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Subject: Persecution report for April 8, 2003.

Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 16:57:09 -0600

From: "Bruce Atchison" <ve6xtc@telusplanet.net>

To: "Ted" <thilts@help-for-you.com>

CC: "John M. Lindner" <jml@christianaid.org>

The Voice Of The Martyrs presents these incidents of believers suffering persecution.

Sri Lanka:

Rural church torched.

A small rural church in the Anuradhapura district of Sri Lanka has been facing harassment from local Buddhist monks for several months. While the government has stepped in to try to assist, the problems have persisted, including a protest rally against the church on February 16, demanding that the church close.

According to an April 1 report from the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka, the Apostolic Church of Padhavi Siripura was set on fire during the night of March 27, completely destroying the building. There were no injuries and no witnesses. Anuradhapura is a traditional Buddhist stronghold, attracting pilgrims from around the world.

Nigeria:

Elections may bring Sharia law.

As presidential elections are set to begin in Nigeria on April 19, the possibility of Sharia law spreading to more states increases. The front-runners in the election are Olusegun Obasanjo, the current president and a Christian from the south, and Muha-mmadu Buhari, a Muslim northerner. At present, twelve of Nigeria's thirty-six states are governed by Islamic Sharia law. According to a March 31 report from CNSNews, Josiah Warron, press attache at the Nigerian Embassy in Kenya, expects this number to increase if Muha-mmadu Buhari wins the election. Since the election is taking place during the Easter Season, some Christian leaders are concerned that Christians may be less likely to vote.

Please go to http://www.persecution.net to learn more about the suffering of Christians and how they can be helped.

Mission Network News has these reports of persecution.

India:

Anti-conversion law hinders evangelism.

Mission organizations continue to weigh the ramifications of the newest anti-conversion law in the state of Gujarat. It passed despite a huge outcry from Christians.Dayspring International 's John Gilman is concerned. "If you even offer to show someone a free film, like we do, and come and see our movie or any other kind of thing that would be considered an allurement and part of the anti-conversion movement and a person could go to jail for several years (and) be fined." Dayspring shares the love of Christ through an Indian acted film on the life of Christ.

Gilman says it has a huge impact on the lives of low-caste Dalits." That message is profound for a Dalit person who has been told all of his life that God hates you and you are despised.They are truly moved deep in their hearts and the door is open for them to find Christ." Gilman isn't sure what this will mean for Dayspring's work, but he's asking people to pray.

India:

Christians discriminated against in water distribution.

A serious water crisis is likely in 19 Indian states due to a lack of rainfall in the last three to four years.Living Water International's Jonathon Wiles says the problem is worse for the national church. "We're not just dealing with a complete lack of clean, safe drinking water, we're dealing with unequal access to the safe drinking water that's there. What I mean by that is, because of the social structure in most of rural India, people who become Christians are typically outcast from society." Wiles says in areas openly hostile to the Gospel, the church has to be more careful about ministry. However, Living Water found a way to help. "We have been drilling wells in Orissa in areas where there's not already a church in hopes of opening the doors in that area for the Gospel because the people in the area who don't have the water want to know why people are coming in and giving them water, so that opens the doors for local believers and the people who are working with Living Water to be able to share the Gospel a little bit more openly."

Please check http://www.mnnonline.org for missions news and a weekday audio broadcast.

Christian Aid Missions provides the following persecution reports.

Pakistan:

Christians fear imminent slaughter.

A Pakistani Christian leader says believers there fear a slaughter of Christians may begin. The leader said that mosques were filled with anti-Christian rhetoric on March 28. Sermon titles announced "War Against Islam" and "War Between Truth and Evil."

"Mohammed said fight the infidels with everything you have," and "Fight the followers of the devil," some of the Muslim clerics preached, identifying Christians with Americans.

In light of that, religious extremists allegedly have scheduled a demonstration on April 2. It is expected Muslim clerics will rail against President George W. Bush and his "War Against Islam" and speak against Christianity. Pakistani Christians fear the rhetoric may spark an attack on Christians, possibly as soon as the current All-Muslim holy days end.

"Tension and fear are increasing day by day," a confidential spokesman told Christian Aid. "Please pray that our Heavenly Father will give us wisdom and courage to face this situation."

In a separate report, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (UK) said that North West Frontier Province is on the verge of enacting legislation that will quickly lead to "Talibanization." The Provincial Cabinet unanimously adopted the Islamic Shariah Act adopting Sharia (Islamic) law. It is expected that it will pass the Provincial Assembly without resistance, since the radical Islamic party holds two-thirds of the seats. Already, music programs and cinemas have been banned in most of the province, cable TV and other media are under scrutiny, and some commercial banks reportedly have been asked to cease charging interest on loans.

The new law, if adopted, will make praying five times a day mandatory for all residents; all business will have to cease during those times, wearing the national dress will be compulsory, women's freedoms will be greatly curtailed, and Islamic education will be compulsory for all.

"Christians are particularly concerned that the implementation of Shariah law will formally legitimize the persecution of non-Muslim communities," the report said. That complete report can be read at www.csw.org.uk.

North Korea:

North Korean escapees tell of horrors.

The following shocking report is a slightly edited version of a report issued by Christian Solidarity Worldwide and provided here to inform Missions Insider readers.

Two North Koreans who had once served in the regime's horrible prisons told the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva last Thursday the ugly conditions and brutal treatment drove some prisoners to cannibalism and suicide.

"Kang Chul Hwan was arrested at age nine along with several members of his family because of his grandfather's alleged political crimes," the report said. "He spent ten years in a prison camp in North Korea where he witnessed children being kicked to death, worked to death or publicly executed."

Kang told the U.N., "A third of the children died of malnourishment. In order to survive, I ate rats, cockroaches and snakes. Children simply disappeared from the camp."

Lee Min Bok is a former North Korean Plant Genetic Engineer who was sent to prison camp after being caught attempting to flee to China. He survived terrible brutality at the hands of guards in both China and North Korea before being sent to the State Security Police Detention Centre in Hyesan City.

He said: "The food situation was so bad that cannibalism was quite widespread. A woman who had just given birth was so hungry that she ate her own newborn baby. Brothers ate their own brothers in order to survive.

"There were no sanitation facilities and no showers and your body became full of insects. There were tens of thousands of lice all over my body. There was no freedom to kill them. The concentration camps in North Korea today are like Hitler's concentration camps."

Kim Sang Hun, a South Korean who has worked for 20 years as a UN official and has devoted the last six years to aiding North Koreans, said: "Even using the most conservative estimates, the number of victims of extra-judicial killing in North Korea over the past 50 years of the regime's entire history stands close to one million, or five percent of the entire prisoner population of 300,000 each year.

"We are of the conviction that unless we stop such crimes against humanity from being committed in North Korea today, they are bound to spread elsewhere in the world in the generations to come. In contrast to the recent case of the U.N. inspection team searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a good number of reliable witnesses are available today to identify the locations of these camps and of prisoner burial sites in North Korea."

The speakers met with diplomatic missions and others to urge the Commission on Human Rights to adopt its first resolution on human rights in North Korea during this session. A full text of the message can be obtained from CSW at www.csw.org.uk or by writing richard.childvers@csw.org.uk.

Syria:

Syrian Christians help iraqi refugees.

Iraqis seeking refuge in Syria bear the emotional scars of war, according to a direct report received by Christian Aid.

A team of Jordanian and Syrian Christians visited several cities in the northeastern tip of the country between Iraq and Turkey. There they found hundreds of Iraqi families who had left their homes searching for peace, support and rest. Most were from Christian background. Most of them had left some of their family members behind. Almost all came from Baghdad. Forty percent were children age 15 or under. All told sad and discouraging stories.

The children had left their schools and friends behind. Their emotional state was shattered. "Their eyes are full of tears with astonishment and wonder," the leader said.

He said the people were staying with other Christian families--two or three families to a house. In some cases five families shared a house while their hosts lived elsewhere.

The team left food and in some cases offered medical assistance, as many were suffering from major health problems.

The team leader said he was expecting to visit hundreds of other Iraqi families in the next week.

"We are sharing a huge burden," the leader said, who is pastor of a small Christian church in Syria. "The problem is bigger than what we have, but we believe that the Lord is giving us a unique way to serve Him."

Gifts to help Iraqi refugees can be given by credit card at Christian Aid's website www.christianaid.org or by calling 1-800-977-5650.

Jordan:

Jordanian school trainee incommunicado after returning to Iraq.

An Iraqi graduate of a theological school in Jordan who returned to pastor a church in Iraq has not been heard from since March 17.

The young man, brought up in the Orthodox Armenian Church, was won to the Lord by an evangelical pastor in 1994, and went to Jordan in 1997 to acquire more knowledge of the Bible. He completed his bachelor's degree last spring and enrolled in the master's degree program.

He was on course to complete his second degree this spring, but the Lord began dealing with him about returning to Iraq. He left last November to return to Iraq to minister to his people. He was hoping to open a church in Baghdad that had been closed, but instead was assigned to a church without a pastor in Basra in January.

Please pray for him and his congregation during these troubled times. To learn more about the Bible school ministry, write insider@christianaid.org and put MI-413 420-JETS on the subject line.

Jordanian Christian Widow and Children Still in Jeopardy

A Christian widow who has been ordered to turn over her two children to be raised as Muslims or go to jail is still in jeopardy in Jordan.

Hussam Rasmi Issa Jibreen was a soldier with the Jordanian Army when he died while on peacekeeping duty in Kosovo in 1994. Upon applying for widow's benefits, Sahim Qandah was told her husband had secretly converted to Islam three years earlier. As proof, a document signed by two witnesses was shown. In place of her husband's signature was only an X.

At first Mrs. Qandah learned benefits for her children, Rawan, 15, and Fadi, 13, could be received as long as they went to a Muslim guardian. So she authorized her brother, a Muslim cleric, to receive them. Records show, however, that very little of that support reached the children.

Subsequently, courts ruled Mrs. Qandah was an "unfit guardian" for her own children because she distanced them from Islamic rituals and ordered her to surrender the children to authorities who would turn them over to her brother. If she failed to do so by February 5 she could be jailed.

The deadline came and went and the order to jail her has not been enforced, thanks in part to the number of letters, e-mails, faxes and petitions sent from the international community.

The issue is not a mere matter of Islamic law. Advocates for Mrs. Qandah point out first of all that there is no hard evidence that her husband ever converted to Islam.

Secondly, when the courts have ruled that Mrs. Qandah was unfit on religious grounds, they contravened the Jordanian Constitution, which says that "Jordanians shall be equal before the law," "there shall be no discrimination...on grounds of ...religion" and that "personal freedom shall be guaranteed."

Moreover, some are now considering going to court to have Mrs. Qandah's brother judged as an unfit guardian of the children because he did not use the child support funds appropriately.

Christian relatives in neighboring lands have offered to receive Mrs. Qandah and the children, but thus far the widow and her children have been barred from leaving the country.

The bottom line is that authorities have thus far failed to enforce the judgment, and continued international attention seems to be helping. It is reported that Prince Hassan, brother to the late King Hussein, has taken an interest in the case and seeks to resolve the situation to benefit Mrs. Qandah and her children.

Polite letters of concern can be faxed to King Abdullah II at (011) 962-6-535-3025 and to Prince El Hassan bin Talal at (011) 962-6-463-4995.

This report is provided with input from Elizabeth Kendal of World Evangelical Alliance, and is given in gratitude for Missions Insider readers who have prayed, sent letters of concern, and made inquiries concerning Mrs. Qandah's status. We will not give further reports until something specific happens.

Please visit http://www.missionaid.org for more stories like these.

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