http://www.compassdirect.org/News of Christians worldwide who are persecuted for their faithenhttp://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5707ISTANBUL, December 1 (Compass Direct News) – Two Coptic Christians wrongfully arrested for killing a Muslim during the May 31 attack on Abu Fana monastery in Egypt have been tortured and sent to a detention camp so authorities could try to extract a false confession, their lawyer said. Egyptian authorities sent brothers Refaat and Ibrahim Fawzy Abdo to El Wadi El Gadid Detention Camp near the Egypt-Sudan border on Nov. 22. A week earlier they were bailed out pending their court case – but never released – and held in a Mallawi police station until their transfer to the camp. The brothers’ attorney, Zakary Kamal, said the timing of the murder at the monastery rules out any possibility of the two Copts having committed it. Monks at Abu Fana say the Fawazy Abdo brothers were far from the monastery at the time of the attacks. Security forces are detaining the brothers to blackmail the Coptic Church into testifying that the attack against Abu Fana monastery in Mallawi, Upper Egypt, was not religiously motivated, Kamal said. “They want the whole issue to be seen by the public as if it were an exchange of gunfire and a criminal case that had nothing to do with persecution of Christians,” he told Compass. At the beginning of Refaat and Ibrahim Fawzy Abdo’s captivity in June, police subjected the two men to electric shocks eight hours a day for three days to try to force them to testify that the Abu Fana monks were armed during the attack, sources said. Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0100http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5706JOS, Nigeria, November 30 (Compass Direct News) – Communal violence broke out in the central Nigerian city of Jos on Friday (Nov. 28) after Muslims began attacking Christians on claims of vote-tampering, leaving hundreds dead and thousands fleeing their homes. After officials reportedly refused to post local council election results on Thursday (Nov. 27) – prompting speculation that a party backed largely by Christians had won – Muslim gangs in the Ali Kazaure area of the city began attacking Christians, according to local residents. Violence along political, ethnic and religious lines followed, with security forces said to be responsible for killing more than 300 Muslims whose bodies were later brought to one mosque. On Saturday (Nov. 29) officials reportedly announced that the ruling People’s Democratic Party, backed mainly by Christians, had won 16 of 17 council seats, defeating the All Nigerian Peoples Party, said to be primarily supported by Muslims. Muslim militants burned several churches, including that of the Church of Christ in Nigeria in the Sarkin Mangu area of Jos, and its pastor has been confirmed killed. Several mosques also were reportedly razed. Plateau Gov. Jonah David Jang said in a radio and television broadcast Friday night that the crisis was pre-planned by disgruntled elements who had schemed to manipulate religious sentiments to create instability in the state. Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5705ISTANBUL, November 26 (Compass Direct News) – Thousands of Muslim protestors on Sunday (Nov. 23) attacked a Coptic church in a suburb of Cairo, Egypt, burning part of it, a nearby shop and two cars and leaving five people injured. Objecting to a newly constructed extension to the church of St. Mary and Anba Abraam in Ain Shams, the huge crowd of angry protestors gathered outside the church at around 5 p.m. following a consecration service for the addition earlier that day. Chanting, “We will demolish the church,” “Islam is the solution” and “No God but Allah,” rioters pelted the church with stones and burned part of the structure; priests and worshipers were trapped inside, and five people were injured. “It was a terrifying moment,” said lawyer Nabil Gobrayel, who was inside the church at the time. “They were shouting ‘holy slogans’ like, ‘We will bring the church down,’ ‘The priest is dead’ and ‘The army of Muhammad is coming.’” Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5703MEXICO CITY, November 25 (Compass Direct News) – As the number of evangelical Christians in southern Mexico has grown, hostilities from “traditionalist Catholics” have kept pace, according to published reports. Especially in indigenous communities in southern Mexico, the prevailing attitude is that only traditionalist Catholics, who blend native rituals with Roman Catholicism, have rights to religious practice, according to news reports. Moreover, the reports indicate the traditionalist Catholic villagers believe they have the right to force others to conform to their religion. In Oaxaca state, four Christians in Santiago Teotlaxco, Ixtlan de Juarez district, were jailed on Nov. 16 for refusing to participate in a traditionalist Catholic festival and for not paying the high quotas they were assigned to help cover its costs, according to La Voz news agency. Their neighbors, now fewer than the town’s 180 Christian evangelicals, have been trying to force them to practice what the evangelicals regard as idolatrous adoration of saints and other rituals contrary to their faith. As a result of such pressure, non-Catholics in the area, including children, live in fear of being expelled from their properties.Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5704ISTANBUL, November 25 (Compass Direct News) – Last week’s court hearing on the bloody murder of three Christians in Turkey’s southeastern city of Malatya paved the way for further investigations into the connection between the five defendants and shadowy elements of the Turkish state linked to criminal activities. The hearing at Malatya’s Third Criminal Court on Friday (Nov. 21) in the murders of Turkish Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske presented little new evidence. The court prosecutor and plaintiff lawyers, however, are pursuing proof that there are links between the murderers and Ergenekon, an ultranationalist cabal of retired generals, politicians, journalists and mafia members under investigation for conspiracy in recent murders. A sobering silence prevailed in the courtroom as those present watched video footage of defendants walking through the crime scene shortly after their arrest, describing how they attacked, stabbed and sliced the throats of the three martyrs. Suspected ringleader Emre Gunaydin described how Geske, as two others repeatedly stabbed him, lifted his hands up in a gesture of prayer. Gunaydin also described how Yuksel, injured by the stabbing while tied and on the floor, cried out in Turkish, “Mesih, Mesih [Messiah].” Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5702ISTANBUL, November 24 (Compass Direct News) – Egyptian human rights workers are looking to international bodies for support against Muslim judges who use sharia (Islamic law) to undermine custody rights of Christian mothers. Despite provisions such as Egyptian law’s Article 20, which dictates that minors should remain with their mother until age 15, judges consistently rule in favor of Muslim fathers in custody disputes with Christian mothers. Islamist judges typically resort to Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution, which states that “principles of Islamic law are the principal source of legislation.” Sharia-based decisions that rule contrary to Egyptian statutory law have led the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), an independent human rights organization, to protest before the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR). The ACHPR was formed by the African Union to oversee the implementation of its Charter on Human and People’s Rights. The EIPR’s complaint before the African Commission accuses the Egyptian government of violating the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Egypt ratified in 1984, the human rights organization said in a Nov. 10 statement. EIPR referred to the case of 13-year-old twins Andrew and Mario Medhat Ramses, whom an appeals court awarded to their father, Medhat Ramses Labib, on Sept. 24 after a custody battle. Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5700ISTANBUL, November 21 (Compass Direct News) – Authorities in an Egyptian village arrested 50 Coptic Christians, whose shops were then looted, to pacify Muslims following violence that erupted on Nov. 4 over a Christian boy’s unwitting break with local custom. Muslim villagers attacked the homes and shops of Coptic Christians in violence-prone Tayyiba after 14-year-old Copt Mina William failed to dismount his donkey as a funeral procession passed. Members of the procession reportedly beat William before completing the procession. The processional members later attacked homes and shops of local Copts before police broke up the crowd with tear gas. A source told Compass that police arrested a disproportionate amount of Christians to create a false sense of equanimity and to pressure Christians into “reconciliation” with the attackers so the Copts would not prosecute them. Police in the village have since harassed Copts through intimidation, “fines” and racketeering, taking an estimated $50,000 from village Christians, sources said. Once police lifted the curfew, Coptic shopkeepers returned to their stores to discover that they had been looted. “It is unreasonable that a mistake by some 14-year-old should lead to all that rampage,” a village Coptic priest known as Father Augustinus told weekly newspaper Watani. “Something ought to be done to halt all this.” Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5701HO CHI MINH CITY, November 21 (Compass Direct News) – In violation of Vietnam’s new religion policy, authorities in Lao Cai Province in Vietnam’s far north are pressuring new Christians among the Hmong minority to recant their faith and to re-establish ancestral altars, according to area church leaders. Local authorities have warned that on Sunday (Nov. 23) they will come in force to Ban Gia Commune and Lu Siu Tung village, Bac Ha district, where the Christians reside, but they did not say what they would do. When the authorities in Bac Ha district in Vietnam’s Northwest Mountainous Region discovered that villagers had converted to Christianity and discarded their altars, they sent “work teams’ to the area to apply pressure. Earlier this month they sent seven high officials – including Ban Gia Deputy Commune Chief Thao Seo Pao, district Police Chief A. Cuong and district Security Chief A. Son – to try to convince the converts that the government considered becoming a Christian a very serious offense. Christian leaders in the area said threats included being cut off from any government services. When this failed to deter the new Christians, they said, the officials threatened to drive the Christians from their homes and fields, harm them physically and put them in prison. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5699LOS ANGELES, November 20 (Compass Direct News) – At a chapel on the remaining patch of Thai Ha Redemptorist property in Hanoi that the Vietnamese government had yet to confiscate, at 10 p.m. on Saturday night (Nov. 15) an official came to summon the priests to an “urgent meeting.” According to Vietcatholic.net website and other church sources, it proved to be a ruse to draw them away from the property while government-inspired gangs attacked St. Gerardo Chapel. As the gangs ravaged the chapel, Father Joseph Dinh told Independent Catholic News, some people at the church began ringing the church bells to signal for help while others sent urgent e-mail and text messages asking Catholics to defend it. Hundreds of police with stun guns tried to keep the arriving faithful from entering the chapel to stop the destruction. The hundreds of Catholics who arrived eventually overwhelmed officers, going past police to scare off the attackers. Witnesses reportedly said that government, police and security officials had stood by doing nothing to protect the chapel. Ironically, only a few hours earlier on the same day, the Vietnam Mennonite Church was allowed to hold its organizing general assembly in Ho Chi Minh City, becoming the fifth smaller church body to receive full legal recognition in 2008. While registration can mark an improvement in the way the government treats a church, it is not to be confused with full religious freedom, church leaders said, as it is sometimes used as a means of control. The dubious benefits of registration have led many Protestant groups to simply quit seeking it. Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=5698Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100