had embraced Islam, accused Masih of slandering Muslim prophets and beliefs.

According to Akbar Durrani, one of a team of lawyers from the Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS) defending the jailed Christian, Masih is only facing trial because of “very prejudiced judges” at the lower court level.

“Anwer Masih’s case is a case of no evidence,” Durrani told Compass today. “There is not a single piece of evidence against him.”

Nevertheless, earlier bail petitions for Masih had been rejected by two lower courts -- the judicial magistrate’s court as well as the Lahore sessions court.

Although Masih’s trial is set to be heard by the Judicial Magistrate’s Court in Lahore, the defense plans to apply directly to the Lahore High Court to annul the original indictment against him filed with the police. “We have a very good case for quashing the First Information Report,” Durrani said.

Only a handful of the Pakistani Christians jailed on charges of blasphemy have ever been granted bail during the long years of their trial proceedings. Even so, the bailed defendants have been forced to remain in hiding, with one such Christian shot and killed minutes after he had appeared at a court hearing.

Masih is charged with violating Articles 295 and 295-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, not under the harsher 295-C statute which requires the death penalty for slandering the Muslim prophet Mohammed.

Currently seven Pakistani Christians are jailed without bail on similar cases of alleged blasphemy, three of them under trial in the lower courts with four others appealing death or life-in-prison sentences.

END

***A photograph of Anwer Masih is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Panama Gathering Assesses Environment for Religious LibertyLatin church leaders examine strategies for advancing rights.by David Miller

MIAMI, May 27 (Compass) – “When it comes to freedom of religion, we have to recognize that no one has conceded anything to us evangelicals in Latin America. Every advance we have gained has been through hard work and the grace of God.”

According to a report today from Open Doors, this is the assessment of Francisco Anabalon, pastor and religious rights advocate from Santiago, who addressed delegates to the Latin American Leadership Conference held May 19-22 in Panama City.

The event, sponsored by the Latin America Evangelical Confraternity (CONELA), drew more than 500 church leaders from 20 countries to the isthmus. The four-day gathering gave delegates an opportunity to assess the current and future role of evangelical Christians in the continent.

Speaking on the theme “The Political Responsibility of the Christian,” Anabalon presented a historical review of the efforts of evangelical Christians to throw off centuries of religious discrimination in his native Chile and achieve equality with followers of the official state religion.

“After a while, we realized we were involved in politics,” he said wryly, acknowledging that many Latin American evangelicals consider politics a corrupt activity and staunchly avoid it.

“But we soon realized that we were fighting not just for the rights of evangelical Christians, but for the rights of every minority who suffers discrimination,” he said.

Open Doors hosted a round table workshop on religious freedom at the CONELA conference that brought together religious rights activists from the region to share experiences and develop strategies to confront discrimination on religious grounds.

Walter Alejos, member of the Congress of Peru (Ayacucho District), initiated discussion with a sketch of recent legislative battles fought to extend religious equality to evangelical Christians in Peru.

Former president of Guatemala Jorge Serrano followed, pointing out some of the impediments to full religious freedom in Latin America.

“The fact that the majority of evangelicals have come from the lower strata of society and that pastors have trained them not to insist on their rights, impedes progress,” Serrano said.

“Nevertheless, today in Guatemala we have religious equality, open (Christian) education and Protestant chaplains in our prisons and armed forces.”

Round table participants included Abdias Tovilla and Esdras Alonso, religious rights attorneys and active pastors from Chiapas, Mexico; and Ricardo Esquivia, director of the Commission on Restoration, Life and Peace of the Evangelical Council of Colombia and founder of the youth organization Justapaz.

Julio Rosas, president of the INTERDES advocacy group based in Lima, Peru, and pastoral counselor to Open Doors Agape Network in Latin America, coordinated the Religious Liberty and Equality round table.

“Efforts such as the round table at the CONELA Leadership Conference are important because the persecution of the church needs to be at the top of the agenda of Christian leadership circles in our continent,” said Richard Luna of Open Doors.

“In so far as we take up the cause of those who suffer for the faith, religious liberty efforts are worthwhile, necessary and biblical,” he added. “The Word says that if one suffers, we all suffer.

“We can only share the joy of brotherhood if we also share the suffering. Too many are suffering alone.”

*** Photos of the Panama conference are available. Please contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Saudi Arabia Jails Indian NationalReligious police tortured expatriate for ‘spreading Christianity.’by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, June 9 (Compass) -- An Indian national abducted and tortured 10 weeks ago by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for “spreading Christianity” remains jailed in Riyadh’s Al-Hair Prison without trial or even formal charges against him.

Brian Savio O’Connor, 36, was accosted on Al Massif street just outside his living quarters in the Mursalat district of Riyadh early on the evening of March 25. As he started down the street, a muttawa (member of the religious police) stopped him, asking harshly, “Why did you not attend ‘Salah’ [evening prayers]?”

Surprised, since shops along the street were already re-opening as their owners returned from Muslim prayers, O’Connor took out his Saudi identity card, proving that he was a Christian. When another three men came up and tried to grab his I.D. card, O’Connor ran back to a shop where he had seen a work acquaintance. But the group of men chased him into the shop, grabbing and beating him right there.

O’Connor was then dragged to a mosque with an adjacent muttawa office just behind his home. There, O’Connor later told friends who visited him in prison, his legs were chained and he was hung upside down. For the next seven hours, his muttawa captors alternately kicked and beat him in the chest and ribs.

According to International Christian Concern, a U.S.-based advocacy group who first broke the news of O’Connor’s arrest on March 31, O’Connor was “whipped on his back and soles of his feet by electrical wires,” causing intense pain.

After some time, one of his tormentors told him that he would not be harmed any further if he just “told the truth.” When questioned, O’Connor declared that he did preach the Bible, but he denied converting Muslims to Christianity. A few minutes later, the beatings resumed, along with painful squeezing of his face.

O’Connor said that at one point, when he was gasping for breath and moaning from the blows, a muttawa placed a call on his mobile telephone to a Saudi coordinator at his place of work. Laughing loudly, the muttawa held the phone to O’Connor’s mouth so the man on the line could hear the Indian’s groans.

Finally at 2 o’clock the next morning, the muttawa took O’Connor to the Olaya police station, ordering him put under arrest on three charges: preaching Christianity, selling liquor and peddling drugs. Ten days later, the Indian Christian was transferred to Riyadh’s Al-Hair Prison.

While held at Olaya, O’Connor was allowed visits by several friends, who then notified the Indian Embassy of his arrest. Although two embassy representatives visited him on April 3, the day before he was sent to prison, they have not since been allowed access to him by Saudi authorities.

“The charges against him are spreading Christianity, plus liquor,” an Indian Embassy official confirmed yesterday to Compass from Riyadh. “We requested to visit him in prison about two weeks ago,” he specified, “so we will go as soon as we get permission.”

In April, an embassy representative told one of the prisoner’s friends that O’Connor had “broken Saudi law” by having five Bibles, one of them Arabic and another Urdu, and that he had even admitted that he was teaching the Bible in his home.

“We do not interfere or do any kind of investigation in these cases,” the official declared. “We merely ask for the official Saudi response, and ask their government to proceed with whatever punishment is due.”

O’Connor himself has apparently been told that his embassy has secretly “agreed” with Saudi officials that he will serve a three-month sentence at Al-Hair Prison, and then be deported without any court proceedings. The Indian Embassy has denied any such arrangement.

From India, O’Connor’s older brother Raymond has vowed to begin a hunger strike to publicize his brother’s plight if the Saudi authorities have not released him by June 15. “Even my government is just washing their hands of the case,” he told Compass by telephone.

According to Raymond O’Connor, the Indian Embassy in Riyadh told him, “Everything is in the hands of the Saudis. We cannot do anything.” Despite all his calls and faxes to Riyadh, he said, he has not received one message or answer from the embassy in reply.

The All India Catholic Union issued a press release and fired off a protest letter to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia last week, demanding that the Indian Christian be “given a fair trial and released.” Their advocacy followed a diplomatic inquiry by the Indian Bishops’ Conference to the Saudi Arabian Embassy in New Delhi which went unanswered.

A cargo agent for Saudia Airlines, O’Connor left his hometown of Hubli in India’s Karnataka State six years ago to work in Saudi Arabia.

The Indian Christian currently shares a windowless cell with 16 other inmates at Al-Hair Prison. Located on the southern edge of Riyadh, the facility is Saudi Arabia’s largest prison, housing an estimated 3,500 prisoners.

“I am in here for a purpose,” O’Connor told a visitor last month, “and unless and until that assignment is complete, I cannot be released.” At least two of his cellmates have come to faith in Christ during his confinement, and others have asked him to pray for them.

***A photograph of Brian O’Connor is available electronically. Please contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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Sri Lankan Parliament to Consider Anti-Conversion BillAttacks on churches continue as politicians campaign to “promote and preserve” Buddhism.by Sarah Page

DUBLIN, June 8 (Compass) -- Members of Sri Lanka’s new Buddhist party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), will present a “Bill on the Prohibition of Forcible Conversion” to Parliament within the next two weeks. The JHU or National Heritage Party, formed to contest snap elections on April 2, published a draft of the bill in the Government Gazette, released on May 31.

Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, the Minister of Buddha Sasana, has also announced plans to introduce three new bills implementing the recommendations of a presidential commission on Buddhism held in 2002. According to a report in the Lankadeepa newspaper on June 4, these bills will address the conversion of Buddhists to other faiths

and the formation of a Buddhist court system or “Sanghadhikarana” where monks can settle disputes without reference to the courts.

The alternative bill offered by the JHU describes itself as “an act to provide for prohibitions of conversion from one religion to another by use of force or allurement or by fraudulent means.”

Claiming that Buddhism is the “foremost religion professed and practiced by the majority of people of Sri Lanka,” the bill sets out the conditions by which religious conversion will be accepted. Any person converting to another religion must report the conversion to local authorities. Those responsible for encouraging the conversion must also report their involvement.

Those who fail to meet the conditions of the bill may be “punished with imprisonment for a term which may not exceed five years and also be liable to a fine not exceeding rupees one hundred and fifty thousand ($1,508).”

In cases where the conversion involves a minor, a woman or any other group deemed “vulnerable” under the terms of the bill, the punishment increases to a possible seven years and a maximum fine of 500,000 rupees ($5,027).

According to a spokesman from the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka, “Even if the government decides to vote against the conversion bill brought forward by the JHU, they will obviously support the alternative bill championed by Minister Wickremanayake.”

The JHU took voters by surprise in the April elections, winning nine of the 225 available seats. Consisting entirely of Buddhist monks, the party was formed only a week before the February 24 deadline for poll nominations.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga had dissolved Parliament on February 7 and called for snap elections on April 2. Her party won 105 seats, falling just short of the 113 required to form a majority government. She was then forced to negotiate with smaller parties to form a new alliance.

However, the Tamil National Alliance party with its 22 seats and the Sri Lanka Muslim party with seven both sided with the opposition United National Party, giving them a total of 110 seats. This left only the JHU to align itself with the president’s United People’s Freedom Alliance, effectively making JHU the “kingmaker” and placing great power in the hands of the Buddhist monks.

Prior to the elections, an anti-conversion campaign begun in late 2002 and led by senior Buddhist monks had resulted in scores of attacks on churches throughout Sri Lanka. Statistics from the World Evangelical Alliance show that from January 2003 to March 2004, more than 140 anti-Christian incidents were recorded. These incidents

ranged from mild threats to death warnings, arson and the complete destruction of church buildings.

The snap elections brought a temporary halt to the violence, but attacks quickly resumed.

On April 29, a Buddhist monk accused the pastor of a church in Hali-ela, Badulla, of building an unauthorized structure. The pastor was called to the police station, where he explained that the church had submitted building plans and received a building permit in August 2003.

That night around 11:30 p.m., a small group of people tried to set fire to the pastor’s house. Disturbed by neighbors, the group then moved to the church property where they pulled down concrete pillars erected for the new church, and destroyed a temporary shelter constructed for church services.

On May 17, a small crowd confronted the pastor of the Prayer Tower Church in Mahawewa, Puttlam district, warning him to cease construction of his house, as a rumor had spread that he was building a Bible school. The following day, about 400 people arrived at the building site, throwing rocks into a well and creating havoc. The pastor was warned not to report the incident.

The same day, a crowd of about 50 people led by a Buddhist monk stormed the home of an Assembly of God pastor in Yakkala, Gampaha, demanding that he cease worship services. Then on May 23, a mob of 20 armed with sticks and clubs broke into the church during Sunday services, assaulting the church members and breaking chairs and musical instruments.

Police arrived during the attack and arrested one of the assailants. Investigations are continuing.

Finally, a dispute between two people in Kalutara district on May 28 escalated into a full-scale riot between Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus and Christians. Fourteen people were injured and 400 families were left homeless after the violence. Sources said two Buddhist monks were instrumental in instigating the riot.

JHU politicians have made their agenda quite clear. As party member Venerable Medhananda Thera told reporters three days after the elections, “Our sole intention is to establish a righteous Buddhist state with Buddhist values.”

(For the Sidebar)

Eliminating Reasonable DoubtThe Bill on Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religions proposed by the JHU provides specific legal definitions of terms involving “forced” or “fraudulent” conversions.

“Allurement” means an offer of any temptation in the form of any gift or gratification whether in cash or kind; grant of any material benefit, whether monetary or otherwise; or the grant of employment or grant of promotion in employment.

“Convert” means to make one person to renounce one religion and adopt another.

“Force” includes a show of force such as a threat or harm or injury of any kind, or threat of religious displeasure or condemnation of any religion or religious faith.

“Fraudulent” includes misinterpretation or any other fraudulent contrivance.

The bill also defines “Schedule 1,” a category of people who, along with women and children, are deemed more vulnerable to “forced conversions.” Under the proposed law, anyone convicted of forcibly converting a person in this category will be liable for a maximum sentence of seven years, and a fine of 500,000 rupees ($5,027).

Schedule 1 1. Those persons classified as samurdhi beneficiaries. 2. Prison inmates. 3. Inmates of rehabilitation centers. 4. Inmates of detention centers. 5. Physically or mentally retarded. 6. Employees of an organization. 7. Members of the armed forces or police. 8. Students. 9. Inmates of hospitals and or places of healing.10. Inmates of refugee centers.11. Any other category as may be prescribed by the minister by regulations.

***Photographs of Buddhist monks at a political rally held in Colombo days before the elections are available electronically. Please contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Sudanese Anglicans Evicted from Khartoum HeadquartersDefrocked bishop at center of legal controversy.by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, May 24 (Compass) -- Khartoum police forcibly evicted the Episcopal Church in Sudan (ECS) from its provincial headquarters in Khartoum last week, producing an Islamic court order declaring the property had been sold to a new owner.

With armed riot police stationed at the gate, the personnel of the ECS Guesthouse were ordered on the morning of May 20 to evacuate the building immediately, together with their movable possessions. If they failed to comply, the police warned, force would be used.

The court demand came as a total surprise to Bishop of Khartoum Ezekiel Kondo, who confirmed that a church consultation was in progress at the guesthouse that morning, with preparations for a four-day workshop on “Peace and Reconstruction in Sudan” to begin there the next day.

To avoid an outbreak of violence, the staff of the church’s provincial office and other diocesan offices of the ECS vacated the premises, setting up temporary offices in Khartoum’s Episcopal Cathedral.

As soon as all the Christian personnel had been expelled, a Khartoum church source told Compass, two sheep were sacrificed at the gate of the property, a Muslim rite enacted “to purify and rededicate” the site.

“This is an attempt to humiliate the church,” Bishop of Renk Daniel Deng told the Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS). “How can police trample through the church’s property and dismantle the archbishop’s office before our eyes?” Bishop Deng’s diocesan offices were also located at the guesthouse.

From Juba, ECS Archbishop Dr. Joseph Marona called on Khartoum’s Islamist leaders to retract the illegal sale and confiscation of the building. “I call on the government to restore the church’s property to its rightful owner, the church,” Marona said.

Purchased by the diocese in 1993, the church’s guesthouse has served as a meeting place in Khartoum for Christians of all denominations, as well as housing the church’s visitors from abroad.

But according to the court order, the church’s property had been sold two months ago to an Arab businessman by Gabriel Roric, a former government minister and defrocked Episcopal bishop who represented himself to the court as the ECS Archbishop. Soon afterwards, the new owners opened a court case against Roric, complaining that he had failed to evacuate the premises so that they could take possession.

Roric had been named in the ownership papers as the church’s trustee over the property when it was first purchased. At that time, Roric held the title of Bishop of Rumbek.

But Roric had been dismissed from his bishopric in May 2003, after failing to comply with a church resolution that all bishops must live and work within their own dioceses. In more than 10 years as a state minister under the Islamist government of President Omar

al-Bashir, Roric never even visited the Rumbek diocese. A new Bishop of Rumbek was named in August 2003 to replace Roric.

Although Roric acknowledged that the guesthouse property belonged to the church, he has refused since 2002 to hand over the title deed and other documents to the diocese.

According to a March report in The Sudan Mirror, Roric has announced he is forming a rival Episcopal Church of Sudan, reorganizing the provincial dioceses and naming his own set of bishops. Roric lost his ministerial position in the government in a cabinet shuffle in 2001, although he maintains a senior role in the ruling Islamist party.

Roric’s recent campaign to undermine the ECS has “the tacit support of the Khartoum government,” the ACNS noted in a May 21 release.

On the day of the eviction, Bishop Kondo declared in a written statement, “We suspect that the government might be behind Roric to do this, to put the ECS in a difficult position.”

“The story of [Roric’s] dismissal and subsequent attempts to undermine the church is well known in Khartoum,” the ACNS release stated. “The church has long recognized Roric to be acting as the agent of government security.”

Described by church leaders as a “long-time thorn in the flesh of the diocese of Khartoum,” Roric repeatedly embarrassed the church in his high-profile role as a Christian bishop serving Khartoum’s Islamist government. He reportedly refused a direct request from the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign his political position.

The ECS filed criminal charges on May 22 against Roric, accusing him of “misrepresenting the church” by selling ECS property instead of turning it over to the church. He is also charged with “illegally impersonating” the Episcopal archbishop of Sudan.

Last week’s confiscation of the ECS guesthouse follows more than a decade of government aggression against the Episcopal church’s properties, institutions and ministries across Sudan.

Part of the worldwide Anglican communion, the ECS is the largest Christian church in Sudan with five million members.

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***********************************Turkish Pastor Acquitted of Criminal ChargesDiyarbakir prosecutor cites precedence of European agreements.by Barbara G. Baker

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, May 13 (Compass) -- In what the mass-circulation Hurriyet newspaper called a “jet acquittal,” a criminal court in southeastern Turkey dropped all charges yesterday against a Protestant pastor accused of opening an “illegal” church.

Pastor Ahmet Guvener was fully acquitted in the opening hearing of his case before Diyarbakir’s Third Criminal Court.

The quick resolution of the case, based on the state prosecutor’s recommendation, surprised both Guvener and his lawyer. According to advocate Abdul Kadir Pekdemir, such a criminal case typically extends for a year or more of hearings before a verdict is issued.

More than a dozen observers at the May 12 hearing included representatives from the U.S. Consulate in Adana, the Dutch section of Amnesty International, the Alliance of Protestant Churches of Turkey and the Diyarbakir Bar Association.

At the request of presiding Judge Necla Ipek, Guvener reviewed the circumstances of building a place of worship for the Diyarbakir Evangelical Church, a Protestant congregation that grew out of house-church meetings begun in his home 10 years ago.

Guvener declared that the purpose of the new three-story building had been clear from the initial blueprints approved in 2001, and that it had openly functioned as a church since completion in April 2003.

In his opening statement for the defense, Pakdemir pointed to the strong guarantees of religious freedom contained in the constitution and laws of Turkey, as well as its signature on European human rights agreements. Under these legally binding statutes, he argued, the state is also responsible to guarantee its citizens the right to establish places of worship.

But when the judge asked State Prosecutor Vahdettin Taskiran to present the government’s case against Guvener, he promptly declared that no sufficient grounds existed to bring any charges against the pastor. Instead, Taskiran stressed that under recent reforms passed in the Turkish Parliament, international agreements now take precedence over national laws.

In accordance with human rights agreements signed with the European Union, the prosecutor said, Turkish citizens have the right both individually and in community to conduct public or private worship, as well as to teach and propagate their faith and practices.

Moments later, Judge Ipek declared Guvener acquitted and the case closed.

“Some of our authorities have approached this case emotionally,” Pekdemir commented to reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing. “My client and his congregation did

not have a place to conduct their worship. This case violated the basic principles of the republic.”

“Our prayers have been answered,” a smiling Guvener told the Turkish press afterwards.

“It’s a great step forward for Turkey,” he later told Compass, “for Christians here, for religious freedom, for democracy.”

“This has tremendous ramifications for southeast Turkey,” a member of Guvener’s congregation agreed. “It specifies that we as Protestant Christians have the freedom to be Christians, and that it’s perfectly legal for us to establish a place of worship, teach our disciples and spread our faith.”

“It is an advantageous decision,” an Izmir pastor who attended the hearing noted. “This gives strong legal precedence to many other pending cases against Protestant churches who are being accused of opening ‘illegal’ churches here.”

Like most of the other Protestant congregations formed over the past two decades in Turkey, the Diyarbakir church members are converts to Christianity from Muslim backgrounds.

Dozens of these churches across Turkey have opened court cases to prevent closure of their worship services by an Interior Ministry order in the fall of 2001, declaring their places of worship in violation of municipal zoning laws. Although the order was revoked last September, amendments to the law on opening new places of worship appear to be more restrictive than before.

In a blunt letter about Guvener’s case sent to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on May 6, the U.S. Commission of Security and Cooperation in Europe had declared the pastor’s charges to be “disingenuous and surpassing mere harassment.”

Warning that closure of the Diyarbakir church would contravene Turkey’s signed international commitments, the commission also criticized “severe limitations” inserted in last July’s revision of the law regarding new places of worship. Amendments to Law No. 4928 empower civil administrators to determine whether there is a need in any given area to justify a new place of worship.

“This severe limitation also contravenes Turkey’s OSCE (Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe) commitments, as governments have agreed to facilitate, not frustrate, the practice of religious freedom by granting state recognition and respecting the right of religious communities to establish and freely maintain places of worship,” the letter stated.

The last hurdle for Guvener’s church to obtain official status hinges on its petition filed five months ago for zoning permission, which must be approved by the local

Council for Protection of Cultural and Natural Sites. Once that has been granted, the church can apply to the municipality and governor’s office for recognition as a legal place of worship.

***Photographs of Ahmet Guvener at his Diyarbakir trial are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Vietnam’s Montagnards Face the Propaganda WarRecent demonstrations are sure to bring more repression for minority Christians.Special to Compass Direct

LOS ANGELES, May 17 (Compass) -- During the Easter weekend of April 10 and 11, and on some days afterward, Montagnards in Vietnam’s Central Highlands attempted to stage demonstrations to call attention to the harsh injustices they suffer at the hands of communist authorities and ethnic Vietnamese settlers.

Tribal demonstrators planned to travel from home villages in a coordinated manner to several main centers, especially Buonmathuot and Pleiku cities. According to reports from Montagnards in the Central Highlands, civilians and Vietnamese security forces dressed in civilian clothes attacked the demonstrators with weapons such as clubs with embedded nails, iron bars, chains, hoes and machetes. An unknown number of Montagnards were killed, hundreds more were injured and many are missing. These have either been arrested or have fled.

The government now admits the demonstrations involved thousands of people.

Information from several sources poured out after the events. The Vietnamese government mounted an aggressive propaganda campaign. On the other extreme, a U.S.-based organization supporting Montagnard rights, called the Montagnard Foundation Inc. (MFI), circulated its version of events.

A third line of reporting by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other agencies avoided MFI exaggerations but challenged Vietnam on its denials, minimizations and cover up. On April 29, the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission weighed in with a thoughtful analysis piece involving testimony from eyewitnesses. On the same day, Amnesty International began to challenge Vietnam on its crude policies toward Montagnards and published a list of eight who had died in the demonstrations.

The Vietnamese government first responded to these events with silence, denials, and minimization, then moved to admitting that a problem existed. Vietnam blamed the conflict on naive Montagnards -- who had learning disabilities, according to one source, and were easily duped. They then painted themselves as victims of an evil plot of hostile outside forces.

Just over two weeks after the events, Vietnam took foreign diplomats and journalists to the location of the unrest. The government clearly feels in control of this propaganda war by allowing foreign journalists, including Americans, to check things out for themselves. Yet with the restrictions imposed on the journalists and diplomats, experienced observers believe the truth about what happened was concealed.

During this time, a church event became the propaganda centerpiece used to illustrate that everything was fine on the religion front. The recognized Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South) planned a special meeting to mark the official recognition of the 11th church in Gia Lai Province. Local government officials tried to dissuade church leaders from holding the meeting.

However, when the Plei R’Ngol church went ahead with this meeting, the government filmed the event and gave it inordinate exposure during the evening national TV newscast on April 13. The government has made repeated references to this event since then, but they have recognized only 16 of the more than 750 church groups that functioned in Gia Lia and Dak Lak before 2002.

Widely blamed for a part in inciting the 2001 Montagnard demonstrations, the MFI reinforced this perception when it released information on April 9 that demonstrations would occur the following day. MFI also phoned foreign reporters in Hanoi on April 9, urging them to go to the Central Highlands.

At midweek, they released a list via the Internet of the villages of 139,000 demonstrators who they said had counted the cost and joined the demonstrations. Some MFI releases talked of 150,000 demonstrators. By April 12, MFI released news that 400 Christians had been killed. Several Christian news services published this figure and related “news” in additional releases without further confirmation.

According to a respected Vietnam watcher, three problems emerged from the MFI reporting. First, the announcement ahead of the event made MFI a natural scapegoat for Vietnam. At the May 12 opening session of Vietnam’s National Assembly, government officials predictably blamed the Montagnard Foundation Inc. for organizing the protests, according to an ABC Radio Australia News report.

Second, the MFI’s constant reference to Montagnard Christians in the context of the conflict is misleading and causes great hardship for many in the Montagnard Protestant church who choose to struggle for justice in other ways. The risk to them became evident in a speech Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung delivered to the National Assembly in which he called for authorities to combat plots and hostile forces among the Montagnards. Vietnamese leaders vowed to punish anyone inciting further unrest in the Central Highlands.

Finally, the exaggerations of MFI diverted attention from legitimate advocacy for the Montagnards. For instance, Human Rights Watch released a report on April 14 which

covered the events of the previous days and included solid documentation of heavy repression in the months leading up to the Easter weekend outbreak. HRW followed on April 22 with a significant release detailing events of April 10 and 11, based on credible sources. It reported that at least 10 people had been killed, but admitted it was impossible to cite accurate casualty figures and therefore called for international observers to investigate.

On April 29, the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission, citing primary sources, released Understanding the April 2004 Demonstrations in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. The same day, Amnesty International reported and listed details on eight killings.

On April 30, Vietnam celebrated the 29th anniversary of the “liberation” of the country in 1975. Ironically, Vietnam’s oppressed minorities are less liberated today than ever before.

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***********************************Vietnam’s Atrocities Against Montagnards ConfirmedFacts surrounding Easter incident slowly emerge.Special to Compass Direct

HO CHI MINH CITY, May 21 (Compass) -- In spite of monumental efforts by Vietnam to minimize and cover up their brutal repression of demonstration attempts by the Montagnard ethnic minority this past Easter, consistent information is emerging that confirms atrocities.

During Easter weekend, April 10 and 11, Montagnards in Vietnam’s Central Highlands sought to call attention to the harsh injustices they suffer at the hands of communist authorities and ethnic Vietnamese settlers. However, Vietnamese security forces attacked the demonstrators, causing many deaths, injuries, arrests, and the flight of many more to unknown locations.

Montagnards, who are largely Christian, have long been the victims of severe harassment and persecution at the hands of the Kinh majority. This ill-treatment intensified after previous demonstrations held in 2001. One church leader reported to Compass, “They [state officials] have promised to deliver to us great hardship and pain. They specifically promise us fear and revenge. Day by day the animosity between the races grows. It is virtually impossible to see how this can now be resolved.”

Reliable sources from Vietnam have produced a list of names, along with birthdates and village addresses, of 11 Ede people in seven Dak Lak provincial villages who were arrested. Sixty-three others were listed as “killed, badly wounded or known to be in hiding.” The list also covered articles that were confiscated, including small farm tractors, fuel oil, water pumps, gold and cash.

Another document, apparently prepared not long after the Easter events, reported the deaths of 205 people in seven other Dak Lak villages. In four of those villages, usually inhabited by a total of 2,200 people, only 12 people remained. The fate and location of the missing is not known; some may have now returned.

The same document reported that over 500 small farm tractors, used in transporting Montagnards from 30 villages to the demonstrations, were completely destroyed.

On May 17, the Montagnard Foundation Inc. (MFI), which Vietnam blames for the unrest, released a 12-page report giving details of the repression. The MFI report named 37 people killed during the Easter demonstration. Four of the dead were described as Jarai from Gia Lai Province and the remainder as Ede from Dak Lak.

The MFI claims it has information that another 239 people, as yet unidentified, were also killed. Numbers in the report issued by MFI immediately after Easter weekend appear to have been exaggerated. However, MFI spokesmen believe that information still emerging will confirm their earlier claim that at least 400 people were killed that weekend.

“The verifying of deaths is a huge challenge,” a respected Vietnam watcher explained, “but it is looking more and more certain that the number of confirmed dead will exceed 100.

“Vietnam’s admission of only two deaths is ridiculous. However, it will prove very hard to provide forensic or testimonial evidence because Vietnam is engaged in a rapid and thorough cleanup of evidence, and is now firmly rejecting calls for independent investigations. Further, authorities are going to extraordinary lengths to prevent news from getting out, and to prevent official visitors such as diplomats and journalists from talking freely to people.”

Visits to the region by U.S. diplomats, a Vatican delegation, and a team comprised of the Canadian, Norwegian, Swiss and New Zealand ambassadors were completely controlled by Vietnam officials. A handful of Montagnards were selected to speak with the foreign visitors. However, local sources say they were threatened with severe consequences if they so much as hinted at the truth of what happened.

After each diplomatic visit, Vietnamese state journalists published manufactured quotes saying the diplomats had complimented Vietnam for its enlightened minority policies. In each case, the diplomats took strong public exception to the misrepresentation.

Vietnam’s Kinh majority have a long history of racist attitudes towards the Montagnards and other minorities. The minorities are subject to discrimination through the illegal seizure of their lands, along with poor access to education, health care, jobs,

government relief and small loans. Those who do have access to public schools are often driven out of the classroom by the ridicule and abuse of fellow students.

There were several accounts of cruelty to Montagnard children during the post-Easter crackdown. One report stated that a number of third grade Montagnard schoolgirls were attacked on the road in Buon Poc. One of the girls was stabbed to death, while another was “humiliated” (a euphemism for rape) and then stoned to death. A similar fate befell a schoolgirl in Buon Dha Prong.

Another source reported that those attacking the Montagnards in a certain location killed a number of children first, saying this was a pre-emptive action to stop future demonstrators.

Some human rights organizations are concerned that democratic governments seem unwilling to address these atrocities, apparently because they lack forensic “proof.” It appears that Vietnamese authorities have worked hard to prevent such proof from surfacing.

A Montagnard pastor told Compass, “If all foreign countries incline their ears toward Vietnam and continue to believe its lies, then it is absolutely certain that, bit by bit, the Montagnard people will be totally exterminated.”

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**********************************************************************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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Compass DirectP.O. Box 27250Santa Ana, CA 92799USAPhone: 949-862-0314FAX: 949-752-6536E-mail: info@compassdirect.org

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