The city of Mosul is now empty of Christians for the first time in the history of Iraq, according to Patriarch Louis Sako after Islamist fighters told them to convert, pay a protection tax – or be killed reports The Telegraph. Families, the elderly and the disabled were seen walking in the fierce Summer heat…
Bengali-speaking Hindus from Bangladesh facing religious persecution should be refused official refugee status in India, according to the opposition Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) political party. Governor Janaki Ballabh Patnaik of Assam received a memo from the group on 19 July objecting to the state cabinet’s acceptance of the displaced people group found in the province…
Christians and Muslims live under a ‘reign of terror’ with almost-daily attacks in Northern Nigeria by the Boko Haram Islamic extremist group. That is the verdict given by a delegation from the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART) following a visit to communities in the region in June and July, 2014. The team included Baroness Cox, a…
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…