CANOE -- CNEWS - World: Bibles will be allowed at Beijing OlympicsOutraged Beijing Olympic organizers sought to refute allegations of religious intolerance Thursday, saying Bibles and other religious items for personal use are welcome at next year's Beijing Olympics.
That latitude, however, does not extend to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, banned eight years ago as an "evil cult" and persecuted mercilessly ever since.
Recent reports by a religious news agency and European media that Bibles would be banned at the Olympics touched off an outcry that prompted a U.S. senator to call the Chinese ambassador for an explanation and a Christian athletes group to protest the "deep violation."
Angry Beijing organizers flatly denied the reports, while the Foreign Ministry said they were likely the work of people who wanted to sabotage Beijing's hosting of the Games.
"There is no such thing. This kind of report is an intentional distortion of truth (oh, there's an interesting turn of phrase - 1rt)," said Li Zhanjun, director of the Beijing Olympics media centre. Li said texts and items from major religious groups that are brought for personal use by athletes and visitors are permitted.
The U.S. State Department said in a report earlier this year that Beijing continues to repress Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Muslim Uighurs and the Falun Gong while expelling foreign missionaries.
Bibles are printed under government supervision and allowed to be sold only in approved churches, according to a document posted on the website of the State Administration for Religious Affairs.
Foreign visitors can bring religious texts for personal use, and are limited to three copies of each kind of text, said an official at the administration's regulation department, who refused to give his name.
The reports in the Catholic News Agency and European media about the Bible ban - which said Bibles were on a list of "prohibited objects" in the Olympic Village - prompted U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, to telephone the Chinese ambassador for an explanation.
"If true, it would be outrageous act of censorship that would be rejected and condemned by the entire international community and people of all religions," the senator said in a statement. "There is no value needed more in the world at this critical time in human history than religious tolerance."
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Christian Persecution Blog: Standing for Christ No Matter the Cost“I will not run away. I am ready to take a stand.”
Saratu Turundu was thiry-five and unmarried. She loved kids so much and desperately wanted her own, but God had not answered her prayer.
Saratu chose to devote herself to God and the church. She embraced her church family with her whole heart and especially loved teaching Sunday school. Her interaction with the kids and her opportunity to show them the way to Christ fulfilled Saratu with incredible joy. She knew she could never be happy without Christ.
But the fanatical Muslims who dominated her town of Kaduna, Nigeria, started persecuting Christians. She had heard stories of Christians being persecuted in other villages, their homes and possessions burned. Some were even beaten and killed.
So when mobs came to attack the Christians in Kaduna, Saratu had already decided to stay and take a stand for Christ. Saratu’s brothers begged her to flee into the woods with them. But even as she watched the angry mob burn her beloved church to the ground, she wouldn’t go. She knelt and prayed on the floor of her apartment as Muslims doused the building with gasoline and set it on fire.
She is remembered by her family and friends as a kind, compassionate person who showed love to everyone. She died loving her Savior.
Tales of super-human strength are as inspiring as they are incredible. We are awed by stories of mothers lifting burning cars off their children in terrible accidents. Driven by adrenaline, the human body is capable of amazing feats. In the same way that adrenaline affects the human muscles, our faith can enable our spiritual muscles to accomplish what we never thought possible. Saratu flexed her spiritual muscles when she decided to take a stand for Christ in her community. She likely never realized she had the strength to do so before that moment. Yet God enabled her to do it. Have you ever done something you thought you could never do? Thank God today for his faithfulness to make you stand strong.
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Palestinian Christian killed in Gaza - Israel News, YnetnewsA prominent Palestinian Christian in the Gaza Strip was found dead on Sunday after being abducted near his home, six months after the religious bookshop he ran was blown up.
Sources said anonymous men have recently been threatening Ayyad, demanding he stop selling Christian religious books in the Gaza Strip.
Ayyad's mother, Anisa, said her son had telephoned his family after he was seized.
"He said he was going to be with the 'people' for another two hours and that if he was not back (by then), he would not be returning for a long, long time," she said. "Rami redeemed Christ with his blood. Rami redeemed the Bible with his blood."
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Compass Direct NewsA Muslim rampage last week in this town in the northern state of Kano resulted in the killing of 10 Christians and the destruction of nine churches, according to eyewitnesses. Another 61 people were injured and more than 500 displaced in the September 28 disturbance, touched off when Muslim students of Government College-Tudun Wada Dankadai, a public high school, claimed that a Christian student had drawn a cartoon of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, on the wall of the school’s mosque. Rabiu Danbawa, pastor of an area Evangelical Church of West Africa congregation, said he stood about 500 meters from his church and parish home as it burned. “There was nothing I could do,” he said. “I did not know the fate of my wife and my children.” Danbawa said he went to the police station, only to find the police dispersing the many Christians who had run there to escape the attack. “We were told to leave, as our safety could not be guaranteed,” he said, in tears. “Women and children all scampered to the bush, only to be attacked by the Muslims who had already hid themselves in the bush awaiting their Christian prey.”
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Grenade explosion in church kills 6 childrenA soldier detonated a hand grenade Thursday at an evening worship service, killing himself and five children and wounding four others.
The reason for the incident is unknown at this time.
According to Pastors Francis Ayul and Saphano Riak Chol, leaders of FEBAC-Sudan, the newly-formed association of evangelical Baptist churches, “Rev. John Monykuer was leading an evening worship when an unidentified man in military attire walked into the service and detonated a grenade. Five children were killed instantly. Four others, including two children, Pastor Monykuer and the wife of Pastor Michael Makuin Kuol, were taken to the hospital in nearby Malakal, a former government garrison town on the White Nile. One of the children died Saturday morning. The other three are still in critical condition.”
This tragic incident shows that even with the “peace” in Southern Sudan, acts of violence and persecution still are a reality for Christians in southern Sudan, where more than two decades of ethnic cleansing left 2 million dead and displaced 4 million more.
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allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Can Condemns Religious Killing in Kano (Page 1 of 1)Salifu who spoke with newsmen in Kaduna weekend said that reports reaching him from Kano state said there was trouble in Tudun Dankande local government area of the state Friday where nine Christians, including a youth corper serving in the area were killed and their property destroyed over an internet cartoon said to have emanated from a 20-year-old Muslim boy from Bangladesh.
"Information available to me is that almost all the churches within that local government area have been razed down and shops belonging to Christians had also been burnt including their houses. We have been told that they have been ejected and their property brought down and burnt.
"The information given was that they saw a cartoon on the internet and they discovered that this cartoon was drawn by a 20-year-old Muslim boy from Bangladesh and they decided to visit their anger on innocent Christians and their churches.
I have been told that nine people including a youth corper are confirmed dead and several others injured while the local government in a desperate attempt to cover the dastardly act pretended to be taking the victims to the hospital while in reality they sent some of the victims to Bauchi and some other places around so that people will not go there and see the number of destitutes or refugees caused by this incident.
He said Christians and their leaders were getting worried because both the Christian leaders and Muslims had been holding series of meetings within and outside the Nigerian Inter Religious Council (NIREC) to see how to bring about peaceful coexistence between followers of the two religions. Salifu regretted, however, that "the more we continue to meet with Muslim leaders the more some of these people attack our people.
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BBC NEWS | Africa | Eritrean Christians tell of tortureAn Eritrean refugee lies contorted on the ground. Balanced on his belly, his hands clutch his feet behind his back, bending his legs back almost double.
Paulus is demonstrating a torture technique known colloquially as "the helicopter".
It is one he knows well. It was in this excruciating position, he claims, that soldiers left him tied up for 136 hours, in an attempt to force him to recant his faith.
"They kept asking me to sign a document," he recalls, "and agree to not participate in church activities or express my faith in any form. I was told I would be untied and released the minute I agreed to their requests."
Paulus is an evangelical Christian from Eritrea, one of an increasing number fleeing the tiny Red Sea state because of religious persecution.
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Please pray that they stay strong in the faith.Compass Direct News : PAKISTAN - TALIBAN MILITANTS FORCE BURQA ON CHRISTIAN WOMEN’S SCHOOLA Pakistani official in a northern district warned female teachers and students to don Islamic garb this week, citing threats from Taliban extremists active in the area.
Christians in the Afghan-border region 120 miles north of Peshawar say that extremists from the Taliban movement, which ruled most of Afghanistan from 1995 to 2001, have targeted them in recent months.
“Due to continuous threatening letters from the Taliban directing female staff and students to wear burqas … the Executive District Officer has instructed [them] to comply with the orders,” the Daily Mashriq article stated.
The all-girls school had already closed down for a week this month after being threatened with suicide attacks for supposedly converting students to Christianity.
Entitled “Red Notice for Public School Sangota, (The Factory of Englishmen),” the September 8 letter accused the nuns of involving students in adultery, according to a Union of Catholic News for Asia (UCAN) article.
The Urdu-language note said that Christian teachers were converting Muslim students, who make up more than 99 percent of the schools 950 students, to Christianity. The Catholic Church’s National Commission for Justice and Peace reported that the extremists also told parents to withdraw their girls and place them in Islamic schools.
A Christian running a small medical clinic has been forced to close down the center and conduct only home visits in order to avoid attack.
“Embrace Islam and become Muslims … otherwise, after next Friday, August 10, your colony will be ruined,” read one of more than a dozen identical letters thrown into the courtyards of Christian and Hindu homes in Peshawar last month.
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Compass Direct News : ERITREA - CHRISTIAN WOMAN TORTURED TO DEATHEritrean authorities tortured a woman to death on Wednesday (September 5) for refusing to recant her Christian faith, the fourth such killing in less than a year, according to a Christian support organization. Open Doors said in a statement that it had confirmed the death of 33-year-old Nigisti Haile at the Wi’a Military Training Center; she was one of 10 single Christian women arrested at a church gathering in Keren who have spent 18 months under severe pressure. On February 15, Magos Solomon Semere died under torture at the Adi-Nefase Military Confinement facility outside Assab, and last October 17, two other Christians died from torture wounds in Eritrea. Two days after Immanuel Andegergesh, 23, and Kibrom Firemichel, 30, were arrested for holding a religious service in a private home south of Asmara, they died from torture injuries and severe dehydration in a military camp outside the town of Adi-Quala, eyewitnesses told Compass.
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Gaza: Christian-Muslim tensions heat up | Jerusalem PostClaire Farah Tarazi was the latest victim of anti-Christian attacks that have increased in the Gaza Strip since Hamas took full control of the area in June.
"He was carrying a club and a sharp tool," she said. "As soon as I opened the door, he pushed me inside and shouted: 'Where is the money, you infidel?' I shouted back: 'I'm not an infidel - I'm a proud Palestinian Arab.'"
"The fact that the attacker called her an infidel speaks for itself," one of them said. "He clearly knew that this was a Christian woman living alone. He would not have dared to do the same thing to a Muslim woman."
The assault on the elderly Christian woman is the latest in a series of attacks against Christians over the past few months. Since the Hamas takeover, a Christian school and a church have been targeted by Muslims.
"The masked gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades to storm the main entrances of the school and church," he said. "Then they destroyed almost everything inside, including the cross, the holy book, computers and other equipment."
Musalam expressed outrage over the burning of copies of the Bible, adding that the gunmen destroyed all the crosses inside the church and school.
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