They hate you because of me - The first item starts here at home and pails in comparison to the remaining five, but it fits the category none-the-less.
Repent America posted a Press Release titled: ELEVEN CHRISTIANS ARRESTED, JAILED, AND CHARGED UNDER HATE CRIMES LEGISLATION
Here's an excerpt:
PHILADELPHIA - On Sunday, October 10, 2004, eleven Christians with the Philadelphia-based Repent America were arrested, jailed, and charged under hate crimes legislation during an evangelistic outreach at the annual "OutFest" homosexual pride event held in the public streets of Philadelphia.
The charges leveled were:
Criminal Conspiracy (Felony), Possession of Instruments of Crime (Misdemeanor), Reckless Endangerment of Another Person (Misdemeanor), Ethnic Intimidation (Felony), Riot (Felony), Failure to Disperse (Misdemeanor), Disorderly Conduct (Misdemeanor), and Obstructing Highways (Misdemeanor).
Compass Direct is running two items of news.
The first involves forced conversion and it's a bit of an oddity. Hindus in Orissa, India, dug up the grave of a Catholic man and reconverted his corpse. His living family members were then "convinced" to reconvert too.
The second Compass Direct item tells of the threat of death leveled by militant Islamists against Christian nurses with the Fellowship of Christian Nurses working in a hospital in Keffi, Nigeria. The Muslims want the nurses to stop holding services in the hospital were there are also two Mosques.
The statement from the militant Islamists was,
“We are making it abundantly clear that our thirst for your heads/blood is mounting daily if you continue with your worship services in the hospital unabated.”
See the Compass Direct website for further information.
Michael Ireland reports for ASSIST News Service that the, "EXODUS OF IRAQI CHRISTIANS IN FULL FLOOD AS TARGETED KILLINGS GROW.
Here's a snippet from his article:
“It was midnight in Baghdad, not a time to be out in this place of violence. But the workers from the Baghdad Hunting Club had almost made it back home through the deserted streets when the tires of their Kia minibus were shredded by a burst of gunfire,” Sengupta wrote.
“The shots had come from a black Opel saloon which had tracked them from the club -- a prestigious haunt of Iraq's new rich -- after finishing the late shift. Four men, their faces covered by keffiyehs, slid open the door of the minibus and sprayed the occupants with Kalashnikov fire.
“Their targets, seven Christians, were killed almost instantly. Two others were injured but survived. The dead were all breadwinners for their families in the close-knit Christian community in the suburb of al-Doura. These families now want to leave Iraq, joining the exodus of thousands of their co-religionists since the war.”
Forum 18 reports that Christians are being murdered in North Korea by the State.
A North Korean army general who become a Christian was, after he had begun to evangelise in his unit, shot dead by another senior army officer in 2003, Protestant sources have told Forum 18 News Service. Other known Christians are in some cases martyred by being shot, or are imprisoned. The sentence is dependent upon the situation. Forum 18 knows of the execution and torture of Christians continuing, but has not been able to establish if followers of other religions have suffered similarly. North Korean Protestants are said to be "very, very strong believers", resisting material inducements in prison to recant their faith, but when they stubbornly refuse to recant they are then shot. The state is said to be watching the increase in contacts between North Korea and the rest of the world "very carefully", and "false believers" may be used by the authorities to contact missionaries in humanitarian aid initiatives. Details of sources cannot be revealed by Forum 18, for fear of reprisals against them.
Sandra Jordan has and in depth report for Independent.co.uk titled, "Vietnam's Christians persecuted as state sees hidden enemy."
Jordan begins:
Amid the graceful pagodas, temples and French Colonial architecture, the Protestant church in Hanoi is a very ordinary building. The Vietnamese congregation sings enthusiastically, maybe unaware a government official is watching them.
The pastor sits at the back of the church. "I don't have government permission to give an interview," he said, sweat running down his face even though it was a rare cold day in Hanoi. Foreign journalists are accompanied everywhere by government minders and it is danger- ous for Vietnamese to criticise the government, especially during a visit to one of just 300 legal churches that service Vietnam's two million Protestants.
The Great Separation continues.
