Muslim minorities face continued persecution for their faith by religious fanatics backed by authorities in China, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, according to the chief of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), on 16 July. Saleh Al-Wohaibi, who leads the Riyadh-based organisation, said extremist Buddhists and other faith hardliners were systematically targeting Islamic believers in those countries….
A spokesman for the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum said the village of Belar, in central India, convened a Gram Sabha, or village assembly, on 6 July and passed a resolution banning all non-Hindu religious activities. This echoed a Gram Sabha of representatives from about a dozen villages held 10 May in nearby Sirsiguda village. There, the delegates…
On 10 July Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal against two lower courts’ support of the State Commission for Religious Affairs’ (SCRA) refusal to give state registration to the Ahmadi Muslim community. Asel Bayastanova, the Ahmadi’s defence lawyer, told Forum 18 News Service that “it means that Ahmadi Muslims cannot act like Ahmadi Muslims and…
Sunni Islamic extremists are making inroads in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh. The New York Times, in a major feature, reports that In recent months, Hindu temples have been defaced, Shiite Muslims have been assaulted and Christians have been charged with blasphemy. The Sunni supremacist ideology propagated by Pakistani sectarian groups is similar to…
On 10 July the U.S. Senate passed the Near East and South Central Asia Religious Freedom Act of 2014, which creates a special envoy within the State Department to promote the religious freedom of religious minorities in the region. The envoy would be required to: (1) Promote the right of religious freedom of religious minorities in…
Several university students from China’s western region of Xinjiang are being banned from fasting during the month of Ramadan. The BBC reports that students said they were being forced to have meals with professors to ensure they were not fasting. Those who refuse to eat risk being punished by officials. As part of a propaganda drive,…
Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander MP spoke at a meeting in Parliament yesterday hosted by Christians on the Left in partnership with this APPG. Under the title International Religious Freedom – the next human rights frontier? he emphasised that “The government has a responsibility and an opportunity in this moment to take action on this issue,” adding “People…
The Pakistani government is systematically failing to protect the country’s Shia population, says Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. Balochistan’s largely Shia Hazara community has borne the brunt of the Sunni militant violence, which is thought to have killed over 800 in the region since 2008. The author claims “The Pakistani government’s response…
Authorities in China are continuing their campaign of church demolition. The Guardian reports that Christians in Wenzhou – a city known as ‘China’s Jerusalem’ due to its 1,500 churches – say that they have not seen such sustained persecution since the Cultural Revolution. Between 3 and 6 am on 17 June the cross that topped Guantou…
The Federal Court of Malaysia in June refused the country’s Roman Catholic Church leave to appeal against the ban of the use of the word “Allah” in their weekly newspaper, The Herald. Christians argue they have used the word, which entered Malay from Arabic, to refer to their God for centuries and that the ruling violates their…