Tag: Minorities

Main suspect behind Sri Lanka Easter churches’ deaths arrested

March 31, 2020 Sri Lanka Catholics, Churches, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Minorities, Sri Lanka

Detectives have arrested the man suspected of being the ‘handler’ of the bomber of Zion Protestant Church in Batticaloa, eastern Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday 2019, 21 April. The man, from Mount Lavinia, south of the capital Colombo – across the complete width of the island from Zion Church, around . . . Read More

Nigerian girl, 17, escapes month in locked room after abduction and forcible conversion to Islam

March 25, 2020 Nigeria Boko Haram, Chibok girls, Islamic extremism, Kidnapping, Minorities, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria, Women

According to the UN, over 4,000 women and girls have been abducted by Boko Haram alone in northeast Nigeria. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

Sadiya Amos, aged 17, went missing from north central Kaduna in northern Nigeria on the night of 5th January. On 7th January, some men came to force her father Amos Chindo to attend a Sharia court in Anchau (in Kubau) without telling him what offence he had committed or even . . . Read More

UN Sec. General’s “biggest data gap in the world” affects persecuted Christian women

March 6, 2020 Global News -- No Particular Country Converts, Human rights, Kidnapping, Minorities, Religious freedom, Women

Women to women conference in Ethiopia, February 2018.

The UN Secretary-General last week called it ‘the biggest data gap in the world…what UK writer Caroline Criado Perez calls “default man” thinking: the unquestioned assumption that men are standard, and women the exception. Very often, women are not counted, and their experiences don’t count”. And this lack of ‘counting’ . . . Read More

From sub-Saharan Africa to China, Christians experience ‘high’ levels of persecution

January 15, 2020 Global News -- No Particular Country BJP, Boko Haram, Churches, Islamic extremism, Middle East, Minorities, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, World Watch List

Poster memorials and crosses for Christians who died in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Easter Sunday, 2019

• In Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday more than 250 people, 45 of them children, were killed in attacks on three churches and hotels; more than 500 people were injured. • Bombs killed 20 at a Catholic church in Jolo in the southern Philippines. • In China, state-sanctioned and ‘underground’ . . . Read More

India: Supreme Court orders seven Kandhamal Christians freed on bail after 9 years in prison

December 13, 2019 India BJP, Hindu nationalism, Human rights, India, Kandhamal, Minorities

Eleven years ago today, 13 December 2008, an Indian man was arrested. Initially, he suspected it would be quickly resolved – he was active in local politics and assumed it was for something minor connected to that. But it was to be over ten years before he would get his . . . Read More

Turkey serves deportation order after German’s 20 years of tourism work

September 19, 2019 Turkey Austria, Germany, Minorities, Protestants, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, tourism, Turkey

Hans-Jurgen Louven has worked in Turkish tourism for 20+ years

Without any warning, the Turkish government last month notified a German who’s worked for two decades in its tourism sector that his routine application to renew his residency visa had been denied. Abruptly, 58-year-old Hans-Jurgen Louven was then ordered to leave Turkey – where he owns property, and . . . Read More

Lack of a lunch for all – life in an IDP camp on Myanmar border

August 30, 2019 Myanmar Education, Minorities, Myanmar, Refugees

Majority-Buddhist Myanmar is made up of eight major and eight minor ethnic groups, each of which hoped for autonomy after Burmese independence 70 years ago. On February 12th, 1947 Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, then national leader, signed the Panglong Agreement, promising all ethnic minorities a place in a new . . . Read More

176 children lost one or both parents in Sri Lanka Easter bombings

August 12, 2019 Sri Lanka Bombing, Catholics, Children, Colombo, Minorities, Negombo, Sri Lanka

Woman kneels at altar at St Anthony's shrine, Colombo where 54 died on Easter Sunday, 2019

At least 176 children lost either one or both of their parents in the Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombings, according to the Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith. Just over three months ago, at St. Anthony’s Shrine in the country’s capital saw a powerful explosion rip apart the bodies of . . . Read More

‘It’s time to be real: what happens in Iraq is ethnic cleansing’ – UK analyst

July 12, 2019 Iraq Genocide, Iraq, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Minorities, Nineveh Plains, UK, UN, USA, Yazidis

Tahira Church in Qaraqosh, a Christian town in northern Iraq, shortly after liberation from Islamic State in November 2016. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

What Iraq’s Christians want from the West is to say the plain truth: that there is ethnic cleansing of Christians in the region and it is ongoing, Dr Tim Stanley told a meeting at the UK’s parliament last Tuesday, 9 July. The historian and columnist, working for UK daily newspaper . . . Read More

Iraq: Five years after IS occupied Mosul, returnees live in fear

June 10, 2019 Iraq Bartella, Bashar Warda, Human rights, Iraq, Islamic State, Minorities, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Ramadan, Shabak

The Islamic State’s three-year occupation of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and its surrounding villages ended nearly two years ago, yet the city and its diminished number of Christian residents remain vulnerable. Last month the Iraqi government announced it would arm residents of 50 villages around Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, . . . Read More

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