ANKARA, July 21 (Compass Direct News) – Days after his release from a month of interrogations and severe torture under secret police custody, Iranian Christian Mohsen Namvar has fled across the border into Turkey with his family. Traveling by train, the badly beaten Christian arrived July 2 in eastern Turkey with his wife and son. Namvar, 44, had been held incommunicado by a branch of Sepah (the Iranian Revolutionary Guards) from May 31 until June 26, when authorities told his family they were releasing him “temporarily.” Although the secret police demanded $43,000 in bail, officers refused to issue a court receipt for the family’s cash payment. At the time of his release, Namvar was experiencing fever, severe back pain, extremely high blood pressure, uncontrollable shaking of his limbs and recurring short-term memory loss. “I have no doubt they wanted to kill me,” Namvar told Compass. According to Namvar, who converted from Islam to Christianity as a teenager, his severe physical mistreatment stemmed from his refusal to give the police any names or information about other converts and house church groups in Iran.
Read More
ISTANBUL, July 18 (Compass Direct News) – A Pakistani couple has appealed a court decision to award custody of their two daughters, 10 and 13, to the children’s alleged kidnappers. The court based its custody decision on the girls’ conversion to Islam. Judge Main Naeem Sardar ruled Saturday (July 12) that Saba Masih, 13, and Aneela Masih, 10, had become Muslims, invalidating their Christian parents’ right to legal guardianship. “He said that because the parents are Christians and because the girls told the court that they adopted Islam, their relationship has ceased,” lawyer Rashid Rehman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan told Compass. Under a common interpretation of Islamic law, a Christian cannot have custody of a Muslim. The sisters appeared in a Muzaffargarh District and Sessions court in the company of 16 Muslim men and were given five minutes to testify that their conversion was genuine, human rights activist Ashfaq Fateh said. It was the first time that Younis Masih and his wife had seen their daughters since they disappeared on June 26 while traveling to their uncle’s nearby home in Sarwar Shaheed, 150 miles southwest of Lahore.
Read More
ISTANBUL, July 18 (Compass Direct News) – Three Algerian Christians fighting a blasphemy sentence arrived at court in northwestern Algeria on Tuesday (July 15) to find that their hearing was postponed until October 21 because the presiding judge was on vacation. Rachid Muhammad Essaghir, Youssef Ourahmane and a third man were charged in February with “blaspheming the name of the Prophet [Muhammad] and Islam” and threatening the life of a man who claimed to have converted to Christianity but who “returned” to Islam when his Islamic fundamentalist ties were exposed. The accuser, Shamouma Al-Aid, has links with Islamic fundamentalists, according to the defendants. “He was in touch with fanatics while with us,” said Ourahmane. “He used us to get money and information.”
Read More
NEW DELHI, July 17 (Compass Direct News) – The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government in Gujarat state has disclosed that there were only three complaints of alleged “forcible” conversions in the state in the last 10 years, and only two of those concerned Christian conversions. The state Home Department made the embarrassing disclosure after Samson Christian, a leader of the All India Christian Council, sought the information under the Right to Information Act of 2005. The Act makes it mandatory for government authorities to furnish information concerning public matters sought by any citizen. “The Home Department said two of the three complaints were concerning Christian conversions,” Christian told Compass. “One was filed in 2007, and the other in 1997.” The BJP government’s reluctant admission coincided with the notification of the rules under the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act of 2003 on July 10. The rules were framed on April 1, and their notification was the last formality in the implementation of the law.
Read More
DUBLIN, July 14 (Compass Direct News) – Authorities in West Papua, Indonesia, must move fast to prevent tension between Christian and Muslim communities escalating into a Malukan-style conflict, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG). The neighboring Maluku islands erupted into bitter sectarian warfare between 1999 and 2002, leaving thousands dead, injured or homeless. While the conflict in West Papua dates back to Indonesia’s takeover of the region in 1963, several developments from the beginning of the decade have heightened tension in recent months, according to ICG’s June 16 report, “Communal Tensions in Papua.” New, less tolerant strands of Islam and Christianity have gained influence since 2002, creating fissures within and between religious communities, the report claims. Also, faith issues have acquired a political dimension, since many Papuan Christians believe a Special Autonomy Law passed in 2001 was too limited, while Muslim migrants firmly support centralized rule from Jakarta and accuse Christians of separatism. Most importantly, an influx of Muslim migrants, initially sponsored by the government, has changed demographics in the region, with Papuan Christians now fearing they will become a minority.
Read More
ISTANBUL, July 11 (Compass Direct News) – A Christian father in Pakistan is in a legal battle with kidnappers for the custody of his pre-teen daughters, who allegedly have been forced to convert to Islam. Yesterday a judge in Pakistan’s Punjab province ordered further investigation into the kidnapping of Saba Younis, 12, and Aneela Younis, 10, who went missing on June 26 in the small town of Chowk Munda. The kidnappers filed for custody of the girls at the local police house on June 28, stating that the sisters had converted to Islam and their father no longer had jurisdiction over them. When the father of the two girls, Younis Masih, was summoned to the police house to testify, police initially refused to file a case, telling Masih to “remain silent” as the girls had embraced Islam. Ashfaq Fateh, a Christian advocate who established contact with Masih this week, said that the girls’ Catholic family had not received threats for their faith. He asserted, however, that the kidnapping was a religious matter. “Being weaker and belonging to the Christian community, the girls were kidnapped,” he said.
Read More
ISTANBUL, July 9 (Compass Direct News) – Iranian authorities have detained two converts to Christianity in the southern city of Shiraz for eight weeks on suspicion of “apostasy,” or leaving Islam. In Iran, apostasy is a crime that can be punishable by death. Mahmood Matin, 52, and Arash Bandari, 44, remain imprisoned in a secret police detention center known by its address, Sepah Street 100, located in the center of Shiraz since their arrest on May 15 (previously reported as May 13). Matin and Bandari were detained with 13 other Muslim converts to Christianity while meeting together in a park in Shiraz. The 13 others have been released but were told they have an ongoing case against them, though officials have not informed them of the charges. During a visit on June 24, Matin’s wife was able to speak with her husband for five minutes as officials listened in, a source told Compass. “They are pushing me to tell them that I am connected to a church outside [Iran] and that I am receiving a salary, but I told them that I am doing it on my own,” he told his wife, according to the source. A draft penal code under discussion in Iran’s parliament this month may make the death penalty obligatory for those who leave Islam or use the Internet to encourage others to do so.
Read More
MALATYA, Turkey, July 9 (Compass Direct News) – Despite new court testimony naming a web of ranking local officials behind the slaughter of three Christians in Malatya last year, defense lawyers for the alleged murderers attempted to turn last week’s hearing into an investigation into Christian missionary activities. Playing to rising anti-Christian sentiments in 99 percent Muslim Turkey, the murderers’ attorneys peppered four of the six witnesses testifying at hearing with probing questions about their personal religious beliefs and involvement in Christian activities. The defense also pursued a line of questioning linked to a farfetched conspiracy theory, based on the murderers’ claims that the Malatya office of Zirve Publishing Co. was secretly linked to the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party terrorist group. But the firsthand testimony of a prosecution witness claiming to know personally the instigators of the deadly plot dominated Friday’s (July 4) hearing. Metin Dogan said Burhan Coskun, president of the ultranationalist youth organization Ulku Ocaklari, had insisted to him, “This job will be done with a knife, it cannot be any other way. If it’s done with a gun, it cannot be arranged with the police.”
Read More
JAKARTA, July 8 (Compass Direct News) – Public Order officials on June 26 demolished a church building in Cimahi regency of Bandung district, West Java, to make way for a new shopping mall and bus terminal after church leaders failed to convince authorities that they owned the land on which it was built. Since the Indonesian Anglican Church of Cirebeum village was established in 1992 – with a letter of approval from 20 families in the immediate neighborhood – courts have dealt with a succession of people claiming to be the rightful owners of the property. Even as the church was demolished, a civil tribunal in Bandung district was considering a verdict on rightful ownership following a hearing on June 24. As pastor Raman Saragih tried to stop officials from tearing down the church building, one of the men hit him in the face and chest. Several others joined in until another church member intervened. Saragih and his church members are pursuing legal action against the Cimahi government. At the same time, the Islamic Defender’s Front, a sub-group of the Anti-Apostasy Alliance Movement, has continued to forcibly close churches in Bandung district, citing the lack of necessary worship permits.
Read More
NEW DELHI, July 8 (Compass Direct News) – More than 1,000 people, including Hindus and Muslims, gathered in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state in India, on Friday (July 4) for the burial of a Catholic priest murdered last week by Hindu extremists in Nepal. Father Johnson Prakash Moyalan, who belonged to the religious order of Salesians of Don Bosco, was from India’s Kerala state. He was shot in the chest and stomach by a group of masked men in the Salesian mission complex in Dharan near the south Nepalese town of Sirsia, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the India-Nepal border, at 1 a.m. on July 1. Salesian provincial secretary in Kolkata, Father Antony Earathara, told Compass that the 60-year-old Fr. Moyalan was Nepal’s first martyr for Christ. “The Salesian was killed by Hindu extremists belonging to an obscure group, the Nepal Defense Army, which left some pamphlets saying Nepal should be made a Hindu state again and that it was training Hindu suicide squads to achieve its mission,” Fr. Earathara said.
Read More
