September 28 (CDN) — Ilya EyvazovSeptember 28 (Compass Direct News) – Born on June 18 to a Christian family in northern Azerbaijan, three-month-old Ilya Eyvazov still has no official name. Local authorities in the town of Aliabad at first refused to issue a birth ....
December 9 (CDN) — Kasprov suffered injury to his eye.December 9 (Compass) — A brutal attack on a Christian book publisher in Ukraine has underscored the high stakes struggle over human rights and religious liberty in the former Soviet republic preparing for a re-run ....
August 25 (CDN) — August 25 (Compass) — A petition protesting the Moscow ban on the Jehovah’s Witnesses was submitted this morning at the Presidential Administration Office of the Kremlin. Signed by more than 315,000 citizens across Russia, the petition expressed ....
June 16 (CDN) — June 16 (Compass) — The Moscow City Appeals Court ruled today to uphold a March 26 lower court decision to strip the Jehovah’s Witness community in Moscow of their legal status and ban their activity in the city, effective immediately. “Now the over ....
April 20 (CDN) — April 20 (Compass) — The recent decision of a Moscow court to ban activities of the city’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, although not yet legally in force, has triggered problems for that religious community and sends a potentially ominous signal regarding ....
January 13 (CDN) — (Compass) — A December 5 news report of a government document outlining recommendations for countering “religious extremism” has alarmed religious rights activists in Russia. The document listed the Catholic Church as the number one threat to ....
January 13 (CDN) — (Compass) — The Bulgarian Parliament has passed a controversial law recognizing the dominant role of the Orthodox Church and requiring all other denominations to register. The law defines Orthodox Christianity as “the traditional religion in ....
July 18 (CDN) — (Compass) — Greek-Catholic churches were confiscated by the Communist regime in the late 1940s and given to the Orthodox Church. Despite establishing a Mixed Commission for Dialogue, which brought together Romanian Orthodox and Greek-Catholic ....
March 15 (CDN) — (Compass) - A draft law on religion introduced on February 5 by State Duma Deputy A.V. Chuev defines “traditional” religion in such a way that critics say favors the Russian Orthodox Church and may even be unconstitutional. It could also affect ....
July 20 (CDN) — (Compass) - A TV news program deliberately misrepresenting a Seventh-day Adventist church in early June has prompted strong objections from local church leaders. Calling the TV report «an insult to our members,» the executive committee of the Ganja ....
June 15 (CDN) — (Compass) - An article appearing on the front page of Azerbaijan’s daily Zerkalo newspaper on May 2 equated the «threat of illegal Christian propaganda» with that of Islamist subversion activities spawned by Iran and the Wahhabi movement of Saudi ....
May 18 (CDN) — (Compass) - An Azeri Christian jailed for 10 days for allegedly «disobeying police orders» in the town of Ismailly has since been forced to resign from his accounting job at a local hospital. Azer Gasymov, 21, was released April 20 from prison in ....
April 21 (CDN) — (Compass) - Two Christians were sent to jail on April 10 for seven days on charges of \"disobeying the police\" in the town of Ismailly, 120 miles west of the Azerbaijani capital of Baku. Asif Mardanov and Azer Gasymov were arrested at their homes ....
March 23 (CDN) — (Compass) - Hungary’s leading opposition political party and a group of minority faiths - Christian charismatics, reform Adventists and independent Methodists - have lodged appeals to the Constitutional Court over an amendment to the tax law that ....
January 19 (CDN) — (Compass) - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze is on the verge of signing a draft amendment to the constitution that would grant the status of \"state church\" to the Georgian Orthodox Church. Once the president signs the draft, a one-month ....
January 19 (CDN) — (Compass) - In Tbilisi, a mob of about a hundred Orthodox extremists roused by a defrocked priest surrounded the site where a local Pentecostal congregation plans to build a half-million-dollar multi-purpose building. Fr. Vassili Mkalashvili, ....
January 19 (CDN) — (Compass) - As the December 31 deadline passed for reregistration of religious associations, Russian Ministry of Justice preliminary statistics indicated that more than 9,000 religious organizations had been registered, or about 60 percent of the ....
January 19 (CDN) — (Compass) - The Moscow corps of the Salvation Army sprang prominently into international news soon after a city court rejected the Christian ministry’s appeal on November 28 for reregistration as a religious organization. The city court upheld a ....
December 15 (CDN) — (Compass) - One year after regaining her freedom, a young Christian girl kidnapped at age 13 is still adjusting to a more normal life in southern Russia. \"After five years,\" a source told Compass, \"she is going to school again and doing passably ....
May 19 (CDN) — (Compass) - The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued its first report on May 1 listing Russia, China and Sudan as their three principal countries of focus for this year. The report stated that although Russia’s human rights’ ....
February 18 (CDN) — (Compass) - A spate of arson attacks on a newly built Baptist church in the eastern Ukrainian town of Sumy has forced the congregation to guard the church around the clock. Church members claim that \"laser weapons\" are being used to ignite the ....
February 18 (CDN) — (Compass) - The European Court of Human Rights has asked the Russian Federation to submit observations by March 10 on \"Pitkevich v. Russia,\" the first religious rights case submitted from Russia to the European Court. The case contests the ....
February 18 (CDN) — (Compass) - Doctors treating a young Baptist girl recovering from three months’ captivity and mistreatment by Chechen militants have confirmed that she is not pregnant, as first reported. The first medical tests given to 13-year-old Anja Hrykin - ....
February 18 (CDN) — (Compass) - Azerbaijani Baptists who had been operating a Christian street library in the western town of Gyanja have been threatened by police twice during January \"to halt preaching the gospel among Muslims,\" according to Baptist pastor Ivan ....
February 18 (CDN) — (Compass) - The Bulgarian Parliament adopted in the first reading on February 2 three problematic religious draft bills. The drafts give special status to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. A fourth draft that was prepared under the auspices of the ....
January 21 (CDN) — (Compass) - A 13-year-old girl kidnapped from the Grozny Baptist Church by Islamist Chechen fighters more than three months ago was brought out of Chechnya’s war zone in late December. Anja Hrykin arrived on the doorstep of a Christian family in ....
January 21 (CDN) — (Compass) - Two churches who were denied reregistration under the country’s controversial 1997 religion law gained a small victory in Russia’s Constitutional Court in November. The Court ruled that an organization already registered before the ....
January 21 (CDN) — (Compass) - President Haidar Aliev made a public pledge to U.S. Ambassador Stanley Escudero in early November, promising to enforce constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and religion in the Central Asian state. Within two weeks, the ....
