COMPASS DIRECTGlobal News from the Frontlines

June 21, 2002 E-Mail Version

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 2002 Compass Direct

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

(1) Forgotten Christians of the Persecuted Church***Remembering those whose stories don’t make the headlines.

CHINA(2) Letters from ChinaGovernment regulations and cults hinder church activity.

COLOMBIA(3) Bucking the Terrorism TrendExperts report a worldwide decline in terrorist attacks -- except in Colombia. What does it mean for the church?

(4) Kidnapped Pastor FreedTwelve-day captivity ends with Bible ransom.

(5) The Good News from ColombiaChristian leaders dream of better days ahead.

CUBA(6) Christians Frustrated Over Community Church PlansEcumenical building project in Havana suburb appears dead.

ERITREA(7) Eritrea Closes Evangelical ChurchesPressure may be coming from the dominant Orthodox Church.

INDIA(8) Indian Family Refused AsylumUnited Kingdom officials believe persecution is an ‘aberration.’

1st Rejection Letter: No Religious Persecution in India

2nd Rejection Letter: Christians are Biased Sources on Persecution

(9) Christian Leader Charged with Illegal Inducements in ConversionsOrissa Freedom of Religion Act effectively prevents conversions.

(10) Murder Trial Heats Up in IndiaWitnesses identify Dara Singh in the Staines murder trial.

INDONESIA(11) Where Persecution Starts -- By Losing an ArgumentFighting for truth in Indonesia.

JORDAN (12) Widow Promised Solution for Her ChildrenFamily leaves hiding to return home.

NIGERIA(13) Christians Face a Variety of ProblemsReligion, ethnicity and politics divide Africa’s most populous nation.

PAKISTAN(14) Blasphemy ‘Convict’ Shot Dead in Pakistani JailModerate Muslim’s appeal case was pending.

(15) Islamabad Hospital Discharges Last Church Blast Victim***Critically injured Christians still face months of recovery.

(16) Christian Brothers Await Blasphemy Verdict Appeal***Accuser’s lawyers demand death penalty.

(17) Woman Fights to Overturn Forced Marriage, Conversion***Christian girl is kidnapped and sold to a Muslim buyer.

(18) Pakistani Defense Lawyers ThreatenedExtremists vow to kill men defending alleged ‘blasphemers.’

PHILIPPINES(19) U.S. Missionary Hostage Killed in Philippine Rescue AttemptMartin and Gracia Burnham had been held for more than a year.

VIETNAM(20) Religious Leaders Hear Plaudits, Others Hear Cries of Pain Delegation’s spin on persecution conflicts with confirmed reports.

(21) ‘Misunderstandings’ Plague Vietnam’s Religious Liberty PolicyGovernment launches a propaganda counterattack after reports of abuses.

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

***********************************(1) Forgotten Christians of the Persecuted ChurchRemembering Those Whose Stories Don’t Make the Headlines

While it would be impossible to relate all the untold or lesser-known stories of persecuted Christians worldwide, below are updates of a few in danger of being forgotten.

Shaiboub William Arsal [Egypt]

Two years ago, Shaiboub William Arsal was convicted of murdering his cousin and another young Coptic Christian in El-Kosheh, a village in Upper Egypt. Then 38 years of age, he was sentenced to 15 years at hard labor, the maximum penalty allowed for manslaughter under Egyptian law.

But in fact, the illiterate day laborer had become the scapegoat in a flagrant cover-up of police brutality in Egypt’s Sohag province.

Arrested the morning after the double murder, Shaiboub was among more than 1,000 Christian villagers interrogated, threatened and abused over the next few weeks by local police investigating the crime. Rather than pursue the Muslim suspect named by the Coptic community, the police seemed determined to find one or more Christian culprits.

But when the local Coptic bishop publicly protested against their harsh treatment of his flock, police officials settled on Shaiboub as the guilty party. After holding two Coptic army conscripts under torture for several weeks, the police forced them to sign prepared statements that they had seen Shaiboub commit the murders.

The two Copts later retracted the confessions as false, declaring they were forced to sign them. But the Sohag Criminal Court refused their retractions, declaring they were “void of any credible evidence that the claims of coercion were true.” Apart from police testimony, the two written statements were the prosecution’s only evidence in the case.

Reacting to international inquiries on the case, the Egyptian government claimed the murders were a “normal criminal incident” that had been “grossly exaggerated” by the foreign press. A half-hearted inquiry into the alleged police excesses was quietly whitewashed by a judicial investigation, and after repeated delays and deferments, Shaiboub’s guilty verdict was announced on June 5, 2000.

In contrast to Shaiboub’s sentence, two self-confessed Muslim murderers who shot and killed a Coptic monk in September 1999 were given only seven-year prison terms.

By August 2000, defense lawyers had filed an appeal of the Sohag Criminal Court’s verdict before the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest court of appeal.

But to date, there has been no answer.

“The courts of Egypt are under no obligation to answer this appeal,” Coptic lawyer Mamdouh Nakhla told Compass. Although the Court of Cassation normally responds to such an appeal application within six months to three years, the Egyptian legal system can choose to ignore it entirely.

“Or, they could just refuse it, say no, and it would be finished,” Nakhla said. “That’s just as likely,” he admitted, noting that if Shaiboub’s conviction should be overturned, the courts would then be obliged to resolve the case by finding the real culprit.

Shaiboub is currently incarcerated with some 1,500 other prisoners at a prison farm, part of the Tora maximum-security prison complex on the southeast edge of Cairo. His family, who live 330 miles away, can visit him once a month, for 30 minutes.

Although isolated in a solitary cell while under trial, Shaiboub now shares a cell with 25 or 30 other prisoners at a time, his lawyer said. Under current prison regulations, after serving three years of his hard-labor sentence, he would be eligible on the basis of good behavior for transfer to a general or light-security prison.

Shaiboub and his wife Suad have two sons, Emad (13) and William (7), and a daughter, Basma (8). Together with his mother in her 70s, they are being supported by his brother and church sources.

***A photo of Shaiboub Arsal and family is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

The “Padang Six” [Indonesia]

One of Indonesia’s worst miscarriages of justice against Christians took place in Padang, Sumatra island in 1998-99. Three Christians, including two pastors, were arrested and jailed for their role in helping a young Muslim girl who came to them claiming to have become a Christian.

In what may have been an elaborate sting operation, the Christians were accused of raping and abducting her. In 1999, with Muslim crowds outside the court baying for blood, they were sentenced on the flimsiest evidence.

Mr. Salmon Ongirwalu was sentenced to 10 years in prison; the Rev. Yanawardi Koto was given seven years, and the Rev. Robert Marthinus was given six years. In addition,

the wives of Mr. Ongirwalu and Rev. Marthinus, and the church secretary, Ms. Jenny Mendrofa, were each handed six-year sentences for complicity, though none were asked to serve their sentences.

The three men appealed to the Indonesian Supreme Court. But in early 2001, the court refused to hear the case. The case was then referred to Indonesian President Wahid, who had the power to offer a pardon. Wahid was known to be sympathetic to their plight, but politics cruelly intervened and he was impeached and replaced by Megawati in mid 2001. President Megawati has shown no interest in the case.

All three continue to serve their sentences. Salmon Ongirwalu at first lost weight and contracted diseases from the prison food. His wife, however, is now able to bring him food every day, and this has greatly improved his health. If he qualifies for a government remission program, the earliest he can hope for release is at the end of 2003.

Yanawardi Koto works in the rehabilitation program of the jail and often travels outside the prison on project work. He is also considered so trustworthy that he is given a special one-night pass each month to spend with his family. He has a wife and two young children. If remission is granted to him, then he might also be free in the second half of 2003.

Robert Marthinus has also impressed the prison authorities with his good conduct. He is given a one-day leave once a month also, and often uses this time to lead services at his church. If remission is applied, he can expect to be freed later this year or in the first quarter of 2003.

After the justice question, the biggest issue was support for the families. Salmon and Yanawardi both have two children and Robert has three. But local Christians rallied around the families, and some missions have also given money to the families. So they have survived, and the children continue to be educated.

The area remains raw with the memories of the trial and riots. Christians number barely 400 in an area dominated by the staunchly Muslim Minang people, four-million-strong. Indonesia’s reputation as a place where Christians may receive a fair trial remains in tatters. This is the country where three men who took pity on a girl claiming to have been rejected by her Muslim parents have served a total of 12 years in prison thus far for their kindness. They remain jailed.

***A photo of the “Padang Six” is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

Ranjha Masih [Pakistan]

When he was arrested four years ago during funeral processions for Catholic Bishop John Joseph of Faisalabad, Ranjha Masih was 50 years old. Jailed without bail ever since, his hair and beard have turned white in the local jail, and his health is failing.

“He’s becoming weaker and weaker each time I see him,” his wife Rashidaan Bibi told Compass, wiping her eyes with the end of her wrinkled dupatta, the traditional long scarf worn by rural women of the Punjab.

Ranjha’s wife said her husband, a long-time personal friend of Bishop John, had been deeply shocked by the prominent cleric’s suicide, made in protest against the victimization of Christians and other religious minorities under Pakistan’s notorious “black laws” on blasphemy.

“Bishop John really loved my husband,” she said, and their entire family joined the sad processions through Faisalabad on the bishop’s burial day, May 8, 1998.

While returning home afterwards at dusk with his brother and three of his sons, she said, the men met a large procession. Thinking that the group were Christians, Ranjha shouted at them to return home, saying that the funeral was over.

But without warning, her sons later told her, the crowd rushed at their father with weapons and sticks in their hands. The mob of angry young Muslims grabbed Ranjha and began beating him, accusing him of throwing a rock that broke a neon sign bearing a verse from the Quran.

When the police arrived, Ranjha was arrested and taken off in a jeep. After his sons crept home and reported the incident to the family, the mosque loudspeakers in their neighborhood blared late that night, declaring that “Ranjha Masih was a blasphemer who should be killed and his house burned.” Together with most of their Christian neighbors, the entire family fled overnight. Early the next morning, a Muslim mob surrounded their empty house, breaking down the doors and shattering windows until the police arrived to stop the destruction.

His family could learn nothing of his fate for several weeks, until by chance a relative who was at the local courthouse saw Ranjha in a queue of chained prisoners. “Our whole family rushed there to see him,” his wife said. “He was in a police van, so we could hardly see him, but we could talk through the window.”

Ranjha later told them he had been shifted from one place to another, always blindfolded and in heavy chains, and beaten repeatedly. According to a fact-finding report by Lahore’s Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), he was taken to Thana Thekerewala, in the suburbs of Faisalabad, where he was “chained and tortured for approximately 15 days.”

Seven weeks after his arrest, Ranjha was brought before a judge and formally indicted for violation of Section 295-C of the blasphemy law, despite the fact that in the police registry he was charged only under Section 295-A. While the former statute requires capital punishment for conviction, the latter calls for lighter sentences.

Incredibly, Ranjha’s trial is still in process before the Faisalabad Sessions Court, where he is being defended by Khalil Tahir, a Christian lawyer himself under threat for taking the case.

“The prosecution has finally rested its case,” a representative of the Catholic Church’s National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) handling the case told Compass in mid May. “Now the defense can begin, so it will take at least two or three more months.”

But on May 15, the judge failed to appear for the hearing, and on May 28, the case was postponed until June 8, when again the judge did not attend. The court session was re-scheduled for June 19.

Ranjha’s family are allowed to visit him once a month for 30 minutes, no more than four persons at a time. Guards at the Faisalabad jail observe very strict security, his wife said, and they are never allowed to speak with him privately.

“The guards tell us, ‘We are doing you a favor, being kind to even allow you to visit this blasphemer!’” she said. “Sometimes we have to listen to their abuse for several hours, waiting to see him, because we are not allowed to visit him until all the other prisoners’ visitors have left.”

His wife said her husband does not know how to read, and there is no one near him in the prison who can read the Bible to him. “He can just pray on his own,” she said.

In the meantime, one of his sons and several other relatives have lost their jobs over his arrest on blasphemy charges. Rashidaan Bibi and her husband have five sons and one daughter, three of them married, and several grandchildren.[Return to Index]

***********************************(2) Letters from ChinaCults and Government Regulations Hinder Church Activity

Anhui Province“Recently our church has again suffered persecution from the government. They do

not allow house church meetings. Our Christian workers have been locked up and fined. Our church has been damaged financially. They have only just been released. I hope you will pray for our church. Our district is an area of great poverty and the workers are weak, so the church is not in a revival situation.”

-- Letter from Mr. Guo dated March 6, 2002

Hainan Island“In the city in which I am at present living, there are three meeting points but all

belonging to the Three Self [official] church. You probably know the Three Self churches are under government control. The content of the sermons preached by their pastors is

laid down by the government. Some of this is not according to Scripture. The brothers and sisters here all understand this as we have some knowledge of the Bible. So when they preach things against the truth of the Bible, we do not accept it.”

-- Letter from Mr. Wang dated January 29, 2002

Hebei Province“Last year the letters I wrote [to a Christian organization in Hong Kong] were all

confiscated by the county police station. They forbade me to correspond any further. I was sentenced by them to pay a fine of 300 RMB [$40] and I was labeled a ‘counter-revolutionary and traitor.’ So I lost touch with you for a while. But now I’m writing to ask for a Bible handbook, Scripture concordance, Bible encyclopedia, Life of Jesus, etc.”

-- Letter dated March 20, 2002

Hunan Province“I would ask you to pray for us. The local office managing religious affairs is giving

out all kinds of rules and regulations to people who believe in religion. They want us to obey them in everything and not obey God. They bind us hand and foot. They don’t bother about God’s will. But if you disobey their regulations, you will be put in custody. You are only released if you give them money. All house churches must register. If you don’t, they order you to stop meeting. Those who undertake religious training classes without permission will be fined between 500 and 5,000 RMB [$65 - $650]. If you preach or conduct religious propaganda outside registered or temporarily registered places of worship, then you will be fined 200 - 2,000 RMB [$25 - $250]. Brothers and sisters in Henan have been imprisoned for three years for not meeting in specified places. Christians in Yunnan province have also been imprisoned very recently. So far the local government here has not implemented these regulations, but if they do, it will be quite normal. Please pray for us.”

-- Letter from Mr. Z in Jishou City dated April 2, 2002

Inner Mongolia“Here in the north, very few Christians have a vision for mission. The church itself is

immature, and there are very few capable and far-sighted leaders. Because of government interference and disruption by cults and sects as well as Chinese people’s conservatism, most churches here are lukewarm towards mission. Three years ago, three South Korean missionaries came here to start Bible training. The Three Self [official] church did not welcome them. So some far-sighted young people set up house churches to welcome them. But later they were opposed by the local government, and five believers were convicted of ‘religious and political crimes’ and sentenced to prison.”

-- Letter from Mr. Dong dated January 29, 2002

Jiangsu Province“My situation is very bad. In April and May 2001, the house churches came under

attack. Some of the brothers and sisters were put in prison. Even now we cannot conduct normal church life.”

-- Letter dated January 24, 2002

Liaoning Province“Now the ‘Three Self’ [official] church set up by the government is persecuting us

even more. They reported me and several Christian workers to the police and to the Religious Affairs and Minorities Office. They labeled us as a so-called ‘cult.’ When they discovered our meeting, they reported us to the Public Security to arrest us. Many people here are unclear about the distinction between the house church and the Three Self church. Many people fail to discern the true nature of the Three Self. Many people look up to the big churches and consider only those ‘protected’ by the government to be legal. So we are harried on every side. Please pray for us.”

-- Letter from Mr. Liu dated February 9, 2002

Zhejiang Province“Just recently the atmosphere in my school has become very tense because of Falun

Gong. So anyone with religious faith is in a sensitive position. The political instructors have even drawn up name-lists of all those pupils who have religious beliefs. So people are extremely nervous. But fortunately I am one of the members of this statistical committee so I can get away with things!”

-- Letter from Mr. Wang dated January 31, 2002[Return to Index]

***********************************(3) Bucking the Terrorism TrendWorldwide Terrorist Attacks Decline -- Except in Colombia. What Does It Mean for the Church?by David Miller

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (Compass) -- The war against international terrorism seems to be making some headway, according to a recent report released by the U.S. State Department. In 2001, investigators say, the number of terrorist incidents worldwide declined by nearly one-fifth, despite the horrendous death toll on September 11 in New York and Washington. That’s the good news.

The bad news? More than half the terrorist attacks committed last year occurred in one country -- Colombia.

The annual report on Patterns of Global Terrorism registered 346 separate terrorist attacks in 2001. Of those, 55.2 percent were committed by three armed groups operating in this South American nation of 42 million. Four out of five terrorist attacks committed against U.S. citizens or corporations on foreign soil last year occurred in Colombia. Most of these incidents were directed against oil and mining interests operated by American companies such as Occidental Petroleum and Drummond.

The report also revealed that Colombia, once again, suffered the world’s highest incidence of kidnapping. Some 2,800 persons were abducted during the year, most of them by insurgent groups. Ransom payments are second only to cocaine trafficking as the greatest source of income for the rebels.

Finally, whereas terrorist attacks worldwide decreased by more than 20 percent in 2001, Colombia registered a slight growth in terrorist activity (2.6 percent).

“An increased international awareness of terrorism did nothing to stop or even slow the pace of terrorist actions by Colombia’s three terrorist organizations -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), National Liberation Army (ELN) and United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) -- in 2001,” the Global Terrorism report states. “Some 3,500 murders were attributed to these groups.”

The statistics on terror for 2002 in Colombia are likely to climb even higher. Violence has intensified since late February, when peace talks between the government and insurgents collapsed.

On May 2, one of the worst atrocities committed in the 35-year-old civil war claimed the lives of 117 civilians, many of them infants, children and elderly persons, in the isolated village of Bojayá, Chocó. The victims, seeking to escape fierce fighting between FARC and AUC units, took refuge in the town’s Roman Catholic church. But the guerrillas failed to respect the sanctuary. FARC fighters exploded a bomb fashioned from a bottled gas canister on the crowded building, killing the people inside.

“That is precisely what we saw coming -- an escalation in the war -- when the dialogue broke down,” said Irma Rodriguez of the Commission on Human Rights and Peace of the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia (CEDECOL).

The CEDECOL commission monitors attacks against evangelical churches and provides support and humanitarian aid to violence victims. However, staffers admit they do not know the full extent of casualties among the Christian community, due to difficulties with travel and the breakdown in telecommunication within the country. When evangelical leaders do receive information, “the reports are sometimes very contradictory,” Rodriguez said.

An example of this involved a bombing attack in April in the southern city of Puerto Asis. Initial reports indicated that FARC exploded a car bomb in the city, killing two members of the Assemblies of God church. Later, witnesses reported that, in fact, FARC had exploded a gas canister bomb in Puerto Asis -- the same type used in the Bojayá bombing. Two police officers died and 11 others suffered injuries. Two Assemblies of God believers died in separate terrorist incidents the same week.

In most cases, evangelical Christians become war casualties because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nevertheless, instances of religious martyrdom do occur, such as the May 6 murder of Pastor Fredy Antonio Urueta.

Urueta pastored the Rock of Salvation evangelical church in Las Piedras, a town 40 minutes journey from Sincelejo, Bolivar. According to a report circulated by the National Intercessors Network of Colombia, unidentified gunmen called the minister out of a

prayer service that evening and ordered him to accompany them into the bush. Urueta refused, saying that if they were going to kill him, he preferred to die in the presence of his congregation. As he raised his arms and commended his life to God, the assassins opened fire. Eight bullets hit Urueta in the face and one in the heart.

Eyewitnesses said the insurgents then taunted the members of Urueta’s church. “Your little game of singing and shouting the Bible out loud is over. From now on, worship services here are finished. Don’t let us find out that you continue meeting because we will kill you too.”

Fredy Urueta is survived by his wife, Norys Paternina Urueta, and nine year-old daughter, Esther María. Intercessors Network circulated an internet appeal for prayer on behalf of Urueta’s family and for the Rock of Salvation church, which remains closed. They also ask Christians to pray for the safety of other pastors in the Sincelejo area who have received death threats in recent weeks.

The evangelical community in Colombia is doing what it can for violence victims. Justapaz, a Bogotá-based organization affiliated with the Mennonite church, distributes humanitarian aid to widows, orphans and families displaced by the violence. Janna Bowman, a Justapaz volunteer, organizes relief packages of cooking oil, salt, sugar, whole grains, hydrants, and canned food, as well as sleeping mats, mosquito nets and medicine.

Bowman said that Justapaz volunteers often deliver aid personally to local churches, in order to better coordinate relief activities. They also hold workshops to provide what she describes as “sustainable assistance.”

“We are concerned that the church not just respond to crisis,” Bowman told Compass. “We know too well that today’s crisis is forgotten in the wake of tomorrow’s, but that the needs of the victims do not fade with yesterday’s news.”

“We cannot shove a Bible in someone’s hand and tell them to be happy because God loves them when their stomach is empty, when they’ve just abandoned the only home they ever knew and lost a father, sibling, child or husband. For people to know the love of God, we must provide a response to the crisis they are experiencing.”[Return to Index]

***********************************(4) Kidnapped Pastor Freed in ColombiaTwelve-Day Captivity Ends with Bible Ransomby Deann Alford

AUSTIN, Texas (Compass) -- “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen to me,” the Rev. Juan Carlos Villegas told his crying mother. Later he admitted to being terrified and said he didn’t believe his own words.

Five guerrillas with machine guns had singled out Villegas and a fellow church leader from a small group of Christians that included Villegas’ mother. The Christians were returning from an April 28 baptismal service at a ranch in Barbosa, 24 miles from Medellin in northwest Colombia.

The guerrillas forced Villegas and Nelson Gutierrez back into the church’s pickup truck that Villegas was driving back to Family Christian Church in Medellin’s Bello Antiochia suburb.

Three guerrillas boarded the pickup after Villegas and Gutierrez. The other guerrillas hopped into their Jeep. The two vehicles drove away, leaving behind nine church members -- including Villegas’ mother -- to make their way back to the church, report the abduction, launch a prayer vigil, and wait for word on what the kidnappers wanted in exchange for the men’s lives.

A few days later, the National Liberation Army (ELN) sent a demand to Family Christian Church: handover $25,000 or their assistant pastor -- Villegas, 26 -- would be killed.

The MiracleWhat happened next Villegas calls “a miracle.”

On May 9, Family Christian’s head pastor gave the rebel “Commander Alex” a Bible in exchange for the hostage they had held for 12 days. “There was no need to pay a peso for my freedom,” Villegas told Compass.

“I think kidnapping is a possibility that all Colombian pastors are aware of, something that they’ve spoken about to their families at some time,” Villegas told Compass. “I had even told the church that it shouldn’t pay ransom. We spoke about these things in case one of us pastors was kidnapped.

“But nevertheless in my heart, I never had believed it would happen to me.”

The KidnappingFifty believers left Family Christian Church in a bus and the church’s pickup for the

ranch that Sunday afternoon. Villegas baptized some of them in a stream that ran through the ranch. The bus left the ranch at 3:30 p.m. A half-hour later, Villegas and 10 church members boarded the truck to leave.

Villegas had driven a few yards from the ranch when he came upon a Jeep carrying five armed guerrillas. The guerrillas jumped from the Jeep and told the pickup’s passengers to get out. “They were rounding up people in ranches because they saw them as potential sources of income,” he said.

Villegas said that the guerrillas, ranging in age from 25 to 35, took him because he was driving. They took Gutierrez, 40, because he was the oldest male in the church group.

The only person he was able to say goodbye to was his mother. “It was very painful for her to see,” he said. “Everything was very fast, and there was pressure from [the guerrillas] that we had to leave right away.”

The guerrillas had Villegas drive the pickup until the road ended. Villegas, Gutierrez and their captors continued silently on foot up a mountain until they came upon more people. “That was where they identified themselves as part of the ELN,” Villegas said.

They asked Villegas who he and Gutierrez were. “When I told them that I was a pastor, they kept me as a hostage but decided to free my disciple,” he said of church elder Gutierrez, a textile factory worker. “They said they’d get the biggest benefit out of keeping me.”

Gutierrez had brought his Bible from the truck. Before leaving, he gave it to Villegas.

Constant FearSix guerrillas continued with Villegas up the mountain until they arrived at a camp

with eight more rebels. “We want to use you to get ransom,” a guerrilla told him. “If we run into the army or paramilitaries, the first one we’ll kill is you.”

“I was terrified -- really praying, doing spiritual warfare, rebuking all spirits of death,” Villegas said. “They told me that to resist or to escape would mean they’d kill me. They were constantly threatening me with death if I tried to run or if we came up on the army or paramilitaries.”

Despite constant fear, he saw God’s divine purpose. “They asked me what I was doing when they captured me, so I told them I was at a baptism,” he said. “So they asked me what a baptism was. From there, I had a way in to talk to all of them.

“From that night, I began to preach to them from God’s Word.”

Villegas said that most of the guerrillas were very interested in what he had to say. He spoke about Christ to all of them. Only one wouldn’t listen.

Captive Audience“Sometimes when I was reading the Bible to myself, they would ask me to read aloud

so that they could all hear,” he said. So he read long passages to the guerrillas, including the entire Gospel of Mark, and Psalms 23, 24, 34 and 91. He even read Psalm 119 -- the Bible’s longest chapter. “To my surprise, the majority reacted, ‘Read more, read more.’ So I kept reading. When there were questions about certain passages, I’d try to explain them.”

The hostage, ironically, found he had a captive audience in his captors. “Generally, when you read long passages of the Bible, people get tired and distracted,” he said. “But I saw the opposite in them. Each time I read, I found them more interested.”

About a third of his captors were illiterate. The others, Villegas said, had primary-school educations. Their ages ranged from 14 to 35, but were between 20 and 25 years old. They came from rural areas around Colombia and from marginal neighborhoods of Medellin and other cities. All were poor people who had suffered. He saw three types of guerrillas: philosophical rebels who fought to make Colombia communist; non-ideologues who loved weapons, killing and terrorism; and those who joined because the ELN had promised them good salaries and better lives.

Of the latter group, “Being there they learned it wasn’t like that, and they were looking for a way to run away,” Villegas said. “All had questions for me, but those who were most interested were those who were tired of being in the war and those who didn’t agree with the war.”

He rose with them daily at 4 a.m. “The first thing I did was pray and do my devotional to the Lord,” he said. Some of the rebels would gather around him. “I’d pray for their family members and for the situation of the country.”

He also answered questions about the church. “They asked if it was true that pastors had sex with the women of the church, if somebody who wanted to get married had to submit the woman to the pastor, and if the gospel was a business for pastors,” Villegas said. “The Lord sent me to clarify these things so they wouldn’t have such horrible ideas about the church of Jesus Christ.”

Gaining TrustVillegas said that early on the guerrillas began to trust him. “God gave me grace

before them,” he said. “Thank God, at no point did they tie me up. I was never put in a cell, either. They quit treating me badly and began to treat me as if I were one of their comrades and didn’t watch me so closely.” One day only one guerrilla guarded him.

For 12 days he marched on the mountain in his rain-drenched jeans, T-shirt and jacket. He was never allowed to bathe. The guerrillas brought him a toothbrush his eighth day in captivity. He ate what the guerrillas ate: “Rice, rice, rice -- the whole time, I ate only rice.”

Villegas said he became friends with three of the rebels. He spent hours marching on the mountain with Fausto*, a young, strong guerrilla who loved making war but had become uneasy with it. Leal* was interested in Villegas’ Bible. Alex was the guerrillas’ commander.

Amid death threats, “They gave me encouraging words that things were going to be all right, that I’d be leaving soon, not to worry, that they would take care of me,” he said.

The tenth day, four guerrillas prayed with Villegas to receive Christ. “I don’t know if God will let me see them farther along, but I’m sure that two of them made professions of faith from the heart.”

But Villegas is careful to say that his 12-day kidnapping -- a fleeting moment compared to hostage situations that routinely drag on for three years and longer -- was no vacation. For six to eight hours daily, the guerrillas made him march with them through dense mountain forests. To evade army soldiers and paramilitaries, the guerrillas constantly moved.

“I wouldn’t wish this experience on my worst enemy,” he said. “It was a very traumatic experience that hit me hard. I never had thought this would happen to me. There were times of great grief. I suffered a lot. We were wet. The cold in the high mountains was awful. We slept on a plastic sheet on the ground.”

And while he did make friends with some of his captors, they still had machine guns and still meant business. “When we walked from one place to the next on the mountain, they said, “Pray to the Lord that we don’t run into paramilitaries or army soldiers, because the first one we’ll kill is you.”

Villegas kept going by faith. “I prayed, ‘Lord, send your column of fire. I understand now why you accompany your people with a pillar of fire. I’m not capable of going alone,’” he said.

Worldwide PrayerMeanwhile, many were working to secure Villegas’ freedom. Christian leaders

approached imprisoned ELN leaders in Medellin, said Pedro Hernandez, head of Medellin’s pastoral alliance (AMEM) and national director of Christ for the City International. AMEM asked the guerrilla leaders to help free Villegas. The guerrillas, in turn, contacted Cuba. Fidel Castro is mediating peace talks in Havana between Bogota and the ELN.

Villegas’ church spearheaded a citywide 24-hour prayer vigil for him. Christians around the world learned of his plight and joined Medellin’s churches in prayer.

A meeting was arranged between Andrés Puerta, head pastor of Family Christian Church, and ELN Commander Alex, who was holding Villegas. “God did something in his heart,” Villegas said. “Also, higher-ups pressured him to free me.”

In the end, “They ransomed me for a Bible,” Villegas said. Puerta gave one to Commander Alex, who agreed to release Villegas. And before Villegas left the guerrilla camp, he gave his Bible to one of the guerrillas.

He’s grateful for those who rallied to support him. “I thank all who prayed. They understand that the effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

Villegas believes there was another reason for his kidnapping -- learning reliance on God alone.

“God told me, ‘Last night you slept in a comfortable bed. Now you don’t have anything. You don’t have your church; you don’t have your family; you don’t have comforts. You only have Me.’ God began to show me in a very strong way that I was in His hands. It was something beautiful for me to learn.”

*A pseudonym[Return to Index]

***********************************(5) The Good News from ColombiaChristian Leaders Dream of Better Days Aheadby Deann Alford

AUSTIN, Texas (Compass) -- Hardly a day goes by without news of war and mayhem in Colombia, a country often listed among the world’s most violent. But Christians who have stayed to reach out to the suffering country say the rewards are great.

And, they say, Colombia’s church is stronger than ever, despite the conflict -- or perhaps because of it.

“A lot of people are coming to the Lord,” said Pedro Hernandez, head of the Medellin Association of Evangelical Pastors (AMEM) and national director for Christ for the City International (CFCI). “The unity of the church, of pastors, of missionaries, is great.

“There are many good things happening in Colombia.”

Hernandez pastored a Medellin church for 15 years. Three years ago, he began coordinating evangelism projects and social outreach for CFCI. Ten years ago, Colombia’s believers pretty much kept to themselves. Now they’re coming together for prayer, fellowship and outreach to the many suffering people in Colombia.

In Cali and Medellin, Christians fill 45,000-seat soccer stadiums for all-night prayer vigils three times a year. Pastors share meals and carry out evangelism together. Pastors gather at AMEM meetings to strategize and carry out projects. “Before, everybody was in their own little churches,” Hernandez said. “But now, denominationalism isn’t as much of an issue anymore.”

“The Lord really is at work even in the middle of everything down there. We’re seeing God’s hand,” said Jeannine Brabon, professor of Hebrew at Medellin’s Biblical Seminary of Colombia and regional director of Colombia’s Prison Fellowship. As a missionary to Medellin’s notorious Bellavista Prison, she ministers to members of rival factions: leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, drug mafiosos, police, killers-for-hire and common criminals. Many of them have become Christians while in prison.

In March, the United States Embassy in Bogota warned that American missionaries in rural areas and smaller towns may be rebel targets -- a warning that gave pause even to some U.S. expatriate Christians in larger cities. But when Compass asked some of the American missionaries and church leaders still in Medellin whether they were considering leaving Colombia because of the warning, the answer was no.

Among those staying put in Medellin is Andrew McMillan, pastor of Christian Faith Community Church. McMillan and his wife, Kathy, are missionaries with Mission South America. They planted a church in Cali before they moved to Medellin eight years ago to plant another church. It grew from five people meeting in their living room to become Medellin’s second-largest church, with about 3,300 attending three services every weekend. McMillan says that every week, an average of 120 people come to faith in Christ through his church and its 550 home Bible study groups.

Hit men and occasionally even armed militants hand over their guns and surrender their lives to Christ, McMillan stated. People constantly give testimonies about how God saved them from armed robberies in the streets, on the buses, in their homes. Women come out of prostitution pouring out their hearts to Jesus. “I couldn’t go back to the States for anything,” he said. “The fish are jumping in the boat.”

McMillan agrees that unity among Medellin’s believers and church leaders is one reason so many have become Christians. “We are believing to see the whole city shaken for Christ,” he said. “But this only comes about with a real unity … a real humility in the pastors. Usually, we pastors want unity on our terms but it must come on His terms.”

CFCI missionary Kelly Green agrees. He and his wife Cherie moved to Medellin almost three years ago to help kindle a missionary vision among believers and prepare those who feel called to missions. He says in the short time he’s been in the city, he’s seen a rise in the unity factor among evangelicals around the country, not just in Medellin, as churches work together with the common goal of evangelizing Colombia.

“I’ve traveled all over Colombia and can say with certain confidence that the body of Christ here is serious about working together to reach all of Colombia,” Green said. In addition to the all-night city prayer vigils, he’s seen “Marches for Jesus” with colossal turnouts and “sobbing pastors, locked arm-in-arm with fellow pastors praying for revival across this land.”

“I constantly see many, many people giving their lives to Jesus in evangelistic campaigns and then in smaller, more intimate one-on-one dialogues,” Green said. “The upshot of things here in Colombia [is that] people are hungry for something different.

“Enter Jesus. He alone is the answer to the multitude of problems here, and many people all over Colombia are beginning to see that truth. That’s exciting!”

In some of Colombia’s roughest places, Christians have a dynamic presence. Prison missionary Brabon says that the outreach that began with the 1990 revival in Medellin’s

Bellavista Prison has spread outside its walls. Bellavista had a murder rate of about 60 per month before a group of Christians entered during a riot and began sharing their faith. The rioters tossed their weapons, dozens came to Christ, and soon Brabon helped plant the Bellavista Bible Institute for inmate students who want to know more about Jesus.

“Christian brothers have been transferred to other prisons, but whenever they go, they pretty much raise up other churches,” Brabon said. “We’re seeing the Lord work.”

Currently, Brabon is seeking to become an official prison chaplain to improve access to the prison even when its officials change. Bellavista’s prison authorities are interested in bringing the successful Texas faith-based prison ministry Inner Change to the prison. The warden himself traveled to see the successful ministry in a Brazilian prison run by Prison Fellowship.

Hernandez, Brabon and McMillan all have either received personal threats or threats to their ministries. But even after years of ministry, none of them has been harmed. Each national pastor and missionary must trust in God’s protection every minute.

“Despite purses being robbed in the meetings, constant financial challenges due to the high unemployment and poverty, the danger of kidnapping -- most mission agencies have pulled their teams out of Medellin -- and the danger of violence and bombings, Medellin is the best place to be,” McMillan said. “The hunger of the people for God and the love expressed is exceptional. Dream with us for a new Medellin.”[Return to Index]

***********************************(6) Cuban Christians Frustrated Over Community Church PlansEcumenical Building Project in Havana Suburb Appears Deadby Mackie Landers

LOS ANGELES (Compass) -- Every Sunday, as many as 90 people cram into Pastor Julio Balas’* apartment near Havana for worship services. Though in recent years, Cuba’s government has widely tolerated “house churches” such as Balas’, what he’s doing is illegal.

Balas doesn’t want to break the law. For more than three years, he and other evangelical leaders in Alamar, a coastal high-rise community about 10 miles from Havana, have sought to comply with laws that believers meet in church buildings.

Now he says that government plans appear to have stalled for a church building project for Alamar’s believers. It’s been at least 18 months since he’s heard anything.

“(The project) is in the hands of the Cuban Council of Churches (CCC),” Balas said of the government-recognized alliance of denominations that acts as an intermediary between the state and Cuban religious groups. “But I don’t think it will work.”

Balas said that several churches in Alamar have sought their own land from the government, which controls all such projects and owns all land in Cuba. The state, however, has refused to grant land to churches and has denied almost all new church construction projects since Fidel Castro took power 43 years ago. It also denied individual requests from Alamar churches’ for their own buildings.

After months of meetings with several of eight denominations active in Alamar, CCC representatives told Balas a year and a half ago of Council plans to get an engineer and architect to draft blueprints for a communal church building. The building would be a collective worship center for the churches in Alamar, but the churches themselves would have to fund its construction.

That idea was flawed from the outset, he says. His church wanted its own building and parsonage that needn’t coordinate -- or compete -- with other congregations for Sunday services and program scheduling for other days. But Balas and others feared that if they didn’t comply with state wishes for Alamar’s churches, state authorities would force their churches to shut down, he said.

Many evangelicals in Alamar share Balas’ frustration with the CCC, which is seen as an arm of the state that tries to politicize faith. “The government looks to the Council to represent us,” Balas said. “But it doesn’t represent me. I simply don’t care anything about the Council.”

According to the U.S. State Department’s 2001 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, 25 Cuban denominations are members of the CCC. Another 22 officially-recognized Christian denominations keep a “more independent posture,” the report says.

Alamar’s Western Baptists and Assemblies of God already have pulled out of the ecumenical building project. If the state presents Balas and the other pastors with blueprints, “My church will participate if we agree with the rules,” he said. It’s unclear just how much control his congregation would have over such a building. If those still-unspecified rules include using the building for political rallies, Communist Party meetings or other purposes his church opposes or those counter to its mission, he’ll count his church out.

In all likelihood, Balas said, that will mean his church won’t take part “because those things are part of the government’s usual practice.”

Meanwhile for church meetings, his congregation spreads its more than 300 members among five homes of church members. About two years ago, the government closed a Baptist house church in Alamar, but authorities have generally left the town’s other house churches alone. So Balas is only slightly worried the government will close his church outright.

Much of that would depend on apartment neighbors’ complaints about noise or dozens of people filing in and out of cramped stairwells. Parishioners of house churches know the risk of the church being shut down and go out of their way to be respectful of the neighbors. “We try to do everything in order, as it says in the Bible,” Balas said.

When asked if he was optimistic about the future of his church, Balas said, “I never lose hope. Man is always deceitful. My hope comes from God.”

*A pseudonym[Return to Index]

***********************************(7) Eritrea Closes Evangelical ChurchesPressure May Be Coming from the Dominant Orthodox Churchby Jeff Taylor

LOS ANGELES (Compass) -- The Eritrean government recently closed all Christian churches in the country other than the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Mekane Yesus (Lutheran) denominations, SIM reported.

SIM, or Serving in Mission (formerly known as Sudan Interior Mission), an evangelical Protestant organization, said it received the news on May 21 from the U.S. Embassy in Eritrea, an East African country north of Ethiopia.

The news came as somewhat of a surprise, since Eritrea’s Constitution allows for freedom of religion, and the population of slightly more Muslims than Christians has enjoyed good inter-religious relations in the past.

The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) reported on May 30 that the dominant Eritrean Orthodox Church could be responsible for pressuring the government to close the churches “in the wake of what appears to be a budding revival movement occurring within the traditional Orthodox Church as well as a recent outbreak of evangelical fervor within the Protestant community.”

A large number of Eritrean soldiers became Christians as a result of personal Christian evangelism and Christian radio broadcasts during the long war with Ethiopia, when Eritrea was fighting for independence from 1962 to 1991.

Eritrea formed a single diocese within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church until its independence in 1993. Ethiopia experienced this evangelical movement beginning in the 1970s as Christians incorporated evangelical themes into the Orthodox liturgy. However, the Orthodox church authorities became uncomfortable with the evangelical challenge to their ancient traditional beliefs and practices and expelled the group. The Eritrean Orthodox church claims to have 1.7 million members with 1,500 churches. Sources in Eritrea say that the church closures may be linked to this Orthodox-Evangelical split.

The WEA report indicated, however, that the situation is quite complex. Pressure could also be coming from outside Muslim forces. The political and military situation is volatile, and the influx of sects has increased tensions in the country.

Eritrea, a poor and little-known country located on the Red Sea across from the Arabian peninsula, has approximately four million people.[Return to Index]

***********************************(8) Indian Family Refused AsylumUnited Kingdom Officials Believe Persecution is an ‘Aberration’by Abhijeet Prabhu

United Kingdom immigration officials recently refused asylum to a persecuted Indian Christian couple and their two children on the grounds that the prime minister of India -- a known Hindu extremist -- stated that persecution of Christians in India was “an aberration.”

After an appeal, they were refused asylum again in May, this time because Christians, a “biased source,” provided the evidence of persecution. The story of the Bakers asylum quest raises vital questions in the persecution realm not only for India, but also in the Western response to it. Compass Direct’s India correspondent, Abhijeet Prabhu, profiles the case below.

It was easy for the Hindu fundamentalists to single them out. “White” Mrs. Baker, with partly British ancestry, stood out like a sore thumb in the Hindu stronghold of Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh (MP) state. The skirt and blouse she wore to the railway office where she worked and her English-Christian name made her a symbol of hate -- hatred for everything that is Western and everything that is Christian. And in this semi-urban town, the local Hindu extremist Bajrang Dal organization was determined to associate the two.

Janet and her husband Robert, with mixed British and Indian ancestry, often had to face stinging remarks made against them. “You are bastards the British left behind,” was one of the more polite remarks directed at them.

But it was the Bakers’ fervent practice of Christianity that was more than the extremists could stomach. Twice a week, Janet and Robert would go to a church for the service and for the “charismatic” meeting after which they would make a point to help the poor and destitute that lined the streets of their city.

The poor began to see why this couple so compassionately cared for them and greeted them everywhere with the phrase, Jai Yesu Masih ki -- “Praise to the Lord Jesus Christ!” This was the last straw.

Soon the attacks began. On October 20, 1999, a group of men armed with iron rods, knives and cudgels barged into the church, pulled Robert from the church and beat him. They screamed at him and told him that his Christianity could not save him.

None of the church members dared to intervene. This was no ordinary mob. Not only were they Bajrang Dal activists who had been spreading terror among Christians in the city, but this particular group was instigated by the son of the local MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly). What could they do but watch and pray?

It was Janet who was left to lift her unconscious husband and take him to hospital. What would she say to her two children, Angela (13) and Cecil (7)? Robert’s assailants were arrested but released without charge because no one dared to come forward as a witness.

And then more threats came, fast and furious. “We will rape you and your beautiful daughter in front of the husband,” and, “We will ‘finish off’ the whole family.”

The threats did not take long to materialize. Three months later on January 20, 2001, when Janet and Robert were at work in the railway office where they both had well-paying, comfortable and permanent jobs, a group of men burst into their home. Angela was alone. The men began to molest her. She screamed.

Fortunately, a neighbor heard her cries and made frantic phone calls. Janet and Robert rushed home to find Angela traumatized. They called for medical help and later rushed to the police, only to regret it as they watched Angela being further traumatized as the police humiliated her, asking her particularly embarrassing questions about what her molesters had done.

Angela’s assailants were again arrested and detained for 48 hours by the police but were released because of lack of evidence.

Now there was no one to protect them, and the attackers had told them this was only the beginning. Meanwhile, Sunday school outings and picnics were disrupted. Bicycles were ridden into Angela’s rickshaw on the way to school. Vulgar comments were hurled at her. Graffiti was scribbled on their front door and rubbish and excrement were thrown into their garden.

Being of partly British parentage, they had no relatives in India. There was only one option: flee the country. But India is a big country. Surely they could find refuge in another state? But the Bajrang Dal is everywhere. The long arm of Hindu fundamentalism would find them wherever they went.

So they fled to the United Kingdom in May 2001. After all, Britain was partly their ancestral home. And they had always been told that Britain was a Christian country! Surely they would find refuge among their “own” people.

Imagine their shock when on December 1, 2001, British immigration officers barged into their home at Hayes in London and took the family to the police station and interrogated them separately. Robert was detained for a whole day and then transferred to Campfield Detention Centre and from there to Oakington Detention Centre near Cambridge. After being held for nine days, he was sent to Grimsby and housed with three other asylum seekers.

Meanwhile, Janet was forced to sign a statement saying that she would not apply for asylum. She and the children were finally settled in a house at Doncaster away from Robert, who continues to be stationed at Grimsby despite her appeals.

Now it was time to go through the actual process of applying for asylum. But the Home Office flatly rejected their application in its letter dated January 2, 2002 (Ref: J1060450), supporting their refusal with an unreferenced quote from Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The Indian prime minister had said that the persecution against Christians in India was an “aberration and an exception to the general texture of peaceful and cordial relations between the various communities,” the Home Office letter stated.

Compass has obtained a copy of the letter and has detected a number of factual errors. The Home Office is either ignorant of the situation or refuses to acknowledge it.

The Bakers continued to pray. “Our file is in Jesus’ hands,” Robert told Compass in January 2002. They appealed again.

This time their case was supported by the Rev. Dr. Nick Sagovsky, former dean of Clare College, Cambridge; the Rev. Jules Gomes, a priest from the Church of North India; and Sister Pat, a Catholic nun working on justice and peace issues.

The trio made a strong case and submitted articles from previous issues of Compass Direct as evidence for persecution in India.

The Bakers’ appeal was again turned down. This time the adjudicator at Rotherham Magistrates Court acknowledged that there was persecution in India, but again quoted an unreferenced comment by the Indian prime minister “to firmly and impartially investigate all incidents of violence against Christians in India.” A number of references were made to the prime minister’s claim to support the cause of Christians in India.

Robert, Janet, Angela and Cecil are now waiting to be “picked up” and deported. They are living in a state of limbo. They are penniless. They have lost good jobs in the Indian railways. Angela and Cecil have been doing well in school even in the U.K. The family has become part of the local church in Doncaster.

They can never go home. They will have to return to another part of India, live in fear and begin life from scratch. “Whatever it is, let God’s will be done,” says Janet. When

the adjudicator asked her husband to change his name, Robert said: “This is the name with which I was baptized. How can I deny my baptism? I will never give up Jesus.”

**********1st Rejection Letter: No Religious Persecution in India

The U.K. Home Office at first refused asylum to the Bakers on the grounds that there was no religious persecution in India, as noted in the letter below:

Home OfficeImmigration and Nationality DirectorateIntegrated Casework Directorate

Block C, Whitgift Centre, Croydon, CR9 2AT

Ref: J1060450Date: 2nd January 2002-06-10

(Remarks made under “Reasons For Refusal”)

“The Secretary of State is aware of some sectarian violence against the Christian community in India, but Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee spoke out strongly about these incidents. He called on state governments to ‘firmly and impartially investigate all incidents of violence against Christians in India,’ and commenting on the spate of attacks, he called them ‘an aberration and an exception to the general texture of peaceful and cordial relations between the various communities.’ Christians constitute the second largest minority in India, after Muslims. The Indian authorities do not interfere with their internal religious activities, which may be conducted freely.”

It is noticeable in the document that the case officer was barely aware of the situation in India. The following sentence proves the point:

“You suggested that it was all done by a nephew of the minister of Bajrangoel, which is a Mans group Datrangdel who are anti-Christian and they are supported by the ruling DGP party.” They can spell neither the Bajrang Dal or the BJP, yet they tell the Bakers there is no persecution in their country.

**********2nd Rejection Letter: Christians are Biased Sources on Persecution

The U.K Home Office, after being presented with many articles from Compass Direct, changed their tune in their second rejection letter. They admitted there is persecution, but refused to admit the persecution is country-wide. They also rejected the evidence of persecution from Christian sources as biased:

Appeal Number CC/07240/2002

Home Office Reference J1060450Heard at Rotherham Magistrates’ Court on 8th April 2002Determination dictated on 19th April 2002

“The Appellant and his wife are Charismatic Christians and lead an active life in their church. Since 1997 there has been an increase in harassment of Christians by fundamentalist Hindu groups in MP. Christians have been accused of forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity, whilst Christians say they are only helping the poor. The Appellant and his wife were involved in helping the poor in their area.

“India is a long-standing parliamentary democracy with an independent judiciary. Human rights of Indian citizens are safeguarded by extensive constitutional and statutory provisions. There are significant human rights abuses which can be attributed to deeply rooted tensions among the country’s many ethnic and religious communities, amongst other things. Human rights abuses include societal violence against Christians and Muslims.

“These groups (i.e. Bajrang Dal) are strongly outspoken against the alleged forcible conversion of tribal people and others by Christian missionaries and that this justifies attacks on Christians and their property.

“Much of the violence against Christians has centred around deprived areas of India where Christian missionaries have traditionally carried out development activities with tribal and Dalit communities. Much of the violence seems to be in the state of Gujarat.

“I have referred to the documents within the Appellant’s bundle and in particular to the documents headed ‘Atrocities’ (page 20-42 of the Appellant’s bundle). Within those documents twelve ‘atrocities’ are listed as having occurred in MP during the period 1998-2000. The atrocities vary from demolition of churches to attacks on missionaries, priests and nuns. No deaths were reported although three nuns were raped by unknown persons and one shot in the face. All of the attacks were on priests or nuns and against church property.

“I find that the Appellant’s account of general discrimination against him and his family to be credible. I find that such discrimination has been both because of their Anglo-Indian ethnicity and because of his Christian religion. However, I also find that this general discrimination, although some of it has been unpleasant such as the throwing of rubbish and excrement into their garden, is of a minor nature.

“As to the attack on the Appellant in October 1999 and the attack on the Appellant’s daughter, Angela, in January 2001, I find the account of the Appellant to be credible. However, I am not satisfied from the evidence I have heard about the attack on Angela that it was the intention of the attackers to rape her.

“There seems to have been an element of personal animosity behind these attacks.

“With regard to both witnesses’ views on the situation for Christians in India, whilst they were at pains to point out that they were endeavoring to be objective, it seemed to me that most of the sources which are relied on for their evidence are of Christian origin and this does call into question the objectivity of such documents.

“It would seem to me to follow from this that those parts of India which are not under BJP governance do not exhibit a state of worsening violence against Christians.”

This time asylum was rejected on the grounds that you can go to another part of India, where there is not a BJP local government, and not be persecuted. But the BJP is the national government. Also, because documentation about the persecution of Christians comes from Christian sources, it is therefore suspect.[Return to Index]

***********************************(9) Indian Christian Leader Charged with Illegal Inducements in ConversionsOrissa Freedom of Religion Act Effectively Prevents Conversionsby Abhijeet Prabhu

BANGALORE, India (Compass) -- For the first time, a director of a Christian organization in India has been charged with converting children by using illegal inducements.

Hindu fundamentalists registered a case against the Rev. Niranjan Bardhan in Orissa state in late April, accusing him of converting poor children by giving them food, clothes and study materials. But Bardhan told Compass, “They are just out to close my center where untouchable children are offered free meals and an education.”

Sources said that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, or World Hindu Organization) Gajapati district president, Purna Chandra Mohapatra, has filed a First Information Report (FIR) in the Parlakhemundi police station against Rev. Bardhan, director of India Gospel Outreach and Social Action (IGOSA). The VHP alleged that he has converted children through welfare programs at the day care center run by his organization.

The FIR also alleges that Bardhan has been providing food, clothes and education to the children at Katalakaitha and R. Sitapur villages and that he succeeded in converting 22 of the children to Christianity. The children all hail from Dalit (untouchable) backgrounds.

Bardhan had opened a school on the premises of the church in Katalakaitha village in Goshani. The VHP said that this is a violation of the 1967 Orissa Freedom of Religion Act.

The case has resulted in communal tension in the area. Parlakhemundi police station officer-in-charge, Subash Chandra Acharya, said that an inquiry has started and suitable action will be taken after an impartial inquiry.

“The opponents of the gospel seem to be pressuring the police to order the closure of the day care center where children within the age group of five to 10 years are offered free education and midday meals,” Bardhan said.

If convicted, Bardhan could face severe penalties and even go to prison. Sources said that the 1967 Orissa Freedom of Religion Act effectively prevents conversions of Hindus to Christianity because it requires the convert to sign an affidavit that he has not been bribed. Then the pastor or evangelist involved has to also convince the police that he has not bribed the new convert. In practice, this exposes the convert and pastor to public exposure. Their names are in the public record and Hindu militants respond, often violently.

Meanwhile on May 16, the family of a Christian named Kujur, a tribal missionary, was attacked in the state of Jharkhand by a gang of 10 to 12 militant Hindus. The armed gang burst into Kujur’s home late at night while the missionary was away attending a training seminar on ministry to the urban poor. The gang mercilessly beat up the family members.

Even Kujur’s wife, who is five months pregnant, was not spared. His sisters and his children were also beaten while the men held them at gunpoint. The attackers were screaming at the women for not participating in the religious rituals at the local Hindu temple.

The attackers threatened the family with dire consequences if Mrs. Kujur did not bring her husband home by a certain date to answer for his “crimes.”

In another incident, a church was set on fire in Tara Nagar village in Bellary, Karnataka state, on the night of April 28. The hut adjacent to it, where Pastor Paul Thammaiah was staying, was also set ablaze.

However, when the local Christians went to file a police complaint, the local sub-inspector of police said that he would register an “accidental fire case” and forced the pastor to register his complaint accordingly.

It was only after much persuasion that a second case was registered. According to the revised version, the fire was not caused by accident but was an act of arson. The Bellary District Pastors’ Association said that they were persuaded that it was a case of arson deliberately targeted against the local Christian community.

The association members went in a delegation to Superintendent of Police Sharat Chandra and demanded that the case be registered as an act by miscreants and the culprits found and punished.

All India Christian Council zonal convener, Oliver D’Souza, has demanded action against the local sub-inspector of police for his refusal to reregister a case. D’Souza

questioned the motive of the police in not registering the case and demanded a thorough investigation into the incident. [Return to Index]

***********************************(10) Murder Trial Heats Up in IndiaWitnesses Identify Dara Singh in the Staines Murder Trialby Abhijeet Prabhu

BANGALORE, India (Compass) -- The trial of those accused in the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons came to a boil in India with the prime suspect identified in court as the instigator.

A prosecution witness identified Dara Singh and three other accomplices in the court of district and sessions judge M.N. Patnaik in Khurda, Orissa state, on May 10.

Raghunath Dehury, the witness, stated that he had seen Dara Singh and three of the accused persons standing in front of the vehicle in which the Australian missionary and his two sons were sleeping on the night of January 22, 1999. He said that the four were among those attacking the vehicle, adding that he had not seen those persons after the incident.

Dara Singh, he said, was the tallest among the crowd who had surrounded the vehicle. The other three suspects identified by Dehury were Harish Chandra Mahanta, Mahadeb Mahanta and Thuram Ho.

Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burned to death on January 22, 1999, at Manoharpur in Orissa state of North India while they were sleeping in a church-owned vehicle.

Dehury, a resident of Manoharpur, told defense counsel Bana Bihari Mohanty during the cross-examination that he had witnessed the crime while standing near the house of Rolia Sren, a villager. He said he had no knowledge about any previous dispute between Hindus and Christians in the village over the playing of a music cassette, as was alleged by some to be the cause of violence.

The much-delayed trial resumed on May 3 with a prosecution witness identifying Umakant Bhoi, another suspect in the case, as one of the persons who torched a vehicle in front of the Manoharpur church.

On May 27, another prosecution witness identified Dara Singh and three alleged accomplices. The witness, Satya Soren, said he met Dara Singh and several others under a mango tree in his village in 1999. Soren said he was called by Surath Nayak, one of the suspects in the case, to the place. He said he was returning after a drinking session at a neighbor’s home. When the judge asked Soren if he could identify those at the meeting

from among those standing in the court, he picked Dara Singh, Kartik Lohar and Surath Nayak.

Soren said he came to know Dara Singh from the local market, as he was a prominent man in the area.

Meanwhile, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is investigating the case, declared two prosecution witnesses hostile. One of the witnesses, Sonaram Marandi, a college student who runs a cycle repair shop, had alleged before a local court that the Australian missionary was engaged in conversion activities. He stated that Staines had been inducing Hindus into Christianity by offering them money. The Hindus had never questioned the conversions by the missionary, he said while being cross-examined by defense counsel.

Another prosecution witness, Debendra Mahanta, said he had made certain statements under duress by the police against Dara Singh and another suspect, Dipu Das, before the sub-divisional judicial magistrate at Anandapur. Mahanta, however, admitted that Dara Singh and Dipu Das did meet him in his garden in his village between 10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. on January 23, 1999, and asked him to supply them with food.

He had asked them to bathe in the nearby Tel River and come to his home. While having lunch, Singh had told him that they had been returning after accomplishing some work. Asked whether Singh explained what the work was, Mahanta said he did not.

The prosecution has so far produced 28 witnesses, including seven forensic experts and two judicial magistrates. Police also arrested Bularam Mohanto, alias Bulu, a close associate of Dara Singh, on April 16. He was apprehended at a bus stand at Thakurmunda, about 150 kilometers from Baripada, Orissa.

While 31 persons including Dara Singh have been arrested by the state crime branch, many others from the mob that killed Staines have not been rounded up. The judge has fixed June 17-21 and June 24-26 for the next hearings of the case.[Return to Index]

***********************************(11) Where Persecution Starts -- By Losing an ArgumentFighting for Truth in Indonesiaby Alex Buchan

The history of persecution teaches many valuable lessons. Among the many is this: Before Christians lose their lives, they first lose an argument!

Persecution does not begin with the policeman’s truncheon hitting a Christian’s head or with an anti-Christian parliament shouting “aye” to pass a discriminatory law. Long before it gets to that stage, Christians have already lost a battle in the realm of words.

They have been successfully marginalized, slandered, discredited, dehumanized -- all without a shot being fired. The father of persecution is propaganda!

In their submission to the United Nations in Geneva in April, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) highlighted this by showing that the road to persecution passes through three phases: disinformation, discrimination, and persecution. The first of these, disinformation, usually begins in the media. The report explains: “Through printed articles, radio, television, and other means, Christians are robbed of their good reputation and their right to answer the accusations made against them.”

With Christians thus marginalized, the second phase can begin, relegating Christians to second-class citizens by a host of discriminatory laws. Finally, full-scale persecution can proceed unimpeded.

The WEA report challenged the U.N. assembly: “We believe it is vitally important to recognize this three-stage development, so that timely, firm and appropriate action can be taken the moment there is any sign of discrimination.”

But persecution reporting tends to highlight the gruesome third stage and not the first stage of disinformation. This is understandable. Debates about points of law, intellectual jousting or even jokes about minorities do not rate headlines, but they do serve to create a new climate that can so easily result in persecution later on.

But where is disinformaton generating arguments now? One place is Indonesia.

Indonesia’s Christians are fighting an argument with extremist Muslims. Violent extremists in the Maluku Islands have convinced formerly peaceful Muslims that Christians want to kill them and create a Christians-only state. It’s a lie, but it’s a lie that has won, at least temporarily.

Even in the rest of Indonesia, where the Christians are a well-tolerated minority, there is a more subtle argument going on which may have long-term importance. At the moment, it is one which only a few Christians are fighting.

This argument has to do with the question of whether Indonesia should adopt Islamic law. Presently, Indonesia is a secular state. If it becomes an Islamic state, then more than 20 million Christians will find themselves in a very difficult position.

In the words of a Jakarta pastor, “We simply have to win this argument.”

Muslim spokespersons are beginning to press for the adoption of sharia (Islamic law) in Indonesia. We are the most populous Muslim country in the world, they say, and yet our laws are based on Dutch colonialism and not on Islam.

At this time, the Indonesian press is relatively free, and it is possible for Christians to have the right of reply. A recent debate over the issue of Islamic law in the press deserves special attention.

One Muslim intellectual making the case for the adoption of sharia law in Indonesia is Mr. Wisnu Pramudya, the editor of Suara Hidayatullah magazine. His refuter is Father Franz Magnis Suseno, a Jesuit priest living in Jakarta and a professor of philosophy who has taught many of Indonesia’s intellectual elite.

Pramudya, in an article entitled, “The Jakarta Charter is Not Islamic Law,” carried in the Jakarta Post in May, perpetuates four important myths, potentially dangerous if left unchallenged. Suseno replies in the same newspaper a few days later.

Myth 1

Indonesia would have had Islamic law when it was founded but for the undemocratic and deceitful intervention of non-Muslim, colonial sources.

This refers to the infamous “Jakarta Charter” -- a clause allegedly left out of the preamble of the 1945 constitution.

Indonesia’s state philosophy is called Pancasila, the first principle of which was “Belief in One God.” The Jakarta Charter intended to add, “with the obligation for adherents of Islam to implement the Islamic law.” Many Muslims believe they were unfairly robbed of their chance to implement Islamic law in Indonesia, and this sense of bitterness, even entitlement, has grown over the years.

Pramudya claims that the Jakarta Charter was part of the constitutional draft when Sukarno, the founder of the Indonesian state, and Mohammed Hatta, were kidnapped. When they turned up a few days later to read the constitution, the Charter was left out.

What pressure were they subjected to during their mysterious kidnapping? He speculates, “Some say the … words were omitted at the behest of Mohammed Hatta, a Dutch-educated socialist democratic figure, reportedly under pressure by a Japanese officer and representatives from eastern Indonesia, who threatened to secede if the formula remained.”

Ever since, Muslims have been easily roused to anger over the omission of this clause. But Suseno, in an article a few days later in the Jakarta Post, argued that this is a grave misreading of history.

For a start, leaders did not “leave it out” at the declaration of independence as Pramudya claims, because Sukarno never read the draft constitution where the Jakarta Charter was based. Also, the Charter was not “months in preparation” but hastily formulated in June 1945. Finally, Hatta did leave it out when he read out the constitution

on August 18 of that year. But no one really knows why, and many Muslims were not keen on the charter being adopted in any case.

The facts of the case are more prosaic. The nationalists, who continue to form the political majority in Indonesia, were nervous about Islam being given a preferential role in the state. And the fact is that in Indonesia’s only two free elections since its founding -- 1955 and 1999 -- Muslim parties calling for Islamic law to be restored have never fared very well, gaining 42 percent of the popular vote in 1955 and only 16 percent in 1999.

It seems the people -- including a majority of Muslims -- do not want Islamic law imposed. But the uncomfortable truth of this is not acknowledged by Muslim intellectuals, who prefer to rehash conspiracy theories about the Jakarta Charter. The debate will never go away.

Myth 2

Since Indonesia is an Islamic culture, it can only hold together if its laws are based on Islam.

“Indonesians do not have the courage to build a legal system on what are actually their own roots,” writes Pramudya. He claims that Indonesia is really following the laws imposed by the Dutch, which are by implication Christian. The danger of disintegration would be greatly lessened, he said, if Indonesia accepted a system of law more in keeping with its own culture and history.

To press his point home, Pramudya argues that making sharia the law in Indonesia is just like Britain and France imposing secular law on their own countries. Both Britain and France, he claims, were struggling with too much pluralism, where kings, churches and legislatures all jostled for control. To solve this, a faction decided to impose a secular state to create peace. To do the same in Indonesia, a faction should impose the only kind of state that will create peace … an Islamic one. History will prove them to be as right as their European counterparts, Pramudya states.

But Suseno claims the truth is the opposite. Britain and France opted for a secular state because religion was becoming a cause of conflict. They dealt with pluralism, he writes, “by resolutely refusing to found modern states on religion.” Pramudya, by contrast, wants the very opposite -- to make one religion the basis of the state. This will not lead to a healthy pluralism, warns Suseno.

Fear of pluralism as a destructive force runs high in Indonesia, a country with a bewildering patchwork of cultures and ethnic groups. At the moment, nationalism is regarded as a glue that will hold the country together, but many Muslim intellectuals and fundamentalists are making a big pitch that only Islam can provide this glue.

Yet the extremists push for a form of Islam not favored by the Javanese Muslims, who have a mystical, Sufi background, which makes them more resistant to an authoritarian fundamentalism.

Myth 3

All Western advances in technology and culture were borrowed from the Islamic world centuries ago, and these technologies all were birthed while Islam practiced sharia law.

“The West’s knowledge and technological advancement today was founded from what had been developed by Muslim scholars centuries earlier,” claims Pramudya. The implication is clear -- just because a state adopts sharia does not mean it cannot keep pace with the modern world.

Suseno acknowledges that Islam did indeed have a technological and cultural golden age from the 6th to 12th centuries and did provide a vital infusion to Western development during that time. But there are three other factors that make the above claim a myth.

First, the great technological developments of the West came in the 18th century, long after the influence of Islam had waned.

Second, Islam’s greatest contribution to the West was actually to preserve the writings of another Westerner, Aristotle. “The truly great merit of these Muslim philosophers was that they brought Aristotle to Europe. It is generally accepted that it was the switch from Plato to Aristotle as ‘the philosopher’ that put Europe on her way to modernity.”

Third, Islam after the 12 century “disappeared from the map of global intellectuality” because Muslim leaders became legalists that persecuted open-minded intellectuals. The kind of Islam that applied sharia did not develop any culture, but instead created a poor conformism that condemned Muslim nations to centuries of “catch-up” with Western ones.

Myth 4

There is no place in the world where the imposition of sharia law has caused harm in any state.

Pramudya states, “There is no historical proof of a country being torn apart due to the implementation of sharia law.”

Suseno does not refute this claim, but a look around the world shows many states torn apart by sharia. The most recent is probably Nigeria. Since some northern Nigerian states

began imposing sharia in early 2001, more than 800 churches have been demolished and hundreds of Christians killed in fighting.

The World Evangelical Alliance report stated, “The campaign by northern Nigerian states to establish Islamic law has brought new Muslim-Christian conflicts to a country already plagued by religious, ethnic, economic and political problems.”

So there you have it: claim and counterclaim, sometimes intellectual and abstract,

sometimes emotional and hard-hitting. But this is the way persecution gets nipped in the bud. Christians -- when they have the chance -- should take every opportunity to dispute false claims before they attain the status of guiding myths.

For once the argument is lost, persecution is not long in coming. [Return to Index]

***********************************(12) Jordanian Widow Promised Solution for Her ChildrenFamily Leaves Hiding to Return Homeby Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass) -- A Jordanian Christian widow threatened with loss of the legal guardianship of her two children was assured in late May by representatives of her government that the children will not be removed from her custody.

Siham Qandah was reportedly called in for an interview with the Jordanian intelligence services, who informed her they had been assigned to assist her because of the “international attention” her case had received.

“They told Siham they would not let anyone harm her, or take her children from her,” a close friend of the widow told Compass, “and they promised they would find a solution to her problem.”

After receiving these assurances, Qandah felt sufficiently secure to return home to Husn, in northern Jordan, where her children are completing their schoolwork and exams before the summer break begins in mid June.

During April, Qandah had fled from her home, taking both of her children out of school. Her daughter Rawan, 13, and her son Fadi, 12, went into hiding with her.

Under a final ruling issued by Jordan’s Court of Cassation, Qandah had been ordered to relinquish custody of her children to be raised as Muslims, based on the alleged conversion of her Christian husband to Islam three years before his death.

In a civil court case unusual for moderate Jordan, Qandah’s Muslim brother filed for full custody of his nephew and niece. Although born and raised in the same Christian home with Qandah, her brother had converted to Islam in his youth. Now a prayer leader in his local mosque, he insisted that his brother-in-law’s conversion required that

Qandah’s minor children be raised as Muslims, as dictated by Islamic law.

Qandah and her family questioned the validity of the conversion certificate, which did not even carry her late husband’s signature. When he died abroad in 1994, serving in the Jordanian army under U.N. peacekeeping forces, his body was brought home for Christian funeral rites. His wife only learned of his alleged conversion several months later, when she applied for his military benefits for herself and the children.

Judicial proceedings in the case went on for nearly four years, as it bounced from civil and religious courts into Jordan’s courts of appeal. The final rejection published by Jordan’s highest court of appeal on February 28 became effective on March 31, when it was delivered in writing to the local court of origin in Irbid.

Qandah has been given no indication as to what kind of “solution” is to be enacted on her behalf, although one of her brothers in Husn admitted they expect something to happen in the next few days or weeks.

“We have a strong belief that the Lord will never forget His children’s prayers,” he told Compass by telephone yesterday.

Qandah and her children are actively involved in the church services and Sunday School of the Husn Baptist Church, where two of her brothers are also members.

***Photographs of Qandah and her two children are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.[Return to Index]

***********************************(13) Nigeria’s Christians Face a Variety of ProblemsReligion, Ethnicity and Politics Divide Africa’s Most Populous Nationby Obed Minchakpu

Jos, Nigeria (Compass) -- Religious and ethnic violence between Muslims and Christians continued to plague Nigeria in May and June, and tensions increased in several states over the use of Islamic law.

The Plateau state capital of Jos was again engulfed in bloodshed on May 2 as Muslims and Christians clashed during elections and ward congresses of Nigeria’s ruling Peoples Democratic Party. The congresses, which previously had been suspended, had been rescheduled for May 2 when violence flared, leading to heavy casualties.

At least 100 persons were feared dead in a manner reminiscent of 10 days of Muslim-Christian rioting in Jos that began on September 7, 2001, and left almost 1,000 dead.

Local hospitals were reported to be full of wounded from the recent conflict. Dr. Daniel Iya, the chief medical director of Jos University Teaching Hospital, who was

among the medical personnel that had to attend to the victims, told Compass, “There are mass casualties and of course fatalities.” But he did not have specific figures.

The crisis started in the Eto Baba area in the Angwan Rukuba ward of the city. Sources said a misunderstanding arose among the voters and the officials when some Muslim extremists arrived. The extremists began throwing stones. Pandemonium ensued as people began to flee. The violence then spread to other parts of Jos.

Christians Protest Islamic LawTensions between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria have increased dramatically

during the last three years as at least 12 states in northern Nigeria have begun implementing Islamic law.

Christian leaders in Bauchi state have protested the imposition of the Islamic mode of dress, which includes forcing Christian nurses and midwives to wear trousers while working at the Federal Medical Center in Azare.

In a strongly worded statement on May 3, Iliya Chiroma and Daniel Laya, chairman and secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Bauchi, pleaded with the federal government through its health ministry to “quickly intervene in order to reduce the unnecessary religious tensions this act has generated in the center in particular and the state in general.”

“When Christian nurses and midwives protested this bizarre order by arguing that Christianity abhors the wearing of trousers by women, they were initially placed on suspension before their appointments were terminated,” the statement said. “All the 21 Christian female staff of the medical center had their appointments terminated for their continued refusal to dress in accordance with sharia (Islamic) mode of dressing.”

State Called to Implement Islamic LawMeanwhile in northern Taraba state, Dr. Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, Nigeria’s chairman of

the National Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria, called on the state government to introduce Islamic law or face the wrath of the Muslims in the state.

Ahmed told the Taraba State House of Assembly that since 12 other states in northern Nigeria had adopted and are implementing Islamic law, it was desirable to implement sharia for the Muslim community in the state.

“The Muslims in the state would be sending a bill to the state legislature for the introduction of sharia because the system is the desire of every Muslim,” Ahmed said. “Christians should understand that sharia is purely a Muslim legal system and, as such, they should not kick against it for selfish reasons.”

Mallam Husseini Ibrahim, a Muslim and the speaker of the legislature said, “Under a democratic system, citizens have the right to demand for what is good for them, provided

it is within the provision of the constitution.” He promised Muslim members of the legislature would endorse the bill.

Christians ArrestedIslamic law has serious consequences for Christians in areas where it is entrenched.

Seventy-five Christians were arrested in different parts of Niger state in central Nigeria for opposing the state’s Islamic law.

Thirteen of the arrested Christians have been prosecuted while the cases of 20 others are pending in Islamic courts. In 130 operations carried out by the Islamic Law Enforcement Board in May, fines totaling $50,000 were levied for offenses such as being in possession of beer.

Eight unmarried Christian girls were arrested for not being married after having passed the marriageable age of 13 years prescribed by Islamic law. As a result, they were accused of being prostitutes. Two of the Christian girls arrested at Kagara have been charged, while the cases of three others in Makera are still being investigated.

Alhaji Mohammed Awal Bida, the chairman of the enforcement board, told Compass, “The law must take its course. Justice must prevail. Nobody is above the law, irrespective of his or her religion.”

Muslim Rebels Hinder EvangelismBut Islamic law is not the only problem Christians have faced during the last few

years. Raids by Muslim rebels from neighboring Chad, especially in the northern part of Borno state in northern Nigeria, has impeded evangelism in the area, according the Rt. Rev. Emmanuel Kanu Mani, Anglican bishop of Maiduguri.

The bishop was on an aggressive rural evangelism program, which his church embarked on earlier this year.

He told Compass on June 2 at St. John’s Anglican Church in the border town of Mallam Fatori that the rebels from Chad were harassing Christians, killing some and looting their property. Evangelization efforts are impeded. Mani said that because of the raids, many clergymen could not move around, and some living in the area were forced to flee.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is almost evenly split between Christians and Muslims. Muslims predominate in the north and Christians in the south.[Return to Index]

***********************************(14) Blasphemy ‘Convict’ Shot Dead in Pakistani JailModerate Muslim’s Appeal Case was Waiting to be Heardby Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass) -- A Pakistani Muslim convicted of alleged religious blasphemy was shot dead by a fellow prisoner on June 11 in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Central Jail.

M. Yousaf Ali was reportedly being transferred from his death-row cell in the jail’s Block Seven to Block One about 2:30 p.m. when he was killed by a convicted murderer identified only as Tariq, sometimes using the alias Mota. Using a .30-caliber pistol, the assailant shot at Yousaf Ali at close range. Four of the bullets hit his chest, killing him instantly.

According to an article in the Daily Times, when the jail’s superintendent arrived at the scene of the crime, the killer exclaimed loudly, “It was your duty, but I have done it.” The Dawn newspaper reported that such panic spread in the jail after the murder that it took jail authorities four hours to bring the situation under control.

The jail superintendent announced his resignation a few hours after the crisis. Shortly afterwards, Deputy Inspector General of Prisons Sarfaraz Mufti put the jail’s assistant superintendent, Bashir Chaudhry, and two jail wardens under arrest on charges of negligence.

Although Mufti refused to comment on the arrests, he told local press that an official inquiry had been ordered into the murder. A jail insider admitted to a Daily Times reporter that the unscheduled transfer of prisoners had been ordered by Chaudhry.

“It was not a routine transfer,” a journalist who went to the Kot Lakhpat jail last night told Compass. “The fact that the murderer was standing there ready, brandishing his gun as he waited for the other prisoner to come, points toward complicity.” According to one jail source, the murder weapon had been in Tariq’s possession for four months.

Several Pakistani dailies reported that the killer belonged to the banned militant group, Sipah-e-Sahaba. But according to one journalist following the case, “He was just an ordinary murderer who had already killed three people. He had been convicted for one murder, and is still on trial for two other murders. Now he is guilty of four murders.”

A moderate Pakistani Muslim about 60 years of age, Yousaf Ali was waiting for his appeal to be heard before the Lahore High Court of his sessions court conviction, handed down in August 2000. He was jailed more than four years ago on accusations that he had declared himself a prophet.

“He had a strong religious bent,” a Lahore source who had read a book written by Yousaf told Compass. “But he never made such claims in his book. He was convicted on the basis of a video recording of a religious gathering which he attended, where he simply said that he ‘felt the presence of the Prophet Mohammed’ there.

“He was a stable, decent man,” the source stressed. “He had not committed blasphemy.”

The attack deepened concerns of local human rights advocates that similar attempts might be made against the lives of at least 75 other Pakistani citizens currently known to be incarcerated on allegations of blasphemy in the nation’s jails.

With an increased number of Islamist activists jailed in recent months in the Pakistan government’s crackdown on international terrorism, blasphemy prisoners now find themselves sharing cells with the most violent category of prisoners.

“Since they are associated with religious organizations like Al-Qaeda, they threaten and beat the [accused blasphemers] whenever they get the opportunity,” the Lahore-based Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS) noted in a statement released June 6. “Jail authorities are cognizant of these facts,” CLAAS coordinator Joseph Francis noted.

“This is the new tactic of the extremist Muslim lobby in Pakistan,” a Pakistani church leader told Compass. “We are very worried about Ayub Masih, and all other prisoners accused on false blasphemy charges,” he said. “All they have to do is take him out of his cell, and he could be killed, too.”

Abid Hassan Minto, a lawyer currently defending two of the most prominent blasphemy prisoners on death row in Pakistan, told Compass that the families of his clients have already asked for increased security for their jailed relatives, in the wake of the Kot Lakhpat murder.

Minto is representing Christian Ayub Masih in the first death sentence for blasphemy ever to be appealed before the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He is also defending Muslim professor Dr. Younis Sheikh before the Lahore High Court, appealing a death sentence handed down against him last October.

According to compiled lists from local human rights activists, Pakistani citizens jailed on blasphemy charges during the year 2001 alone included some 40 Muslims, 23 members of the Ahmadi sect, 10 Christians and two Hindus.

Amended 16 years ago under the dictatorial regime of Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan’s vaguely written, harsh laws against blasphemy now require execution for anyone convicted of slandering the prophet Mohammed, with long jail terms and fines for “lesser” offenses against Islam and the Quran. Although no one has ever been executed, the accused spend years in jail while under trial and must flee the country after acquittal to avoid assassination.

Government leaders from the former prime minister, Benazair Bhutto, to the current chief executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, have tried to introduce procedural changes in the controversial laws, in order to prevent their abuse. But in the face of violent threats from Islamist political groups, Islamabad has backtracked every time, leaving the so-called “black laws” intact. [Return to Index]

***********************************(15) Islamabad Hospital Discharges Last Church Blast VictimCritically Injured Christians Still Face Months of Recoveryby Barbara G. Baker

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Compass) -- Dr. Christy Munir was discharged from an Islamabad hospital on June 4, ten weeks after a deadly church attack in Pakistan’s capital city almost took his life.

He was the last of several local Christians critically wounded in the March 17 blast to be released from hospital care.

Munir was president of the International Protestant Church, where five people were killed and another 45 injured by a grenade attack in a diplomatic enclave of Islamabad.

Shrapnel shattered the artery in Munir’s right shoulder and nearly caused the retired chemistry professor to bleed to death in the hours following the Sunday morning attack. He was left with severe nerve damage causing semi-paralysis of his right hand and arm. He also suffered a compound fracture of his right leg, along with severe leg burns that required skin grafts.

Munir, who spoke with Compass from his bed in the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences on May 17, said that he heard three separate blasts during the March 17 attack.

After hearing the first explosion, he said he was trying to dash out of the church when a second blast knocked him onto the floor. He managed to get up and run toward the exit, but a third blast again felled him, breaking his leg.

“I tried to push myself out along the floor, and shouted for someone to drag me out. By then, I was totally drenched in blood. I felt no pain, but I found myself becoming weaker and weaker.” As he realized he was losing consciousness, he said, “I just yielded myself to my God. I prayed, ‘Whatever you will, Lord, I am here. You can take me.’”

Then suddenly he heard his wife Maureen calling his name, begging him to answer. “I heard her, but I couldn’t respond,” he recalled. Although police were reluctant to enter the church for fear of more explosions, his wife, a medical doctor, finally persuaded them to roll her husband onto a blanket and remove him from the building, so he could be transported to a hospital.

“I can feel the impact of prayers for me in multiple ways,” Munir said. “The very first thing is that I was almost dead when people outside the operating theater came together and started praying for me! Friends told me later they had never seen such a scene. Even Muslims joined in.”

It was not until 3:30 a.m. the next morning, after three successive operations, that Munir’s pulse began to beat normally. Only in mid May did tests indicate that his nerves,

deadened by at least 12 hours without circulation, had slowly begun to respond and regenerate themselves.

Bereaved Father Forgives AttackerFor a second church family struggling to recover from the blast’s crippling wounds,

their loss includes the death of their college-age daughter. Reeba Good was the only Pakistani killed in the attack, along with two Americans, an Afghan and the unknown attacker.

She was sitting in church between her father, Edward, and a younger brother, Arshid, neither of whom remember seeing her after the attack began. They were later told by a diplomat’s wife in the congregation that she had cradled Reeba’s head as she lay on the floor dying, asking her gently, “Reeba, do you know where you are going?”

“Yes,” Reeba replied, “I’m going to my Lord Jesus.”

It was 12 days later when her father, who suffered multiple wounds on his chest and abdomen and a number of bone fractures, learned that Reeba had died. Good’s injuries later forced the amputation of his right leg. Although his son Arshid’s leg was broken and torn by shrapnel, it is healing well and the cast is due to be removed within a few more weeks.

Good spent 22 days in the hospital before he was released to his home on the outskirts of Rawalpindi. Propped on pillows on his bed, with his scarred left leg still in a clumsy metal splint, he admitted it had not been an easy time for him. He found himself unable to sleep, both from the physical pain as well as the grief over his daughter’s death.

“God spoke to my emotions,” Good said, his eyes filling with unshed tears. “He told me, ‘Don’t worry about Reeba. She is with Me.’ So we have forgiven that man, whoever he was, who killed her and left me crippled like this.”

Good had supported his family by giving private lessons in both Urdu and English. But now, he said his family had been forced to take out loans totaling 800,000 rupees ($13,335) to pay the hospital and medical bills for himself and his son. One of his daughters had to quit her teaching job to help care for the men when they returned home. In addition, the family hired the services of a male nurse still required for the father.

“No one from my government has ever come to see my face since the attack,” Good said. “They have given us nothing for the victims or the injured, like they did after the Bahawalpur church massacre. I think they have the mindset that foreign Christians should help us,” he sighed.

Most of the wounded at the International Protestant Church were foreign citizens who were flown to their home countries by their governments or employers, with medical costs paid through their insurance companies.

“But we have experienced such comfort in our sorrow,” Reeba’s older sister Avase said. “We don’t want to miss honoring Jesus in this. We cannot tell you how, but He has taken all our mourning.”

***Photographs of Dr. Christy Munir and Edward Good are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.[Return to Index]

***********************************(16) Pakistani Christian Brothers Await Blasphemy Verdict AppealAccuser’s Lawyers Demand Death Penalty by Barbara G. Baker

LAHORE, Pakistan (Compass) -- Two years after they were handed life sentences in prison following a quarrel over ice cream bowls, Rasheed and Saleem Masih are wondering if their long-delayed appeal will even be heard this year before the Lahore High Court.

The Pakistani Christians’ appeal has been adjourned for the past six months due to the overload in Pakistan’s court dockets as well as a perceived reluctance to process the increasing number of volatile religious blasphemy cases.

Although set for an earlier hearing on May 21, the brothers’ case failed to come up for consideration and was postponed for three more weeks only to be adjourned again.

Meanwhile, the two men wait it out in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail, where they were transferred seven months ago. On June 11 in that same jail, a Pakistani Muslim also waiting for his high court appeal on alleged blasphemy charges was murdered by another prisoner. Many of their cellmates are members of extremist Muslim groups jailed for violent crimes. The prisoners are allowed one visit from their families each month. Rasheed, 35, has five children and Saleem, 31, has three.

Jailed since June 1999, the two Pakistani Christian brothers were ruled guilty of blasphemy against Islam and its prophet Mohammed during a fight with a Muslim ice cream vendor. Although such a verdict under Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws requires the death penalty, they were instead given 35-year prison terms.

The surprise conviction was handed down in the context of threats by local Muslim extremists aimed at both the defense lawyers and the Pasrur Sessions Court judge hearing the case.

A number of discrepancies between the testimony of Muslim complainant Maqsood Ahmed and prosecution witnesses will be argued during the appeal, the defense counsel for the Masih brothers told Compass.

Notably, Ahmed’s original complaint filed with the police only reported a fistfight, with no mention of “blasphemous remarks.” Then six days later, a First Information Report was filed that accused the two Christians of slandering Mohammed.

In addition, one of the prosecution witnesses had denied under cross-examination that his paternal uncle had filed and lost a civil suit against the two Christians involving a dispute over a piece of land. Although a copy of this litigation was submitted to the court by the defense as proof that grounds existed for a grudge on the part of the Muslim complainants, it was ignored in the lower court judgment.

On the procedural side, the defense also argued that the local sessions court by law could not rule on offenses under Section 295-A of the blasphemy law, which remains under the jurisdiction of Anti-Terrorist Courts alone. The two men were sentenced to 25 years in prison under Section 295-C and to another 10 years each under Section 295-A.

The Masih brothers are being defended by lawyers representing the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), a Lahore-based advocacy group providing judicial expertise and related services to Pakistan’s minority religious communities.

Meanwhile, lawyers of the complainant submitted a petition to Lahore High Court Justice M.A. Shaheed Siddiqui on May 21 asking the court to “enhance” the life sentence verdict against the Masih brothers by giving them the death penalty. Although Justice Siddiqui has ordered the complainant to appear in person at the June 11 hearing, neither he nor his lawyer attended. No date has been set for the next hearing.

***Photographs of Rasheed and Saleem Masih are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal. [Return to Index]

***********************************(17) Pakistani Woman Fights to Overturn Forced Marriage, ConversionChristian Girl is Kidnapped and Sold to a Muslim Buyerby Barbara G. Baker

LAHORE, Pakistan (Compass) -- Maria Samar John was a slight, shy teenager of 17 when her nightmare began in Lahore’s Cantt district four and one-half years ago.

While alone at home one day, her younger siblings at school and her mother away for several days on a visit, her Aunt Shama’s husband Jameel unexpectedly appeared at the door. Although her maternal aunt was from a Pakistani Christian family, she had converted to Islam years earlier and married a Muslim.

Claiming that her aunt was ill, Jameel told Maria that her mother had suggested on her way out of Lahore the day before that perhaps Maria could help care for her aunt for a few days. Unsuspecting, Maria returned with him that day in December 1997.

But two days later, the couple took her 40 miles away for a “visit” in Gujranwala, where they left her in a locked room, promising to come back. For the next five months, Maria was kept under lock and key, fed by an older woman who said she “didn’t know” why the girl was being kept there.

Meanwhile, Maria’s mother became frantic over her daughter’s disappearance. Pretending to share her sister’s concern, Shama volunteered to stay with the mother for the next two months, while Jameel allegedly “searched” for the missing Maria. In fact, the Christian family later learned, Shama’s husband was searching for a Muslim “buyer” for Maria.

On the night of May 14, 1998, Maria’s aunt came back to see her niece for the first time. Ten minutes later, Jameel arrived with several armed men, a Muslim sheikh and Abdul Gaffar, a man in his mid 30s.

When a quarrel broke out between Jameel and Gaffar, Maria realized that this man had agreed to pay 80,000 rupees (equivalent at the time to $2,000) to buy her as his wife. Quickly, the Muslim cleric performed the wedding ceremony, changing her name from Maria to Kalsoom. He then tried to force her to say the Islamic creed, which automatically converts to Islam anyone who repeats it. When she refused, the men grabbed her hand and forced her thumbprint on the marriage and conversion certificates.

Over her tearful protests, the unwilling bride was taken that same night to her new husband’s home in the Ghajar district of Gujranwala. There she was introduced to her mother-in-law and Gaffar’s seven sisters, all of whom became guards in her new prison.

After six months, she became pregnant, with a son born in September 1999. Despite their efforts to force her to memorize the Quran and say Muslim prayers, she refused, taking their beatings instead.

“They called me a ‘bloody Christian woman,’” Maria said, “and many other bad names.” Reduced to virtual slave status, she was beaten by both her husband and mother-in-law many times, she said.

Several months after her son was born, Maria attempted to run away when the house was inadvertently left unlocked one night. “They beat me very badly for that,” she said, “and they would only give me my son when I needed to nurse him.”

A year later, when Maria was newly pregnant again, she saw her chance. Snatching a house key that had been left in the bathroom, she took her baby and her marriage certificate, unlocked the door and fled.

From the home of the nearest relative she knew, she telephoned her mother, who after three years had almost given up hope. She immediately came and took Maria home. Within a few days, she found and hired a Christian lawyer to help her daughter obtain a divorce. But after a few days, the lawyer returned to admit, “I’m sorry, I can’t do

anything for your daughter. This man’s family are very influential and dangerous people.”

A member of the Muslim extremist Sipah-e-Sabah Party in Gujranwala, Gaffar sent men to try to recapture Maria from her mother’s home soon afterwards. But due to security guards stationed in the district, where the mother worked as a nurse in an army institution, his henchmen failed in their plan.

Desperate for both physical and legal protection for her daughter, Maria’s mother was introduced to the Lahore-based Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), which agreed in December 2000 to find her safe lodging and file a divorce suit on her behalf.

While in hiding in a secret location, Maria gave birth in May 2001 to a daughter whom she has named Miriam. She has chosen the biblical name Joshua for her son Hassan Ali, now nearly three years old.

First filed on December 19, 2000, before the Lahore Family Court, Maria’s divorce case finally came up for a final ruling on May 22, 2002. But in the meantime, her husband had filed an application in Gujranwala to obtain custody of his son, insisting that Christians should not raise the boy.

The divorce ruling was deferred until after a June 4 hearing, when Gaffar’s custody case was ordered transferred to be heard in Lahore. “Now the divorce decision should be forthcoming within a month,” her CLAAS lawyer said.

Due to the circumstances of her kidnapping and forced marriage, he said, Pakistani law would not allow the father to take the children.

Meanwhile, despite her mother’s support, Maria’s brother has vowed to kill his sister for “shaming the family honor.” The younger sibling is adamant that their family should not accept the two children fathered by a Muslim.

***Photos of Maria and her two children are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.[Return to Index]

***********************************(18) Pakistani Defense Lawyers ThreatenedExtremists Vow to Kill Men Defending Alleged ‘Blasphemers’by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL (Compass) -- Two lawyers known for defending Pakistani Christians and Muslims over alleged blasphemy charges received death threats in early June, part of a series of overt warnings dished out to perceived “enemies of Islam” by local extremists.

Both Christians, Pakistani advocates Pervaiz Aslam Chaudhry in Lahore and Khalil Tahir* in Faisalabad confirmed to Compass on June 10 that unknown men on motorbikes had targeted them and their families on Saturday, June 8.

Chaudhry, the senior legal counsel for the Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), said he was driving to court on the morning of June 8 with another colleague when four men on motorbikes forced his car to stop along the main street in Lahore’s Gulberg district.

“They shouted abuses and filthy language at me and my associate, Justin Gill,” Chaudhry told Compass by telephone from Lahore. “This is your last warning,” the men shouted at him. “Stop this case of Wajih ul-Hussan today, or you will be killed.” Although he did not recognize any of them, Chaudhry said he could identify the men in a line-up.

Shaken by the direct threats, Chaudhry went on to the Lahore Additional Sessions Court for the hearing set on ul-Hussan’s case. Accompanied by CLAAS coordinator Joseph Francis, he filed an application reporting the threats before Justice Sardar Ahmed Naeem, who promptly ordered a continuance hearing on the case, now set for June 13.

Chaudhry said he was threatened in person two other times recently, first on May 29 and then again on June 1. His accusers labeled him “an enemy of Islam,” he said, for representing ul-Hassan, a young Muslim jailed on what he called “flimsy hearsay,” as well as a number of Christians accused of blasphemy. Since then, he has occasionally noticed someone following him on a motorcycle.

“Even my wife has received several telephone calls from unknown persons,” Chaudhry said. “They threatened her with dire consequences if she did not prevent me from defending these cases.”

According to a June 3 report in the Daily Times newspaper, Chaudhry filed applications about these specific threats with the local courts, provincial police and bar councils in Punjab province, requesting legal protection so he could plead his cases “fairly and justly.”

So far, however, Chaudhry has not been provided with police escorts. He was due to appear before the Lahore High Court on June 11 to appeal verdicts against Saleem and Rasheed Masih, two Christian brothers jailed since 1999.

In Faisalabad, attorney Khalil Tahir had already gone to the local sessions court to defend jailed Christian Ranjha Masih on Saturday morning, June 8, when four men on motorbikes pulled up at his home. Although the men knocked on the door, his wife refused to open it, demanding that they identify themselves. Just then her parents came walking up to the house, scaring off the intruders.

On May 28, Tahir told Compass, he and his wife received a late-night phone call from a man identifying himself as Shabeeb Basra. When Tahir’s wife answered the phone, the man declared that because her husband was defending Ranjha Masih, “Your children, you and your husband will be killed.” When Tahir took the receiver, the caller repeated the threat and concluded, “Your days are numbered now. Soon you will be no more.”

Tahir said that he is now being accompanied by plainclothes police everywhere he goes, and that his wife, children and parents-in-law have been moved to a secure location.

“For myself, I don’t have any fears,” he said, stating that he would appear on June 19 for the continuance on Ranjha Masih’s case, which he represents on behalf of the Catholic Church’s National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP). “But for my children ….”

Both lawyers are married with three young children.

In October 1997, an extremist gunman shot and killed a moderate Muslim judge of the Lahore High Court who had acquitted two Christians on blasphemy charges for lack of evidence.

*CORRECTION: In a June 10 Flash News release, Tahir was incorrectly identified as a Muslim. Compass Direct apologizes for the error.[Return to Index]

***********************************(19) U.S. Missionary Hostage Killed in Philippine Rescue AttemptMartin and Gracia Burnham Had Been Held for More Than a Yearby Deann Alford

AUSTIN, Texas (Compass) -- Kidnapped American missionary pilot Martin Burnham was killed on June 7 in a Philippine military raid to rescue him, his wife, Gracia, and a Filipina nurse. Gracia was shot in the leg during the raid in the Zamboanga del Norte area on Mindanao island.

Gracia Burnham returned home to Kansas on Monday, June 10. She met her three children in the Kansas City, Missouri, airport after a year-long hostage drama in the jungles of three Philippine islands.

The 43-year-old New Tribes Mission (NTM) worker was taken to a secure area guarded by the FBI. There she greeted other family members, including her parents and the parents of her late husband, Martin Burnham, 42. Martin’s body was flown to a U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan, for an autopsy. His memorial service was June 14 in Rose Hill, Kansas, followed by a private burial.

The Burnhams considered Rose Hill, a town near Wichita, Kansas, their home in the United States. Martin’s parents, fellow Philippine NTMers Paul and Oreta Burnham, have cared for the couple’s children, Jeffrey, 15; Mindy, 12; and Zach, 11, in Rose Hill during the year since the kidnapping. Well-wishers, yellow ribbons, and homemade signs reading “Welcome home, Gracia,” “Rose Hill loves Gracia,” and “We’re praying for you,” lined the road approaching Rose Hill when she arrived, the Wichita Eagle newspaper reported.

The body of 45-year-old Philippine nurse Ediborah (Deborah) Yap, who also died in the clash between government troops and Abu Sayyaf rebels, arrived in her village of Lamitan on June 9. Lamitan is on the southern island of Basilan, an Abu Sayyaf stronghold.

Before leaving the Philippines, Gracia met with Yap’s four children in a tearful encounter, CNSNews.com reported. She told them that the captors reportedly had offered their mother freedom. Instead, she chose to stay to help the Burnhams.

The raid’s tragic outcome came as a shock to Ross, who learned of it at 4 a.m. June 7 when CNN phoned his home asking for comment.

“We always felt they would probably (survive the kidnapping),” Ross said. “We had no clue anything was happening. Yesterday (June 6) we got a call from a couple of FBI agents saying that they didn’t know what was going on (with the case). So I don’t think they had a clue, either.”

Ross said that the mission holds no bitterness about the tragedy. “God is in control,” he said. “We don’t understand or know why it worked out that way, but we have to believe that God is in control and was working through the situation.”

In previous interviews with Compass, Ross had said NTM would agree to a rescue attempt under certain conditions. “We have never been opposed to a rescue,” Ross said. “We always felt that a rescue should take place only with the right intelligence and only with the right team. And that’s been a concern for us.

“But also a rescue was way down the list of things we would want. At some point when you know they’re at death’s door, because of malnutrition or something, you have to do something. But these are always difficult decisions to make.”

Gracia Burnham said the gun battle lasted about 20 minutes, her sister-in-law, Teresa Burnham, told reporters. Gracia and Martin were on a hammock under a tarp when the fighting began. Moments before shots rang out, Martin was “talking about the Lord,” Teresa Burnham said. “‘If I have to go, I want to go out strong for the Lord’-- those were some of his last words.”

The autopsy results were pending at press time. They may reveal whether Abu Sayyaf bullets killed him, or if he was accidentally hit by “friendly” fire.

In leaving the Philippines, Gracia Burnham was carrying a goodbye letter Martin had written to his children just days before his death, apparently believing that he would face death and meet Jesus in heaven, CNN reported, quoting a senior Philippine military official.

Philippine President Gloria Arroyo said June 8 that her country’s air force and army will unleash their full arsenal now that the rebels hold no hostages. More than 200 soldiers arrived June 10 to reinforce the offensive. The soldiers are the first of up to 1,800 additional troops to be deployed in three southern islands, AP reported.

Arroyo and the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines phoned the family to express condolences, Ross said.

Islamic Abu Sayyaf rebels linked to Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden kidnapped the couple and 18 others from Dos Palmas Resort on the Philippine island of Palawan on May 27, 2001. The other hostages either escaped, paid ransom for their freedom or were killed by the guerrillas.[Return to Index]

***********************************(20) Vietnam’s Religious Leaders Hear Plaudits, Others Hear Cries of Pain Delegation’s View on Persecution Conflicts with Confirmed Reportsby Alex Buchan

LONDON (Compass) -- While a delegation of Vietnam’s religious leaders visited the United States May 9-13, denying persecution reports and receiving plaudits from their Christian hosts, a well-known Vietnam watcher wrote of a darker side during an extensive visit to the country in April.

The Rev. Lonnie Turnipseed, a U.S.-based retired United Methodist and former executive of the Methodist development agency, told the delegation and the press, “There is clearly freedom of religion in Vietnam.” The Rev. Turnipseed, who wrote the mission study on Vietnam used by the 2001 United Methodist Schools of Christian Mission, also said, “One of the problems is that outsiders continue to stir up problems in Vietnam and continue to create tensions within the religious communities and the government.”

But a pastor from the embattled Montagnard (the name for Vietnam’s ethnic groups

in the Central Highlands) communities told the Vietnam watcher, “We are like animals being driven into an ever smaller enclosure. We are on the way to becoming slaves. They take our land and then hire us for a pittance to work for them. They tell us our Christianity is illegal and harass us without end. We don’t know how much more we can take. Our spirits are breaking. We are losing hope. Does anyone know our condition? Can anyone help?”

Over half of Vietnam’s one million Protestants come from the Montagnards, but they have been severely persecuted, especially since February 2001 when disaffection with government oppression resulted in street demonstrations. According to the Vietnam watcher, 30 Christian leaders have already received jail sentences ranging from three to 12 years. Others have simply disappeared, and a further 200 Christians have been arrested this year.

It seems extraordinary that the United Methodist spokespersons can be ignorant of this situation. On April 23, Human Rights Watch released a 200-page report entitled “Repression of Montagnards: Conflict Over Land and Religion in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.” The report concluded that the Vietnamese government had violated the rights to freedom of religion of the Montagnards, forcibly closing churches, imprisoning Christians and pressuring Christians to abandon their faith.

In addition, over 900 mostly Christian Montagnards who fled to Cambodia were granted asylum in the United States in early June on grounds that they had a “well-founded fear of persecution” if returned.

Another United Methodist pastor and the current director of Church World Service, the Rev. John McCullogh, gave the Vietnam delegation and press his impressions from a trip to Vietnam last year. He said he had gained “… a sense that the government of Vietnam clearly expresses a sense of compassion for its people.”

But the Vietnam watcher saw a different side. In the past five years, an estimated 14,000 Christian Hmong have fled persecution in northwest Vietnam. In April 2001, a group of 100 Christian families (nearly 500 people in total) left their ancestral homes and made the 800-mile journey south to the Central Highlands. Pooling their wealth, they bought land for $15,000, erected a simple village and began to plant crops. Just as they were about to harvest their first rice crop in early April 2002, several trucks with police and soldiers arrived one morning before dawn. They informed the Hmong Christians they had two hours to gather their belongings. They trucked them at gunpoint to a remote part of the jungle and dumped them. One week later, the government dropped off some tin roofing and a little rice. This is the kind of compassion the Vietnamese government is showing many tribal Christians in Vietnam today. Wrote the Vietnam watcher, “Is it any wonder that the minority people’s of Vietnam are losing hope?”

The leader of the Vietnam delegation was Mr. Le Quang Vinh, the Chairman of the National Committee for Religious Affairs. He was quoted by the Methodist press as saying, “The government is not interfering in religious affairs.”

But Pastor Nguyen Hong Quang says it is. He is a Vietnamese Mennonite pastor trained in law, who now regularly confronts the authorities with extensive evidence of torture of Christians.

In February, he slipped a security police cordon around his home in order to meet with the visiting United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. In April,

he showed the Vietnam watcher gruesome photos of his latest persecution case -- a tribal pastor named Truc, who is shown with eyes swollen, cuts on his face and clothes badly torn. He was the victim of an increasingly common police tactic: the police encourage unemployed youth to beat up selected victims and then the police refuse to intervene.

Pastor Truc was on his way to visit a Christian family in a nearby village in early April when 20 drunken youths attacked him. They left him for dead under a bush. When he regained consciousness, Truc staggered to a nearby police post to report what had happened. The police advised him they could not help because he was in the wrong jurisdiction.

The Vietnam watcher wrote, “Pastor Quang is nonplussed that some American Mennonites, who opposed their government’s participation in the Vietnam War, appear to have faith in the Vietnamese government and are silent regarding the widespread persecution of Christians.

Pastor Quang is not the only one! [Return to Index]

***********************************(21) ‘Misunderstandings’ Plague Vietnam’s Religious Liberty PolicyGovernment Launches a Propaganda Counterattack After Reports of AbusesSpecial to Compass Direct

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (Compass) -- Stinging from the new reports revealing Vietnam’s human rights and religious liberty abuses, the country launched a propaganda counterattack of sorts when the National Bureau of Religious Affairs (NBRA) led a delegation of eight government officials and eight religious leaders to Washington and New York in mid May.

The communist officials and some of the religious leaders in the delegation, as well as the hosting United Methodist Church (UMC), painted a glowing picture of flourishing religious practice, freedom and warm government cooperation.

With recent reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in mind, Mr. Le Quang Vinh, head of the NBRA, tried, according to Vietnam media, to “correct certain misunderstandings concerning Vietnam’s policy of freedom of religion.” A UMC press release of May 13, 2002, quoted him as describing unfettered religious practice and stating, “The government is not interfering into religious affairs.”

The same release quoted the Rev. Loni Turnipseed, “a United Methodist and a retired Church World Service executive with long experience in Southern Asia,” as saying “that while isolated incidents of religion-related harassment … have occurred in some areas, these are not the result of government policy.” Turnipseed added, “There is clearly

freedom of religion in Vietnam.” The UMC’s chief executive, John McCullough, “lauded the cooperation between government and religious communities.”

These sentiments echoed what was carried in Vietnam’s state-controlled media. The English language Vietnam News reported in its May 15, 2002, edition, “Vietnam and the U.S. have forged closer ties in the religious arena following a remarkable visit by Vietnamese religious bodies to the U.S.”

Surprise Inclusion of ECVN DelegatesThe surprise in this visit was the participation of leaders of the recently recognized

Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South). The ECVN (South) is the only religious body officially recognized by the government that Vietnam watchers say has not been co-opted by the state.

Included among the eight religious delegates were the ECVN’s president, the Rev. Pham Xuan Thieu, and two colleagues. Their presence on the delegation released a firestorm of comment and controversy among Vietnamese evangelicals both in Vietnam and abroad.

Leaders of Rev. Thieu’s own denomination were highly critical; “unwise,” “used” and “naïve” were among the mildest terms used. The leader of Vietnam’s largest house church organization said the reputation of the church in Vietnam had been damaged both at home and abroad.

The other religious figures on the trip were four from the Vietnam Buddhist Church -- a small organization not at all representative of Vietnam’s Buddhists -- and one leader of an association of “patriotic Catholics” held in disdain by Vietnam’s large Roman Catholic Church. Catholic sources in Vietnam told Compass that the priest who went was so embarrassed that on his return to Vietnam he tried to prevent people from knowing that he was on the trip. One of the Buddhists on the delegation is a well-known government “parrot,” sources said.

The Rebuilding of the ECVNThe ECVN (South) was granted legal recognition only last year. Alternately harassed,

ignored and persecuted since the communist takeover in 1975, the ECVN was allowed to hold its first assembly since then in February of 2001. ECVN members knew from a secret, leaked document called “Plan 184A” exactly how the authorities intended to go about controlling the process. Though there were crude attempts to manipulate the church, ECVN delegates refused to vote for the pro-government leaders. Instead, they elected the reluctant Rev. Thieu for his strong spiritual qualities.

Thieu, who is a graduate of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in the U.S., is a quiet theology professor who had long plied his trade underground and has had little previous administrative experience. His challenge, he said, “was to rebuild a structure out of complete rubble.” Communist authorities had made the ECVN dysfunctional by preventing it from carrying on its organizational business for more than 25 years.

The Rev. Thieu expected criticism for going on the trip, but agreed to accept the NBRA invitation because he thought the consequences of not accepting would be worse, sources said. He certainly spoke much differently than the other religious figures on the delegation.

Asked about the situation of the ECVN, which includes about two-thirds of Vietnam’s 1.1 million evangelicals, he “told his U.S. counterparts it is time to focus on a better future, not dwell on the religious problems and restriction of the past,” according to the UMC press release.

He is also quoted as saying in the same release that “Vietnam has 80 churches …,” a figure that bears no resemblance at all to the realities in Vietnam. A phone call to the UMC confirmed this is what the interpreter had indeed said. However, when Compass asked Rev. Thieu about the number, the chagrined president reported that he had said, “Speaking only for the ECVN (South), there are 800 churches,” and that he had used the 800 figure to include the Montagnard churches historically part of the ECVN but still firmly excluded by the authorities from the dubious benefits of official recognition.

“This mistake is no mere interpreter’s slip,” a Vietnam watcher said.

Close observers of the Vietnam scene believe that the authorities pressured the Rev. Thieu to participate in the delegation to damage his reputation among his peers. A very small number of pastors, sympathetic with the government and hungry for power, have been circulating letters accusing the elected ECVN leaders of ineffectiveness and worse. Disappointed at being marginalized, these pastors are playing sycophant to the government and angling for leadership jobs during the next elections.

Little benefit has been gained by the ECVN (South) since its legalization in April 2001, primarily due to government interference. The church’s one priority request was to open a seminary and resume training pastors after 26 years of not being allowed to train leaders. The request is still “under consideration” by government authorities.

Harsh Treatment of ProtestantsContrary to what the National Bureau of Religious Affairs preaches about unfettered

religious freedom and what the United Methodist Church echoes, religious groups in Vietnam, especially Protestants, continue to suffer strong and systematic discrimination, harassment and persecution. There are three well-documented subsets of Vietnam’s harsh treatment of Protestants.

1. Campaign Against Christianity Among the Hmong

One is the campaign against the movement to Christianity among the Hmong minority in Vietnam’s northwest provinces. A conservative estimate of members of this unprecedented movement, which started in 1989 through Hmong language Christian radio broadcasts, is 250,000 Christians.

Hmong believers themselves have acquired and supplied to researchers countless documents spelling out the official campaign against them. A major report on these documents entitled “Directions for Stopping Religion” was published by the Center for Religious Freedom of Freedom House in Washington, D.C., in November 2000 and prompted President Bill Clinton to raise religious freedom issues on his trip to Vietnam.

In April, International Christian Concern of Washington, D.C., published a set of documents from the hamlet of Tran Xoan in Lao Cai province. The “Tran Xoan Documents” report includes petitions of Christians and the government response, which clearly demonstrate that Hmong are forbidden to follow Protestant Christianity.

Persecution of the Hmong people has been cruel. Dozens have spent years in harsh prisons. Eight Christian leaders were confirmed to still be in prison in June. Hmong have been beaten and tortured. Their houses have been torn down and their goods seized. Many have been deprived of their homes and land.

In the past five years, some 14,000 Hmong have found the situation in their native areas so untenable that they have fled south to Vietnam’s Central Highlands, where they have found a bit more freedom. All attempts by Hmong Christians in the northwest provinces to identify with the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (North) have been rejected by the authorities, who have attempted to reconvert Hmong Christian believers to ancestor worship and animism in the name of conserving their “wholesome and beautiful traditional culture.”

2. Campaign Against Christianity in the Central Highlands

A second anti-Christian campaign, already going on for 27 years, finally caught the attention of the secular human rights observers.

In late April 2002, Human Rights Watch published a 200-page expose called “Repression of Montagnards: Conflict over Land and Religion in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.” It is based on reports from Christians in Vietnam, the government’s own private documents acquired by the organization, and interviews with hundreds of Montagnard refugees who fled to Cambodia. It corroborates what Christian religious liberty groups have been saying for years. “Montagnard” is a collective term that refers to the many minority tribal groups in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.

Christians from the minority groups make up the majority of Vietnam’s evangelicals. And in spite of being treated as illegal for years and having faced waves of repression against them, their numbers have grown remarkably. Some tribal churches have grown 10-fold since 1975. There are an estimated 500,000 Montagnard Christians in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.

In early 2001, several thousand Montagnards, predominantly Christians, shocked Vietnam’s authorities when they participated in demonstrations protesting wholesale

illegal acquisition of traditional lands by ethnic Vietnamese settlers and the long repression of their Christian faith.

Instead of addressing the real grievances, communist authorities responded with a long and brutal crackdown on tribal Christians. Dozens have been jailed, hundreds have fled to neighboring Cambodia, and an unconfirmed number have disappeared -- likely killed by extra-judicial means. The Human Rights Watch book details this repression, including the “goat’s blood ceremony” in which authorities try to force re-conversion to animism by making Christians drink a repulsive cocktail of blood from freshly sacrificed animals and powerful rice wine.

The Vietnamese authorities discovered that it was a small number of radicals, incited by exiles in the U.S. who called themselves “Dega,” who were behind the demonstrations. These radicals, lacking any base of their own, had tried to work through the church network. While many Christians shared the desire for justice concerning land and religion, they did not share the Dega radicals’ call for independence that so angered the authorities.

Nevertheless, Vietnamese authorities continue to use the event as an excuse for a wholesale anti-Christian campaign. Only in their propaganda are authorities paying any attention to fundamental racism and injustices suffered by the minorities.

In the two most affected provinces, Dak Lak and Gia Lai, there are more than 700 evangelical congregations with an historic relationship to the ECVN (South). Even though the ECVN (South) was supposedly granted legality last year, only five of the 700-plus congregations in the two highland provinces have been recognized as legal by the authorities. They say for the rest, “It is not yet convenient.” The government accuses Christians of being agents of “peaceful evolution” -- using democracy, human rights, and religious freedom issues to try to overthrow socialism.

3. Campaign Against the House Church Movement

The third campaign is a countrywide one against the house church movement. An estimated 250,000 Christians belong to the 30-plus house church organizations, which began in the late 1980s. Not a week goes by but that there are dozens of reports of hostile actions against these house churches.

House church meetings are regularly broken up. Those attending are “written up,” leaders and house owners are interrogated and fined. Bibles and hymnals and other Christian literature are confiscated. People are roughed up by the police. Many of the official summonses and receipts include, as the reason for the action against the accused, the words, “for following Christianity illegally.”

Here are a few examples from the last week of May.

A renewed campaign to close house churches and make Christians abandon their faith was launched in Quang Ngai province. In the Tan Uyen district of Binh Phuoc province, a public security policeman named Ly confiscated the motorbikes of two Christians attending a house church worship service. They were told they would get them back only when they recanted their faith. In Ninh Son district of Ninh Thuan province, authorities are “upgrading” a Roglai minority village to be a “cultural village.” They distributed pictures of Ho Chi Minh to all households along with a supply of joss sticks. The families were told a requirement was to burn joss sticks before the picture of “Uncle Ho.” When the four Christian families in the village objected, they were threatened with expulsion.

Discrimination against Christians in Vietnam is common in relief distribution, education, health care and other government services. In just one of hundreds of examples that could be cited, in April 2002, several Ede minority Christians in Ea Trol Commune in Phu Yen province had their electricity cut. The official receipt said that the local official issuing it was “implementing an order by the Party and the government to cut the electricity of Christians.”

Just three weeks before Mr. Vinh of the NBRA traveled to the U.S. to assure the world that all was fine on the religious front, authorities in the city of Vinh, Nghe An province, destroyed an historic Protestant church. Built in 1936, the substantial brick church had long been confiscated and used for government purposes. In the early 1990s, with the return of some normality, the Christians of Vinh began submitting regular petitions for the return of their building. They were ignored. On the morning of April 17, machinery arrived at the church site and demolished the church building.

In a letter forwarded to the prime minister by leaders of the ECVN (North), the Christians in Nghe An wrote the following plaintive understatement:

“It was with great pain that we learned of the destruction of our church. Our church miraculously survived two terrible wars without a scratch, but now when our country is at peace and we supposedly have security, our church is demolished. Those of us who are Christian believers are surprised and puzzled, and those near the site who witnessed the destruction are very angry. Where we live, government officials do not consider the needs of people of faith, and they do not properly implement the stated policies of the government.”

Sadly, this last sentence remains the rule in Vietnam, rather than the exception.[Return to Index]

**********************************************************************COMPASS DIRECTGlobal News from the Frontlines

Jeff Taylor, Managing EditorGail Wahlquist, Editorial Assistant

Suzi Quinones, Design

Bureau Chiefs:Barbara Baker, Middle EastAlex Buchan, Asia

For subscription information, contact:

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