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COMPASS DIRECT NEWSNews from the Frontlines of Persecution

May 2007(Released June 1, 2007)

Compass Direct is distributed to raise awareness of Christians worldwide who are persecuted for their faith. Articles may be reprinted or edited by active subscribers for use in other media, provided Compass Direct News is acknowledged as the source of the material.

Copyright 2007 Compass Direct News

****************************************************************************IN THIS ISSUE

CHINA

Government Arrests House Church Leaders in Xinjiang Six pastors accused of involvement in “evil cult” in north-western province.

EGYPT

Jailed Christian Convert Released ***Former Muslim still ‘closely monitored and under threat.’

ERITREA

Police Arrest 80-Member Presbyterian Congregation ***Government announces ‘election’ of new Orthodox patriarch.

INDIA

Briefs 5/8/07: Recent Incidents of Persecution

Anti-Conversion Bill Expected in Eighth Indian StateUttarakhand state chief minister promises to ban ‘forced’ conversions.

Dalit Christians Hopeful of Winning Rights Advisory body says conversion should not bar lowest caste from affirmative action.

Attacks in Rajasthan State Show Disturbing TrendChristians increasingly threatened in worrying pattern of violence.

Briefs 5/24/07: Recent Incidents of Persecution

Compass Direct News for May 2007

IRAQ

Kidnappers Demand Enormous Ransom for Priest ***Church burning, threats to forcibly convert to Islam, plague Baghdad Christians.

Kidnapped Priest Freed in BaghdadBishop: ‘We are living in a small hell on earth.’

MEXICO

Christians in Chiapas Town Deprived of Water ***More than five weeks after signing pact, Los Pozos caciques fail to fulfill accord.

SUDAN

Evangelists Killed in Nuba MountainsReligious motive still unclear; local government to investigate attack.by Peter Lamprecht

TURKEY

Press Leaks Murder Suspect’s ‘Secret’ DepositionAccused killer names another pastor he planned to kill.

VIETNAM

Christian Lawyers Sentenced for ‘Defaming’ CountryAuthorities send attorneys to prison for human/religious rights efforts.

*** Indicates an article-related photo is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.

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**********************************************************************China Arrests House Church Leaders in Xinjiang Six pastors accused of involvement in “evil cult” in north-western province.by Xu Mei

NANJING, China, May 18 (Compass Direct News) – Government-sanctioned persecution of Christians has darkened the landscape of the Xinjiang province in north-western China.


Most recently, an estimated 30 house church leaders were arrested on April 19 in Aksu city, near China’s border with Kazakhstan, as they met with four U.S. Christians. According to China Aid Association (CAA), on April 20 authorities released eight of the Chinese house church pastors but accused at least six others of being “suspects involved in evil cult activities.”

Pastors Zhao Xinglan, Huang Xiurong, Yang Tianlu, Wang Chaoyi, Lu Cuiling and He Sijun were given criminal detention papers under which they are being held for 37 days, according to CAA. They could be sentenced to one to three years of “re-education through labor,” because two years ago they were detained for one month for organizing house church activities.

CAA reported that the Chinese government is preparing harsh sentences for the six accused pastors because of their association with the U.S. Christians. At least two of those arrested, eyewitnesses told CAA, suffered bloody noses and bruising from violence inflicted on them at the interrogation site in Aksu.

The four U.S. Christians, including two pastors, were also arrested, according to CAA. As is usual in such cases, authorities held them in a hotel for interrogation. After intervention by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, the four U.S. Christians were released and flew home.

Authorities in late April raided two of the homes of house church Christians hosting the U.S. citizens and confiscated computers and other valuable items.

Regional SensitivitiesOver the last two years, a number of other house church Christians have been arrested in Xinjiang. Several foreign Christian workers have also been expelled.

The Xinjiang region is supposedly an “autonomous” area for the indigenous Uygur people, who are Muslim and strongly resent rule from Beijing. Recently the Chinese army broke up a terrorist training camp near the border run by Uygur separatists.

Because of the political sensitivity of the region, the Christian community in Xinjiang is particularly vulnerable. Overwhelmingly based in the Han Chinese community, the Christians find themselves caught between hostile Muslim fundamentalists and suspicious government authorities.

Even so, both state-sanctioned and illegal house churches flourish. State church sources in 2002 estimated the total number of area Protestants at 130,000 – compared with fewer than 100 in 1949.

The government has banned the large state-sanctioned church from evangelizing Muslims in Urumqi, the capital, and other cities. The few Uygur converts from Islam are largely isolated.


Western Christian workers have to be more low-profile than in other parts of China.

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***********************************Egypt Releases Jailed Christian ConvertFormer Muslim still ‘closely monitored and under threat.’by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, May 24 (Compass Direct News) – In a surprise gesture, Egyptian authorities have released a Christian convert from Islam who had been jailed without charges under Egypt’s controversial emergency laws for the past two years.

Officials at the Wadi el-Natroun Prison handed Bahaa el-Akkad an Egyptian bill worth nearly US$9 for taxi fare late on the afternoon of April 28, telling him he was free to leave.

Within minutes, El-Akkad had gathered up his few things and flagged down a taxi outside the prison, located an hour’s drive north of Cairo. He was reunited with his wife and three children by nightfall.

No official reason was given for his release, confirmed the following day by his attorney, Athanasius William. Notification of his release was delayed for security reasons.

Just hours before his release, officers from the State Security Investigation (SSI) had reportedly told El-Akkad that he would remain in prison for another 10 years if he did not return to Islam.

According to his lawyer, the convert had responded calmly, saying, “God has brought me to this place, and He alone will let me go to my home. You cannot do anything against God.”

The previous week, the Emergency Court where William had challenged El-Akkad’s ongoing and illegal detention denied the lawyer’s latest appeal for his client.

Reluctantly, William said, he had met with El-Akkad’s wife to inform her, “There is nothing more that we can do now.”

Bahaa el-Din Ahmet Hussein El-Akkad, now 58, was arrested on April 6, 2005 after Egypt’s secret police learned he had converted to Christianity.

Formerly a devout, practicing Muslim, El-Akkad eventually managed to send a note out of prison, stating that he had “chosen the Christian faith” after years of research on Islam.


Although the convert was never informed what Egyptian law he was accused of breaking, the official interrogations indicated El-Akkad was arrested for “insulting Islam” by becoming a Christian.

Appeals and CampaignsOver the past six months, a broad spectrum of international advocacy appeals had been mounted regarding El-Akkad’s case, including diplomatic-level inquiries spearheaded by Middle East Concern, a Christian association supporting religious freedom for churches and individual Christians in the region.

A specific judicial appeal for the Christian convert was also issued on March 21, co-signed by the International Center for the Legal Protection of Human Rights or INTERIGHTS, a London-based group, and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, based in Cairo.

The eight-page document reviewed the handling of El-Akkad’s case, citing repeated violations of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights by Egypt’s judiciary and SSI officials. Egypt has neither signed nor ratified this 2003 charter.

“While I was in prison, my family told me thousands of people were praying for me,” El-Akkad reportedly told his lawyer after his release. “I was sure that was true, because Jesus was with me all through my ordeal.”

He found hundreds of letters and cards waiting for him when he got home, mailed over the past few months in a concerted letter-writing campaign from Christians around the world.

According to a Christian source in Cairo, El-Akkad is still “closely monitored and under threat all the time.”

Radical Islamists from Egypt’s banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood had threatened to kill the former Muslim for committing “apostasy” if he was released from prison.

Last October, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had declared that Islam was under “ferocious attack” and called on Muslims to “correct the wrong image and show the real face of Islam.”

Stating that Muslims had strayed from the values of tolerance, Mubarak called for a return to its principles of “forgiveness, righteousness and reform.”

According to a Reuters article about Mubarak’s October 19 speech, “It was the most detailed remark yet by the [Egyptian] president on the need to reform Islam’s jurisprudence to accommodate more moderate views.”

END


*** A photograph of Bahaa el-Akkad is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Eritrea Arrests 80-Member Presbyterian CongregationGovernment announces ‘election’ of new Orthodox patriarch.Special to Compass Direct

LOS ANGELES, May 4 (Compass Direct News) – In still another police raid in the Eritrean capital, local authorities last weekend arrested 80 members of the Mehrete Yesus Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Asmara at the close of a Sunday worship service.

A U.S. couple as well as several teachers from India working in Eritrea were among those reportedly detained on Sunday (April 29).

But local sources confirmed that after four days of incarceration, the two U.S. citizens were released yesterday and allowed to return to their home in Asmara.

“They have been told not to teach or preach, but they haven’t been asked to leave,” a source who requested anonymity stated.

Church leaders identified as still under custody included the Rev. Zecharias Abraham, the Presbyterian church’s pastor, and a church elder named Mikias Mekonnen. Some of the jailed worshippers were women.

Initiated by former Sudan Interior Mission staff and affiliated with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the indigenous MehreteYesus Church has existed in Eritrea since the late 1940s.

According to a statement posted today by Release Eritrea, a London-based advocacy group, Abraham has served as head of the Eritrean Evangelical Alliance since the May 2004 arrest of his predecessor, Full Gospel Church leader Haile Niazgi.

The latest raid against Eritrea’s Protestant community came only five days after the government Ministry of Information posted a notice on its website, www.shabait.com, announcing that the Eritrean Orthodox Church had elected a new patriarch.

Renegade Bishop Named PatriarchDeclaring Bishop Dioskoros of Mendefera to be the fourth patriarch of the nation’s Orthodox Tewahdo community, the statement claimed he had been “unanimously approved” by the church’s Holy Synod on April 19, with his formal installation set for Pentecost Sunday on May 27.


http://www.shabait.com/

But according to an April 23 posting on the opposition website www.asmarino.com, “When the bishops in attendance expressed a desire to bring the matter to a deliberation, they were told that the announcement was not open for further discussion.”

Signed by “priests, monks, deacons and the faithful of the Eritrean Orthodox Church,” the Asmarino statement warned: “The Eritrean people should be aware that the rights and beliefs of the two-million strong [Orthodox] church have been flagrantly violated once again; and the hijacking of the church by the government that has been underway for quite some time is now completed.”

In direct violation of the church’s canon laws, the Asmara government stripped ordained Eritrean Patriarch Abune Antonios of his ecclesiastical authority in August 2005, after he protested the imprisonment of three priests from the Medhane Alem Orthodox Church.

The government replaced him with Yoftahe Dimetros, a layman appointed as interim administrator of the church.

Antonios was officially removed from office in January 2006, when he was placed under formal house arrest. Four months ago, his patriarchal vestments and insignia were taken away from him by force.

According to an Action Letter appeal from Amnesty International, “…The authorities have also forbidden Abune Antonios from having any contact with Orthodox followers and from attending or leading worship services. He has not been permitted to receive communion for the past year.”

The ecclesiastical canons of Coptic Orthodoxy forbid the consecration of a new patriarch while the previous one is still alive, unless found guilty by official church councils of committing flagrant sin or heresy.

Antonios is still recognized as the legitimate head of the Eritrean church by Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenoudah III, who presided at Patriarch Antonios’ ordination in April 2004.

Now 79, the Eritrean patriarch is being held incommunicado and reportedly suffering from diabetes without access to adequate medical treatment.

2,000 Jailed Without ChargesPatriarch Antonios is the most prominent of at least 2,000 Eritrean Christians now under arrest without trial or legal charges solely for their religious beliefs.

The prisoners include dozens of pastors and priests incarcerated in jails, police stations and military camps in 14 different cities and towns, some of them for more than three years.


http://www.asmarino.com/

In the last nine months alone, Compass has confirmed the deaths of three Christians from severe mistreatment while under arrest.

Eritrean security forces began a harsh crackdown against the country’s evangelical Protestant community five years ago, outlawing all churches not under the umbrella of the Orthodox, Catholic or Evangelical Lutheran denominations.

Since May 2002, anyone caught worshipping outside the government-approved religious institutions, either in church buildings or in private homes, has been subjected to arrest, torture and extreme pressure to deny their faith.

Even weddings and other social activities held within Christian communities have been raided and the participants hauled off to jail.

Under the totalitarian regime of President Isaias Afwerki, religious repression has escalated even further in the past two years. Targeted groups have included the Orthodox church’s flourishing renewal movement, a number of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslim leaders who oppose the government-appointed mufti.

At least 40 percent of Eritrea’s citizens consider themselves Coptic Orthodox by birth, with at least half of the population of ethnic Muslim background.

END

*** Photographs of Asmara’s Evangelical Presbyterian Church and Eritrean Orthodox Patriarch Abune Antonios are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************India Briefs: Recent Incidents of Persecutionby Vishal Arora and Nirmala Carvalho

Maharashtra, May 8 (Compass Direct News) – Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP) beat two Christian workers in Shahpur village, Kolhapur district before a television camera and a large crowd on May 7. According to the Christian Legal Association (CLA), the victims, Ramesh Gopargode and Ajit Belavi, were conducting a baptism service for seven local people when the attack took place. A private TV channel, IBN 7, showed a mob led by the VHP beating the evangelists and dragging them to the police station, where they were arrested and booked for fraud and hurting religious sentiments. According to the local superintendent of police, the seven converts had complained that they were not informed about the “conversion ceremony” and felt they were “tricked” by the evangelists. Dr. Abraham Mathai, vice chairman of the Maharashtra State Minorities Commission, told CLA that the attack was “pre-


planned” and those baptized were seemingly part of the plan. Local sources later told CLA that the VHP had pressured the seven to lodge the complaint. – VA

Karnataka (Compass Direct News) – A mob of some 50 to 60 Hindu extremists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh wearing saffron headbands attacked a newly-dedicated Marthoma Church in Narasapur, in Kolar district of Bangalore on May 6. As believers left the church at 10 a.m., the mob shouted curses at them and demanded that the church be shut down within 10 days, Dr. Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, told Compass. The mob then demanded that two evangelists identified only as Jaya Raj and James be handed over to them. Since the evangelists were not present, the mob beat several believers including three identified only as Santosh, Philip and Govindappa. They also destroyed the electrical circuitry in the church building. Church members filed a complaint with police, but at press time no arrests had been made. – NC

Chhattisgarh (Compass Direct News) – A group of Hindu extremists launched an attack on about 20 Christians while they were gathered at the home of Dr. Vijay Pradhan late on May 3 in Chhattisgarh state’s Sarguja district, according to Dr. Sajan K. George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians. The attackers beat the Christians with clubs and hands before fleeing the scene. One believer suffered a broken leg, and others received minor internal injuries. According to Arun Pannalal, general secretary of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, “The believers went to the police station that same night at around 11 p.m. and tried to lodge an official complaint, but police refused to register it until I phoned them and threatened them with a sit-in protest.” At press time, no arrests had been made. – NC & VA

Uttar Pradesh (Compass Direct News) – Seven Hindu extremists vandalized a Christian school and beat a staff member on May 1 in Sikandara area in Agra, Uttar Pradesh state. The Rev. Richard Howell, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, said members of the Bajrang Dal arrived on motorcycles and tried to break into the Grameen Mission School while a board meeting was underway. “When the school guard tried to stop them, they beat him up in a brutal way,” Howell said. The board members escaped injury by locking themselves inside the room. Infuriated, the assailants then vandalized school property. Police have since told the Christian Legal Association of India that they arrested two suspects and sent the school guard for a medical examination. – VA

Orissa (Compass Direct News) – The Hindu extremist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has accused Christian missionaries of “inducing” more than 500 Hindus to convert during the last three months in the villages of Rajnagar Tehsil, Kendrapara district, Orissa; and of planting three churches and a dozen prayer houses. “We have so far come across around 100 families that have embraced Christianity. And there is prima-facie evidence of offer of inducement by missionaries to carry out these conversions,” Golakh Behari Behera, general secretary of the district RSS, told the Kalinga Times on April 26. “We are of the view that the number of converts may increase threefold,” he added. The local paper said District Collector Kashinath Sahu was investigating the charges. The Orissa Freedom of Religion Act requires that all conversions be reported in


advance to district authorities, otherwise both convert and clergy can be fined 1,000 rupees ($23). – VA

Chhattisgarh (Compass Direct News) – Eight Hindu extremists attacked a U.S. Christian businessman on April 30 in the Pandri area of Raipur, capital of Chhattisgarh state. Steve Allison, a furniture dealer who is married to an Indian citizen, was attacked while out for an evening walk. The assailants shouted slogans against Christian missionaries, accused him of being involved in forced conversions and asked him to leave the state immediately. After beating him severely, they left him in the street. Allison, a diabetic, sustained head and abdominal injuries. Eventually a passerby informed Allison’s wife, Purnima Singh, who rushed him to a hospital where he received treatment. Senior Superintendent of Police B.S. Marawi told The Indian Express that no arrests had been made, although “a case has been registered against unknown people as the victim was unable to identify the culprits.” – VA

Rajasthan (Compass Direct News) – Hindu extremists from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal severely beat Pastor Walter Massey following a church service held at his home in Jaipur district on April 29. Massey’s wife Joyce said initially three people came to the door and engaged Massey in conversation but soon started beating him. Other men with covered faces joined the attack; they thrashed him with wooden clubs and kicked the pastor when he fell to the floor. The mob also broke plastic chairs, utensils and furniture in the house. A television crew was present to film the assault, and many national television channels aired footage at 4 p.m. that day. Massey was admitted to the Sawai Man Singh medical College Hospital in Jaipur for treatment. Another local pastor, the Rev. Rakesh Malachi, told the Times of India that the attack was planned and “we have received information of other possible attacks on Christians.” On April 30, police arrested five people in connection with the attack. – NC

Andhra Pradesh (Compass Direct News) – The Congress Party government in Andhra Pradesh state on April 27 decided to enact a law against propagation of other religions in certain places of worship belonging to a particular religion. The law provides for three years’ imprisonment and/or a fine of 5,000 rupees ($114) and was enacted in response to complaints that Christians were preaching at a Hindu temple in the Tirumala hills, Chittoor district. The Indian Constitution provides for enactment of an emergency law at a time when the Assembly is not in session. “The law will be misused by anti-social elements to book any Christian they find in Tirumala,” Dr. Sam Paul of the All India Christian Council told Compass. In addition, the Bharatiya Janata Party has accused Christian missionaries of forcibly converting Hindus in the university and hospitals inside the Tirupati-Tirumala area. – VA

Karnataka (Compass Direct News) – Twelve Hindu extremists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bajrang Dal barged into a Christian prayer meeting in Christoppara Colony, Karwar, on April 20 and began shouting tributes to Krishna, according to Dr. Paul Ciniraj of Salem Voice Ministries. Ciniraj said extremists armed with wooden clubs approached evangelist Anthony Dasa, who was leading the meeting, tied his hands and feet and then gagged him. They then ordered the congregation to stop singing and praying, and forced the believers to repeat Hindu devotional chants, finally


threatening to wipe out Christianity from the village. A Christian who arrived late for the meeting witnessed the assault and went to inform men in the fields, who arrived with farm implements and stones; the extremists then fled. Ciniraj said the group had been meeting for eight years but that intimidation from the RSS and Bajrang Dal began only last year. – NC

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***********************************Anti-Conversion Bill Expected in Eighth Indian StateUttarakhand state chief minister promises to ban ‘forced’ conversions.by Vishal Arora

NEW DELHI, May 14 (Compass Direct News) – The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to enact an anti-conversion law in the northern state of Uttarakhand, as it promised during its election campaign in February.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister B.C. Khanduri on April 15 said that his government would introduce a law to ban “conversions with allurement or fraudulent means” in the upcoming session of the Assembly, reported the Organizer, a weekly published by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in its May 6 issue.

Khanduri made the announcement at a meeting with local Hindu priests in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar city.

The BJP came into power in the states of Uttarakhand, formerly known as Uttaranchal, and Punjab in March 2007. Given that the BJP is part of a coalition with the regional Shiromani Akali Dal party in Punjab, that state is less likely to succeed in enacting an anti-conversion law.

A representative of the Christian Legal Association told Compass that the “sole motive” behind proposing anti-conversion bills is to make it easier for Hindu extremists to thwart Christian work, adding that it was “worrisome” that the number of states with an anti-conversion law was increasing.

The BJP on February 8 promised an anti-conversion law in its manifesto for the Assembly polls in the state, reported United News of India.

According to government figures, there are only 27,116 Christians out of 8.4 million people in Uttaranchal.

Demand in PunjabThe Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP) on April 14 demanded that an anti-conversion law be enacted in Punjab state.


VHP leader Ashok Singhal told reporters in Chandigarh, capital of Punjab, that those who come from abroad to “engineer conversions” in the country “should be sent back,” stating that conversions were “posing a threat to the existence of Hindus,” reported the Press Trust of India.

Singhal went on to say that there should be an anti-conversion law at the national level rather than only in the seven states that have passed such legislation.

“We will work with our might to stop conversions,” he said. Referring to the Congress Party-ruled Himachal Pradesh state’s recent move to enact a law to ban forcible conversions, he added, “Other states, including Punjab, should also follow suit.”

The Himachal Pradesh Assembly passed its anti-conversion law on December 30, 2006, and the state governor signed it into a law on February 20, 2007. The rules are yet to be framed to bring the law into force.

Singhal maintained that it was a “crime to ask people to leave Hinduism and adopt other religions through forced conversions.”

The VHP chief of Punjab’s Amritsar district, Rakesh Madan, also suggested that Punjab needed an anti-conversion law, according to regional daily The Tribune on March 12.

According to the 2001 Census of India, Christians in Punjab number 292,800 in a state whose total population is over 24.3 million.

Seven India states have anti-conversion laws, known as Freedom of Religion Acts: Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.

Hindu extremists commonly use anti-conversion legislation to falsely accuse Christians of converting people through force or allurement; thus they justify attacks on Christians or deflect prosecution away from themselves by pressing charges of “forcible conversion” without any evidence.

While anti-conversion laws were enforced in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh (before they were divided into two separate states) in 1967 and in Orissa in 1968, the legislation in Rajasthan state, which passed in the state Assembly in April 2006, is still awaiting governor’s assent.

Arunachal Pradesh and Gujarat also have passed such laws in 1978 and 2003 respectively, with their governors’ approval, but they have not been implemented as rules have yet to be framed.

END


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***********************************Dalit Christians in India Hopeful of Winning Rights Advisory body says conversion should not bar lowest caste from affirmative action.by Vishal Arora

NEW DELHI, May 23 (Compass Direct News) – A report of an advisory panel favoring affirmative action benefits for Dalit converts to Christianity has raised the hopes of India’s 16 million lowest-caste believers as they await a Supreme Court hearing in July.

The National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities (NCRLM) has recommended repeal of a clause in the Indian Constitution entitling only Dalits from Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism to governmental affirmative action, the national daily The Times of India reported yesterday (May 22).

The NCRLM, headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Rangnath Mishra and known as Mishra Commission, also called the denial of rights to Dalits after their conversion out of Hinduism “violative of constitutional guarantee of non-discrimination on religious grounds,” added the daily.

“We are one step closer to justice for all Dalits,” Dr. Joseph D’Souza, president of the All India Christian Council (AICC), told Compass. He added that action on the report could “drastically change the lives of the Dalit community” and “reverse the decades of religious-based discrimination against the lowest-strata in society.”

Terming the findings of the Commission report as “the first victory of Dalit Christians,” Dr. John Dayal of the National Integration Council of the Government of India said the government must take early action to reverse historic injustice and give Christians and Muslims of Dalit origin the benefits under laws that “are rightfully theirs.”

A clause in the constitution known as the Presidential Order of 1950 says only Hindu Dalits are entitled to “reservation” of government jobs and educational institutions, along with other special benefits. Thusa Dalit who converts to Christianity or Islam loses the status of “Scheduled Caste” (SC), a term used in the constitution for Dalits for the purpose of special privileges and protection.

The 1950 order has been amended twice to include Dalits from the Sikh (in 1956) and Buddhist (in 1990) faiths in affirmative action benefits.

The Supreme Court of India is scheduled to hold a hearing related to a petition seeking restoration of SC status for Dalit Christians on July 19.

Influence on the Court The Mishra Commission report is likely to have a bearing on the Supreme Court judgment, as the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance had told the high court


that it would give its reply on the demand of Dalit Christians after the panel submitted its recommendation.

The Commission’s recommendation, however, has met with a “strong dissenting note from the panel’s member secretary Asha Das, who argued that extending SC status to Christians and Muslims would amount to inserting caste in religions which don’t recognize it,” said the daily.

Das also questioned the propriety of Parliament or the judiciary to change the tenets of religion.

The 1950 order was based on the premise that non-Hindu religions do not have any caste system, and therefore they did not need any special privileges or protection.

Right-wing parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, and Hindu extremist organizations have opposed the demand of Dalit Christians, arguing that such a move would encourage religious conversions of Hindus as the exclusion of Dalit converts from SC lists acted as a deterrent.

It is estimated that more than 65 percent of Christians in India are from Dalit backgrounds. Christians in India comprise only 2.3 percent of the 1 billion-plus population.

Expressing hope that the Supreme Court would accept the demand of Dalit Christians when it begins hearing on their petition in July was a joint-statement by Edward M. Arokiadoss, national coordinator of the Union of Dalit Movements in India; Lion C. Francis, a leader of the All India Catholic Union (AICU); and Dayal, AICU president.

Reacting to opponents of the Dalit Christians’ demand, D’Souza said various studies conducted by the Mishra Commission – made up of leading social scientists, politicians, and academicians – indicated that Dalits continued to suffer caste-based discrimination, irrespective of their religion.

“In particular, Dalit Christians – even after their conversion – suffer social discrimination and remain in the same educational and economic condition as before,” he said.

Terming the caste system “India’s hidden apartheid”, D’Souza argued, “Those who perpetrate crimes against Dalits do not first verify if their victims are Dalit Hindus or Dalit Christians. The fact that they are Dalits is enough to abuse and discriminate against them.”

Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables,” have traditionally occupied the lowest place in the caste system of Hinduism. They were considered to be outside the confines of caste, and their “impurity” derived from their traditionally lesser regarded occupations.


D’Souza added: “It is our hope that the government does not come up with any more delay tactics at the next hearing.”

The hearing in the Supreme Court has earlier been deferred seven times, first on August 23, 2005 and then on October 18 and in November of the same year. In 2006, it was rescheduled from February 18 to July 12, and then to October 11. Finally, the scheduled hearing for April 3 of this year was moved to July 19. The hearings were delayed as the federal government asked for more time for the Mishra Commission to submit the report.

The petition was filed by attorney Prashant Bhushan on behalf of the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, a non-profit organization.

END

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***********************************Attacks in India’s Rajasthan State Show Disturbing TrendChristians increasingly threatened in worrying pattern of violence.by Vishal Arora

NEW DELHI, May 24 (Compass Direct News) – On May 12, a Catholic priest moved out of his village in Rajasthan’s Udaipur district after a mob entered his house, ransacked his room and demanded that he leave the area.

In a memorandum submitted to the police, Father Paul Ninama and other priests said village leader Gyaneshwar Chaubisa had threatened to burn him alive if he did not leave Parsad village. Both Catholic and Protestant leaders are appealing for police protection and intervention for the Christian minority of Rajasthan state.

The attack on Fr. Ninama was just one of several threats made or carried out on Christians in recent months. In one incident, Hindu extremists threatened a Christian family on May 6; a week earlier, extremists attacked a Protestant pastor in the state capital, Jaipur.

Two masked youth on a motorcycle arrived at the home of Pastor Than Singh John, of the Believers Church of India, on May 6 and demanded that they leave the area. “Singh, his wife Ruth and two children virtually fled from their modest house in Paldi Meena, a resettlement colony in Jaipur,” The Hindu reported on May 8.

A week earlier, on April 29, extremists from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council) and its youth wing Bajrang Dal severely beat an independent pastor, Walter Masih, at his home in Nandpuri area in the heart of the capital city – while a national television news channel filmed the attack. (See Compass Direct News, “India Briefs,” May 8.)


Worrying TrendSimilarities in recent attacks – threats and demands to leave the area, followed by violence – is “worrying human rights activists and the police alike,” The Hindu reported. The newspaper also quoted Kavita Srivastava, general secretary of the Rajasthan unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, who pointed out that extremists were choosing Sundays, a day of worship, to launch their attacks.

While police have arrested seven people in connection with the Masih incident, including government employee and VHP office-bearer Virendra Singh, those who attacked Pastor John’s family had not been identified at press time.

In response to concerns raised by the Christian community, authorities granted temporary 24-hour police protection to Pastor John’s family. Police also questioned about 50 members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, the parent organization of numerous extremist groups) in connection with the attack on Pastor John, a representative of the Christian Legal Association of India (CLA) told Compass.

Extremists had previously threatened Pastor John in February 2006; he submitted a complaint at the Kanota police station but staff there refused to register it.

Police InactionA national fact-finding team of human rights organizations and Christian bodies, including the All India Christian Council (AICC) and CLA, visited Jaipur on May 3 to investigate recent attacks, including the April 29 attack on Pastor Masih.

Preliminary findings of the team pointed out “major lapses in the manner in which the assault on Pastor Masih was formally registered by the Jaipur Police.”

Director General of Police A.S. Gill admitted to the fact-finding team that there were reports of increasing number of attacks on Christians in the state, but he denied any lapses on the part of the police.

“There is a pattern to the violence,” noted Dr. John Dayal, a member of the Government’s National Integration Council and the AICC who took part in the fact-finding mission. “The attacks on Christians are never in the form of clashes, as they are targeted against a micro-minority in the state. There is enough evidence available in many places for the police to take action against the VHP, Bajrang Dal and Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad [VKP, Council for Welfare of Tribal People, a Hindu extremist group], but no action is taken,” he added.

The report expressed concern at RSS “penetration” of the Rajasthan administrative and justice systems, and declared the increasing possibility of large-scale violence against religious minorities, particularly Christians, in the state.

Following agitation by the local community and the arrival of the fact-finding team, police added new criminal charges to the complaint lodged by Pastor Masih, including


accusations of spreading hatred between communities and desecrating the Holy Bible. Even so, the report found, “policemen later sought to pin the blame on Pastor Masih, repeatedly asking him about [the sources of] his alleged foreign funding.”

Anti-Conversion Bill ControversyFollowing the attack on Pastor Masih, noted human rights activist Aruna Roy wrote a letter to the state governor calling for “urgent steps” to protect the Christian community in Rajasthan, the Catholic news agency ICNS reported on May 8.

“Some self-styled … communal [extremist] organizations are actively creating and spreading an atmosphere of religious hatred and contempt,” Roy wrote. “These organizations have repeatedly used the allegation of ‘religious conversions’ to target Christian teachers, their educational institutions and other organizations.”

Roy said the extremists were deliberately manipulating public sentiments in order to push forward the adoption of the Rajasthan Religious Freedom Bill proposed in 2006.

The Rajasthan government introduced and passed the anti-conversion bill on April 7, 2006. Gov. Pratibha Patil however refused to sign the bill on May 19, 2006.

Roy stated that there had been “no substantive proof” of conversions by force or by allurement in the state. On the contrary, she wrote, “merely on the basis of false allegations and suspicion about religious conversion, numerous attacks have been engineered creating immense tension.”

She gave an example of another incident on March 7, where three armed villagers struck one pastor with an iron rod and another with a brick in Hanumangarh district. Pastors Reginald Howell and Sat Nam from the Good Shepherd Community Church in Punjab state had gone to Hanumangarh for a healing prayer meeting hosted by local Christians.

Roy then commended Indian Christians for their contribution to nation-building.

“It is a shame that these acts take place repeatedly and no real punitive and deterrent action is taken by the Rajasthan government,” she concluded.

Jugal Kishore, a local VHP secretary, recently announced that the VHP would pressure Patil to sign the bill.

“We will be forced to launch statewide protests if the governor does not sign the bill in the next two months,” Kishore told the Press Trust of India on April 15. “The governor will be responsible for any untoward or violent situation during our protests.”

Secretive Survey of ChristiansIn May 2006, Christians uncovered the preparation of a “databank of churches and missionary organizations” by police in Udaipur district.


A questionnaire used to gather information for the database asked for the “ideology of the priest of the church or the head of the organization.” It also sought a detailed description of the activities of Christian institutions, their sources of income and financial aid, legal status, fixed assets, and information on residents of any hostel facilities they may run. It also asked if they provided education and whether they were registered to do so. (See Compass Direct News, “State Secretly Surveys Churches, Missions,” May 31, 2006.)

The survey was troubling, particularly as the Christian charity Emmanuel Mission International (EMI) was at the time struggling with a state-supported campaign against their hostels and orphanages. During the campaign, charges were leveled against EMI’s founder and president and EMI’s bank accounts were frozen. (See sidebar).

Udaipur division, which includes Udaipur district and the neighboring Banswara district, is one of the most religiously sensitive regions in the state. Several violent attacks on Christians were reported there in recent years.

In 1998, Advocate P.L. Mimorth and M.P. Chaudhry of the Indian Social Institute noted that leaders of several extremist organizations had declared their intention to stamp out Christianity in Banswara district by the year 2000.

State’s Role in PersecutionMinority rights groups say the situation has worsened since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in Rajasthan in December 2003. Since that time, many observers say extremists have been given “free reign” to carry out their activities.

On August 16, 2004 the BJP government lifted a ban on the distribution, acquisition and carrying of trishuls – sharp, three-pronged knives or tridents – often used in communal attacks against Christians. Two days earlier, the VHP had illegally resumed a trident distribution program.

On July 7, 2004 the government withdrew 122 cases related to religious violence; including five cases registered against Hindu extremists for damaging houses belonging to the Muslim community in Banswara district in September 2002. A case directed against seven Muslims in the same area was not withdrawn.

In addition, the Rajasthan government last year introduced a Social Science textbook for high school students that clearly equates Indian-ness with a Hindu identity, excluding Muslims, Christians and other minorities. The textbook also advocates tough laws to prevent religious conversion, according to an NDTV report broadcast in December 2006.

Christians account for just 0.1 percent (72,660) of the 56-million-strong population of Rajasthan.

SIDEBAR


Harassment of EMI Shows State Collusion in Persecution

In Rajasthan’s Kota district, Christians believe state Social Welfare Minister Madan Dilawar has encouraged attacks on Emmanuel Mission International (EMI).

In January 2006, EMI founder Archbishop M.A. Thomas and his son, Bishop Samuel Thomas, EMI president, received anonymous death threats warning them not to hold an annual graduation ceremony for hundreds of orphans and Dalit Christian students scheduled for February 25.

The threat followed cancellation of the registrations of EMI institutions by the Kota Registrar of Societies and the subsequent freezing of their bank accounts on February 20, 2006. This was on the charges that board meetings of the institutions were not being held regularly and that the chairman and president were blood relatives.

Further, the Kota police arrested Thomas junior, administrator V.S. Thomas, Bible college student Vikram Kindo and chief operating officer R.S. Nair in March 2006 for allegedly distributing the book Haqeekat (The Truth), which supposedly denigrated the Hindu faith.

The same month (March 2006), a delegation from the All India Christian Council submitted a report to the Indian prime minister concluding that the ruling BJP party had encouraged state authorities to harass Christians, including EMI staff. The report named Dilawar as a key figure in the campaign against EMI.

In May, 2006, the Kota administration leveled fresh charges of “exciting . . . disaffection towards the government of India” against Thomas and his son.

In mid-June, 2006, officials of the state Social Welfare Department were deployed at the office of the EMI orphanage to oversee the management.

According to a regional daily, Rajasthan Patrika, dated July 7, the Rajasthan High Court issued a warning to the social welfare department and its minister, Dilawar, in response to a petition charging him with instigating people against minorities, including Christians.

The regional daily stated that Dilawar had been involved in targeting Christians even before he became a minister in December 2003. It reported that he intensified attacks after taking charge of the department.

In 2001, Dilawar had vehemently opposed the conferment of a prestigious national award, the Padma Shri, to Archbishop Thomas for his service to orphans and lepers.

Although all the EMI leaders who were arrested have subsequently been released on bail, granted by the Supreme Court in May 2006, the campaign and harassment against the EMI continues.


The social welfare department served notices to the EMI on December 5, 2006 and last January 10 saying a committee had been formed to look into the “disappearance” of children at the orphanage after the number of residents fell from more than 1,700 to only 435.

EMI officials say that most of the children had left for summer vacation in their villages in March 2006. Only 435 children stayed at the orphanage, and when the other children returned, the department officials refused to accept them back.

END

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***********************************India Briefs: Recent Incidents of Persecutionby Nirmala Carvalho and Vishal Arora

Jharkhand, May 24 (Compass Direct News) – Five extremists attacked Father George Minj and Sister Teresa Kindo from the Gara Lodhma parish near Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state, on May 14 as they returned home from a prayer meeting. Sister Kindo said the attackers shouted and ordered them to stop, then began beating them, continuing until they saw a vehicle approaching. The driver of the vehicle took Minj and Kindo to a nearby hospital for treatment. According to Catholic news agency UCAN, the mob beat Minj’s head so severely that his motorbike helmet was damaged, and he suffered blood clots; but he was out of danger at press time. Kindo said their assailants had no interest in their cash and a mobile phone and seemed determined to kill Minj. Police told UCAN the attack was a “serious issue” and that they had registered a case against the unidentified attackers. – VA

Madhya Pradesh – On May 14, police arrested Kunal Pasricha, a Christian worker of the Indian Evangelical Mission, on charges of “forced conversion.” A group of about 70 people from Narayanpur village in Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh, filed the complaint – allegedly at the behest of Hindu extremists – after dragging Pasricha to a police station. Pasricha had been preparing for a screening of a film on the life of Christ. He was arrested under the state anti-conversion law for “forced conversion” and creating enmity between religious communities, according to a statement from the Christian Legal Association of India (CLA). Assistant Sub-Inspector Rajaram Bansal told CLA that the police arrested Pasricha to save him from a possible mob attack. Local Christian Pritam Verma was arrested along with Pasricha. On May 15, a magistrate denied bail to Pasricha, but on May 19 both men were released on bail. – VA

Karnataka – Police accompanied by Hindu extremists interrogated three believers – identified only as Premandam, Antony and Sudhakar – at Bethel Ministries Church, Kushal Nagar, Kodagu district, Karnataka on the afternoon of May 13. “After the police left the church, the extremists thrashed the believers, causing a number of major and minor injuries,” Dr. Sajan K. George, president of the Global Council of Indian


Christians, told Compass. “They also threatened to murder Pastor Titus.” The following day, two policemen identified only as Geetha and Sreenivas visited the Christian victims in the hospital and threatened to harm them if they filed a complaint. Geetha and Sreenivas then returned to Bethel Church looking for Titus; failing to find him, they threatened two believers who were praying in the church and asked them to give statements against the pastor. Denying that the officers had made threats, Circle Inspector Vasant Kumar insisted to Compass that Titus was creating a law-and-order problem in Kushal Nagar by “luring” poor people to convert to Christianity. “The local people, including several Bajrang Dal and RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevek Sangh] cadres, complained to us several times of the conversion activities of Pastor Titus, and our officials only went to warn them to desist from their conversion activities,” Kumar told Compass. – NC

Karnataka – On May 13 a mob of around 25 Bajrang Dal extremists attacked a service run by Pastor J.P. George of Village Mission India in Kushal Nagar, Kodagu district of Karnataka. The extremists used wooden clubs to injure believers as they walked up to the pulpit, according to Dr. Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC). They then slapped the pastor, hit him with their wooden clubs and the microphone stand, and told him to stop converting people to a foreign faith. The extremists also hit other church members and destroyed the sound system and furniture. The pastor and another believer identified only as Chennaiya were badly injured in the assault. Police were hostile when the pastor tried to register a complaint and did so reluctantly only after the GCIC’s George phoned Shiva Reddy, the local sub-inspector. Pastor J.P. George had earlier been attacked on January 7 during a worship service. – NC

Karnataka – A mob of around 30 Hindu extremists attacked Pastor Hosula Raj of Pandavapura village, Mandya district of Karnataka on May 13. “During our worship around 30 activists wearing saffron robes and carrying wooden clubs gathered outside the prayer hall and hurled abuse at the believers and Christianity,” Pastor J. Jacob, a fellow minister, told Compass. The mob then walked up the aisle to Raj, grabbed the microphone from his hand and slapped him. When he fell to the floor they kicked him in the head and abdomen and began attacking other believers who were present. Raj’s wife Geeta fainted as she saw her husband being beaten. “The mob then dragged Raj to the local police station and registered a complaint of [forced] conversion against him,” Jacob said. Circle Inspector S.T. Sibbalangappa told Compass he had charged Raj under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code for “deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.” – NC

Rajasthan – On May 12, a group of about 15 people led by Gyaneshwar Chaubisa, the headman of Parsad village, in Udaipur district of Rajasthan, forcefully entered and ransacked the residential premises of Father Paul Ninama. They threatened Ninama and ordered him to leave the village immediately or they would burn him alive, according to the Catholic Diocesan Society of Udaipur. Ninama was living in a rented room as he supervised the construction of a parochial house in Chavand village, seven kilometers (4.3 miles) away from Parsad. “The mob was allegedly members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad,” the Most Rev. Joseph Pathalil, bishop of Udaipur, told Compass. “We are


law-abiding citizens, but the local extremists target our work and accuse us of forced conversions. Ninama did nothing against the law, and he has the right to live wherever he chooses. He has not indulged in any activity that is intimidating or alluring any person by force or money to Christianity.” – NC

Kerala – Four unidentified men attacked Dr. Thomas Mathai and his wife on May 8 at Cheppampara village in Kottayam District of Kerala, the Rev. Paul Ciniraj of Salem Voice Ministries reported. Mathai is both a medical doctor and an evangelist. “At 12:15 a.m. there was a knock on my door,” Mathai told Compass. “Four men pleaded for my help with an accident victim. When I opened the door, the men barged into the house, bound my hands and feet, gagged me and thrashed me with a steel pipe.” Mathai’s wife rushed to help him and was also gagged and had her hands and feet bound. The attackers then made off with her gold jewelry, some cash and two mobile phones. After untying their bonds, the couple registered a case at the Ponkunnam police station. According to Ciniraj, robbery was not the motive; Mathai was targeted for sharing the gospel. “This is the third attack in Kerala in recent weeks,” Ciniraj added. “A few weeks ago in Idukki district, some Brethren evangelists were beaten up, and about a fortnight ago vandals attacked the Carmel Gospel Center in Kottayam district.” Police were investigating, but at press time no arrests had been made. – NC

Orissa – A group of approximately 60 extremists attacked Pabitra Mohan Kata, an independent Christian worker, in Adigara village, Kandhamal district, Orissa state on May 6, as he returned from a visit to a Christian friend. The assailants were allegedly followers of the Hindu cleric Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati. Until 1995, Kata had supported extremist groups in the area. The attackers accused him of taking money from missionaries, converting to a foreign religion and converting others using force and allurement, according to Dr. Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians. Kata bled profusely from his left jaw and ear during the attack, but the extremists continued to beat him until the police arrived. “They really intended to kill him,” George said. The police initially refused to register Kata’s complaint and threatened to arrest him on charges of “forced” conversion; they backed down only after local Christian leaders spoke out on his behalf. The accused remained at large at press time. – VA

Tamil Nadu – Eight Hindu extremists broke into the house of an independent pastor, Paul Chinnaswamy, in the Hosur area of Dharmapuri district, Tamil Nadu on May 5. They hit the 51-year-old pastor in the thigh with a screwdriver, pushed his face into a wall, hit him in the ribs, insulted his wife and threatened to harm his 4-year-old daughter – before warning him not to report the incident to the police, according to Dr. Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians. The attackers also broke into a cupboard and took 2,750 rupees (US$64), claiming that the amount was given by “foreigners” for conversion. Chinnaswamy said he had set aside the money to pay his electricity bill. During the attack, about 20 other extremists surrounded the house to prevent the couple from fleeing. Extremists had earlier beaten Chinnaswamy and vandalized his kitchen on April 22 to protest his work; his 24-year-old son later moved out of the family home, fearing for his life. “Being from a poor Dalit family, Chinnaswamy has not lodged a police complaint,” George added. – VA


END

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***********************************Kidnappers in Iraq Demand Enormous Ransom for PriestChurch burning, threats to forcibly convert to Islam, plague Baghdad Christians.by Peter Lamprecht

ISTANBUL, May 21 (Compass Direct News) – Church leaders in Iraq reported that kidnappers have demanded a huge ransom for the release of a Chaldean priest abducted in Baghdad over the weekend.

“They phoned us, they want money and we cannot say anything else,” Baghdad’s Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni told Compass regarding the abduction of Father Nawzat Hanna Saturday morning (May 19).

Hanna, 38, was abducted upon exiting the home of a sick parishioner in the city’s Baladiyat neighborhood, Asia News reported. Christian sources told Compass that the ransom demand was six digits in U.S. dollars, far more than the church could pay.

Chaldean priest Bashar Warda, dean of St. Peter’s Seminary, said Hanna is the only priest at the Chaldean Mar Pithion parish of 700 families, located in a north-eastern, predominantly Shiite district of the city.

Hanna is at least the sixth Chaldean priest to be kidnapped in Baghdad during the past year. All were eventually released, and in several cases Compass has confirmed that ransom money has been paid, but Christian sources said the abductions were about more than money.

Douglas Yusuf Al-Bazy, a Chaldean priest kidnapped and released in November 2006, told Compass last month that his kidnappers had targeted him in order to force the departure of his Baghdad parish.

Fleeing ThreatsIn Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood, more than 190 Christian families in the past month have fled following threats that they must convert to Islam or leave, according to new figures from a church refugee committee.

Over the past month Islamic militias in Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood have continued demands that local Christians convert to Islam, pay jizya (an Islamic tax levied on non-Muslims) or leave the area.

“The majority of them have been asked to leave Dora without taking any of their stuff, even their clothes,” Chaldean priest Warda told Compass from Erbil.


Warda said that, as of yesterday, a church refugee committee in Baghdad had registered 190 families that had fled Dora in the past month because they were told to convert to Islam.

The Chaldean priest, who traveled to Baghdad earlier this month, said that he believed all Dora churches had ceased to hold services since the conversion threats began in mid-April. Prior to 2003, the district had been a center of Christian activity in Baghdad.

Warda also confirmed a May 18 report on Iraqi news website Bent Al Rafidain that a group of armed Muslims had set fire to St. George Assyrian Church in Dora last Wednesday (May 16).

The Assyrian Church of the East structure had been dormant since October 2004, when it was destroyed in a wave of church bombings.

“The bishop had decided not to renovate it because he received threats,” Warda commented.

The Chaldean priest said that it was a new trend for Christians to be leaving the area specifically because of religious threats. Many believers had left the neighborhood over the past year due to its deteriorating security situation, which involved fighting between Sunni militias and U.S. and Iraqi government forces.

“But this is almost a month since the people began to move [specifically] because of the [conversion] threats,” Warda said.

Last week, Iraqi Christian website Ankawa.com reported that Hatim Al Rizeq, a member of the Islamic State in Iraq, was coordinating harassment of Dora’s Christians from the neighborhood’s Al-Noor mosque. Members of the Sunni group have been accused of involvement in the kidnapping of U.S. journalist Jill Carroll and the death of Tom Fox, a member of a Christian Peacemaker Team that was kidnapped in November 2005.

Though unable to confirm the Ankawa.com report, Warda said that refugees from Dora had told similar stories.

“People from Dora have told our committee that some of the negotiations about the amount to be paid [jizya] are being held in the mosque,” the Chaldean priest said.

In a rare departure from his low profile approach to the suffering of Iraq’s Christians, Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly descried the persecution of his flock earlier this month while celebrating mass in Erbil.

Recalling Delly’s words, Warduni told Compass, “Tell all the people to pray that peace and prosperity would return to Iraq because we are in a very bad time.”


An Eastern rite church in communion with Rome, the Chaldean church is the largest Christian community in Iraq.

END

*** Photos of St. George Assyrian Church are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Kidnapped Iraqi Priest Freed in BaghdadBishop: ‘We are living in a small hell on earth.’by Peter Lamprecht

ISTANBUL, May 22 (Compass Direct News) – A Chaldean priest kidnapped Saturday morning (May 19) was released last night.

Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni told Compass from Baghdad that he had personally collected Father Nawzat Hanna from his captors at 9:30 p.m.

“For about one hour I was going here and there, here and there, until they told me to stop,” Warduni told Compass, describing his interaction by telephone with Hanna’s captors. “I was afraid then, because at 10 o’clock there was a curfew.”

Refraining from mentioning the exact location, Warduni said that after he stopped his car he recognized Hanna coming towards him.

“He came crying and saying, ‘Oh Father, Monsignor, thank you, thank God, thank our Lady,’” Warduni commented.

Sitting next to Hanna today at an undisclosed location in Baghdad, Warduni told Compass that Hanna had undergone a “little bit” of torture, but that he had not been hospitalized.

Hanna, 38, was leaving the home of a sick member of his Mar Pithion parish when abducted on Saturday morning.

The bishop maintained that the kidnapping had been motivated by money but did not discuss details of a ransom. Christian sources told Compass that the initial amount demanded for Hanna’s release had been six digits in U.S. dollars, but that the church had been unable to pay the high price.

Regardless of the kidnappers’ intentions, Warduni said that Hanna’s kidnapping may force many of the priest’s flock to leave Baghdad’s Baladiyat neighborhood.


“[When a priest is abducted] it is very bad because the people say, ‘If the priest is gone, what are we staying here for?’” Warduni said.

The bishop said that possibly half of the Mar Pithion congregation was still attending mass regularly. Christian sources estimated that the parish numbers approximately 700 families.

Hanna is at least the sixth Chaldean priest to be kidnapped and released in Baghdad during the past year. The other five have relocated to the northern Kurdish region or abroad to escape targeting by gangs and Islamic militias.

Asked if another priest would be able to fill Hanna’s spot at Mar Pithion church, Warduni said, “From where? Send us some priests to take his place!”

Christian sources, including the kidnapped priests themselves, have told Compass that the clergymen were captured, in part, to force Baghdad’s Christians out of the city.

Warduni confirmed reports that Muslim militias have begun demanding jizya (an Islamic tax levied on non-Muslims) from Christians in several areas of Baghdad.

A church refugee committee reported that 190 Christian families fled Dora neighborhood over the past month, when told to pay jizya or convert to Islam.

“They are telling people to leave their homes, or to be Muslims, or to pay jizya, or to take their daughters, or…” Warduni said. “This is persecution.”

The bishop commented that part of the problem facing Iraq’s Christian community stems from their perceived association with the United States and coalition forces.

“They think that we are with America because we are Christians,” Warduni said. In addition to prompting anti-American attacks on Iraq’s Christian community, he said this belief also encouraged money-making kidnapping attempts.

“They think that we have someone outside to send us the money,” Warduni said. “But all this is false. All our rich people have gone and we are so poor.”

The majority of Christians remaining in Baghdad are those without the means to travel abroad or to Iraq’s northern region, where the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent months.

“Why did the coalition come here?” Warduni asked. “We have no security and peace.”

Warduni pleaded with Christians around the world to do everything possible to provide security for all religious and ethnic groups in Iraq. Expressing the daily fear that faces his community, Warduni said that it might even be better to die than to continue living in the “small hell on earth” that Baghdad has become.


“We must speak now and tell the reality,” the bishop said, “even if the truth causes us some suffering.”

According to a United Nations estimate, 2 million Iraqi refugees live abroad and another 1.9 million are internally displaced, the New York Times reported on May 13. Most of the movement has occurred since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Christians constitute approximately 3 percent of Iraq’s population but make up a much larger proportion of the country’s refugees registered with the United Nations.

END

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***********************************Christians in Chiapas, Mexico Town Deprived of WaterMore than five weeks after signing pact, Los Pozos caciques fail to fulfill accord.by Jeff M. Sellers

LOS ANGELES, May 30 (Compass Direct News) – More than five weeks after town bosses in Chiapas state, Mexico, signed an agreement to restore water lines cut off from Christians since January, the Protestants still rely on dirty, distant wells and puddles for washing and drinking.

The April 23 agreement calls for the autocratic rulers or caciques of Los Pozos, 29 kilometers (18 miles) from San Cristobal de las Casas, to withdraw a threat to expel 65 Christians and restore the electricity and water services of several Protestant families. Another of the pact’s central aims is to keep “traditionalist Catholics,” who practice a mixture of indigenous ritual and Roman Catholicism, from forcing the evangelicals to help pay for drunken religious festivals that they consider idolatrous.

Evangelical pastor and attorney Esdras Alonso Gonzalez told Compass that the Protestants were glad the traditionalist Catholic caciques have ceased forcing the Protestants of Alas de Aguila church to participate in the saints’ day festivals, but that water lines cut since January 30 had not been restored.

“Everyone in the municipality is respecting the agreement, except in the matter of water – it’s horrible,” Alonso said. “We don’t know when they’re going to restore the water; the brethren have not been able to get good information.”

Chiapas state officials brokered the agreement between the evangelicals and the traditionalist Catholics of Los Pozos. Alonso said state officials are responsible for ensuring that local town bosses fulfill terms of the pact.


Informed that the Los Pozos Christians’ water lines still had not been reconnected, Chiapas Secretary of Government Jorge Antonio Morales Messner told Compass through an assistant that his office was looking into the matter.

Manuel Alvarez Martinez, president of the Huixtan municipality to which Los Pozos belongs, declined to comment about the failure of local caciques to restore water service to members of the Alas de Aguila church.

Maria Elena Gomez Ton, a 27-year-old mother of four, said she has been walking about a mile three times a day for water. Carmela Santis Lopez, a 38-year-old Tzotzil Maya resident of Los Pozos, told Compass that her children have become ill from lack of bathing and washing with water from a muddy well.

The Los Pozos officials had agreed verbally to restore the water lines as far back as February 28.

“We have suffered these months – we’ve been drinking dirty water,” Santis told Compass. “We’re not doing anything bad, it’s only that for accepting Christ and being evangelicals that we’re suffering.”

Previously Los Pozos town bosses had prohibited outside Christians from visiting area Protestants, disrupted Alas de Aguila church services and stopped visitors to the church to question and threaten them. Alonso said such harassment has stopped since the April 23 agreement.

“They were going to make the evangelicals contribute to the saint’s festival on May 3, and they were not forced to contribute,” Alonso said. “So the brothers say that even though they don’t have water, they’re just happy that they don’t have any interference in their worship services now.”

The agreement also calls for local authorities to restore firewood-gathering rights and resume distributing federal food aid and fertilizers they have diverted from the Tzotzil Maya Christians.

The signing of the agreement by the caciques, bosses from the municipality of Huixtan, evangelicals and state officials came nine days after traditionalist Catholics and civil authorities destroyed a Pentecostal church building in Ollas, a community of nearby San Juan Chamula municipality, on April 14.

The caciques and other traditionalist Catholics showed up for the April 23 signing with a proposal of their own negating nearly all the terms of a verbal agreement reached February 28. Their proposal would have obligated the Protestants to pay for past festivals and fines accumulated for refusing to contribute to previous traditionalist Catholic events, but state officials nixed it.


Reynaldo Gomez Ton, pastor of Alas de Aguila church in Los Pozos, said town bosses have falsely accused the Christians of failing to contribute anything at all to community funds.

“What really upsets us is that they deny that we’re contributing to the community funds, but it’s not true,” he told Compass. “We’re contributing to community services, but we didn’t contribute to the December 12 festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe. So on two or three occasions, if we were having a cup of coffee with an outside Christian visitor there in my house, they would come and take him out of the house saying, “Where did this guy come from?”

END

*** Photos of Esdras Alonso Gonzalez, Maria Elena Gomez Ton, Carmela Santis Lopez, Reynaldo Gomez Ton and the hillside town of Los Pozos are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.

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***********************************Evangelists Killed in Sudan’s Nuba MountainsReligious motive still unclear; local government to investigate attack.by Peter Lamprecht

ISTANBUL, May 2 (Compass Direct News) – An Egyptian and three Sudanese Christians were killed last week when their truck came under gunfire after holding an evangelistic meeting in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains region.

Egyptian Daniel Girgis, 37, and local Sudanese Christians Markous Tiya, Rihab Kafi Jadeen and an unidentified young boy were killed when unknown assailants opened fire on their vehicle last Friday night (April 27).

At least five others, two foreigners and three Sudanese, were injured in the attack that began when the truck driver refused to stop at a makeshift roadblock of large rocks.

The vehicle was returning to the town of Torogi, 70 kilometers south of Kadugli, at around 10:30 p.m. carrying 14 foreign Christians, as well as several local Sudanese believers.

Organized by the Bahry Evangelical Church in Khartoum North, the evangelism team had spent the previous week in central Sudan’s Nuba Mountains on one of the church’s bi-annual outreach projects.

“When they finished [showing] the Jesus film [in the village of Gnaya] they were going back to the town they were visiting,” Barnaba Timothous, evangelism coordinator at the


Bahry Evangelical Church, told Compass. “On their way there, someone behind the mountain fired at them. It was night, they saw just two men.”

Religious Motive or Robbery?Though the motive for the attack remains unclear, Timothous said he suspects it was caused by Muslims who were unhappy that Christians were doing evangelism in the area.

“The main thing is that there are some chiefs there who are Muslims, who are against the church,” Timothous said. “They don’t want the church to be built there. They don’t want Christianity to grow up there.”

But another Christian in Khartoum who helped organize the trip maintained that the attack was a simple robbery gone awry.

“It might have been something more than that, but you can’t say that unless you have evidence,” the Christian told Compass. “So we assume it was probably robbery.”

Al-Tahir Kodi, the truck’s driver, said that it had been to dark for him to see anyone and he had no way of knowing whether his attackers were Muslim.

“We will not accuse anyone until we know who they were,” he said, talking by telephone from Khartoum. He also said he had heard of an incident five days before the attack, in which masked gunmen looted a bus east of Torogi in an area called Tolodi.

But two sources in Khartoum independently told Compass that roadside ambushes in the region are rare, causing them to question whether robbery was the real motive.

“This is the first [ambush] since the ending of the war two or three years ago that I’ve heard of happening in the Nuba Mountains,” one source said. “So the motive is certainly still in question.”

Timothous said that the government in South Kordofan State had formed a committee to investigate the attack. The committee has yet to report its findings.

“We haven’t had any updates,” one Christian source said. “On Sunday four officials from the Nuba Mountains government, two Christians and two Muslims, came to the church in Bahry, expressed their condolences and assured us that they would get the people who did it.”

Though of Egyptian nationality, Girgis was living in Khartoum and attending the Bahry Evangelical Church in Khartoum North. The Tthree Sudanese killed, as well as three others injured, were Nuba Mountains residents from Gnaya and Torogi, Bahry church pastor Hafis Fasaha told Compass.


Two foreigners injured in the attack, a man and a woman who requested anonymity, are receiving medical treatment in a private home in Khartoum. The man was shot near the ankle while both of the woman’s legs were pierced by a bullet near the hips.

The foreigners flew back to Khartoum from Kadugli on Saturday morning (April 28), where they received post-trauma counseling and medical treatment. Girgis’ body was flown to Cairo later that day.

“Fortunately, the bullet didn’t hit a bone,” a source close to the injured woman said. “She took her first steps yesterday, and they’re keeping the wound clean and bandaged. She’s still in a lot of pain and hoping it will heal up in the next few weeks.”

The source said the foreigners plan to leave Sudan within the next week.

According to Dr. Dawood Bashir, the three injured Sudanese injured are still receiving medical treatment in a Kadugli hospital.

Bashir told Compass from Kadugli that Philemon Kuku Tiya, 27, Ibrahim Karaka Tiya, 35, and Nimat Tutu Gasmim, 11, were all recovering well.

“All the people of the church are paying visits to them and encouraging them,” Bashir said. Gasmim’s pelvis had been damaged by a bullet the doctor said, and she had undergone surgery and a blood transfusion.

Bashir was unable to confirm the exact ages of the three dead Sudanese Christians, but identified Safi as being in his late 20’s and Jadeen as approximately 19 years of age. He said the dead boy was approximately 12 years old.

Christians in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains region have reported low levels of ongoing harassment from Muslim tribal leaders since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended the country’s civil war in January 2005.

Christians in the town of Shatt Damam were forced to rebuild their church repeatedly after it was burned down three times in 2005. A congregation in the village of Katcha told visitors that the town imam verbally abuses them over the mosque loudspeaker and that the town’s Muslim chief built a house on church property, claiming it belonged to his forefathers.

END

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***********************************Turkish Press Leaks Murder Suspect’s ‘Secret’ DepositionAccused killer names another pastor he planned to kill.by Barbara G. Baker


ISTANBUL, May 22 (Compass Direct News) – Turkish newspapers have started leaking extensive details from secret police interrogations of the last of five suspects charged with murdering three Christians in Malatya last month.

In one of the most alarming reports, published on Sunday (May 20), accused killer Emre Gunaydin allegedly told police investigators that he had planned to murder another Protestant pastor after the Malatya attack.

The intended victim was identified in the news reports by his city and distinctive first name, as well as his relationship by marriage to one of the Malatya victims. He requested that his name be withheld for this report.

The illegal disclosures came on the heels of Gunaydin’s medical discharge and subsequent jailing on May 19, after being hospitalized for 31 days from severe head injuries. The suspect fell from a third-story drainpipe trying to escape police on the day of the crime.

Two Turkish converts to Christianity and a German Christian were bound hand and foot, tortured with multiple stab wounds and then their throats cut on April 18 at the Zirve Publishing office in Malatya, in southeastern Turkey. The four other attackers besides Gunaydin were arrested at the scene.

The daily Milliyet claimed on May 20 to have a copy of Gunaydin’s police deposition. According to reporter Tolga Sardan, the suspect claimed that a Turkish Christian he had met over the Internet told him that the governments of the United States and Israel were “behind” the activities of this pastor he wanted to kill.

“In Turkey, all this is meant to point him out as a target for an attack, and to put a price on his head,” Istanbul pastor Carlos Madrigal said yesterday. Three weeks ago the intended victim was offered and accepted security police protection offered by the government.

“We did not expect two of Turkey’s largest newspapers to print something like this,” Ankara pastor Ihsan Ozbek told Compass. Ozbek said he had written a letter of protest to the daily Milliyet, both for breaking the law and deliberately targeting individual Christians.

“How can the Turkish press get this secret information?” asked the targeted pastor who requested anonymity, calling Compass from his home, which the Turkish media have staked out since May 20.

Malatya prosecutor Huseyin Sari Omeroglu told Compass emphatically three times over the telephone from his office, “Our interrogations are secret.”


Although Omeroglu insisted the deposition remained absolutely confidential by court order, he declined to comment on how national newspapers could have obtained a copy of the document.

The news coordinator of a local newspaper that published the targeted pastor’s last name and photograph in today’s edition reportedly told him, “All the newspapers are writing this. This is information that was given out by the security police.”

The same paper reported the arrest of a young Christian man Gunaydin had identified by name as his Internet contact. When telephoned by Compass today, the news coordinator said local police had told his newspaper about the young man’s arrest. So far as he knew, he said, he was still being held in custody.

But a member of a local church told Compass the young man had only been held for a day of questioning.

“Within the first week after the murders, a dozen or more police came to his home, gathered up all his Christian books and flew him out to Malatya,” the source said. “He was released by the end of the day and came back home by bus. But now he is a bit afraid to attend church services any more, especially since his name is in the papers now.”

Clear Religious MotivesIn his reported deposition, Gunaydin repeatedly stressed his religious motives in planning and executing the attack. Earlier that morning, he said, the attackers wrote farewell notes to their families and then performed a “thanksgiving prayer” together before going to the Zirve office.

“My purpose was just to frighten them from doing Christian propaganda,” he was quoted as saying in Sabah newspaper. “But then, when that infidel said, ‘You will all worship Jesus,’ I lost myself. After that I don’t remember what I did.”

“I saw that in recent years Christian work had advanced in Malatya,” Gunaydin told his interrogators. “I thought that those involved in missionary activities needed to be told ‘Stop!’”

The murder victims were Pastor Necati Aydin, 36, married with two children; Ugur Yuksel, 32, single; and Tilmann Geske, 46, married with three children.

According to an article in yesterday’s Hurriyet newspaper, Gunaydin introduced himself to Aydin as a person without any religion. He said Aydin told him, “Islam was spread by the sword, but the essence of Christianity is love.”

Gunaydin reportedly went on to claim, “The German and Necati defamed our government and our religion.”


The ritual slayings appeared to be a deliberate observance of the Quranic instruction to “strike terror into the hearts of unbelievers” by smiting them above the neck and striking every finger (Surah 8:12). The victims’ fingertips were sliced repeatedly and their windpipes and esophagi severed.

Although Gunaydin admitted he had planned the Malatya attack, he denied having killed the victims himself, claiming that it was his accomplices who slit the Christians’ throats. While Gunaydin was still in a coma, the other attackers reportedly said he was the one who actually committed the murders.

“The murders were not part of a plan,” Gunaydin reportedly said. “However, when Geske swore at my sister, events got out of control.”

Using typical ultranationalist jargon throughout his statement, Gunaydin reportedly accused the Christian victims of having close connections with the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group, and of using a prostitution ring to entice Turkish girls to support their church activities. He based both claims on hearsay alone.

The leaked deposition was a clear breach of Turkish law, which forbids the release of initial interrogation transcripts on all criminal cases linked to terrorism.

According to Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a lawyer representing the Turkish Alliance of Protestant Churches in the case, the Malatya authorities are still refusing to give him a copy of Gunaydin’s deposition.

When approached last week in Malatya, prosecutor Omeroglu also refused to let widowed Semsa Aydin see her late husband’s autopsy, declaring it had to be kept secret because it was a terrorism case.

Deliberate Media AntagonismThis week’s provocative news reports follow a decades-long pattern of antagonistic and false reporting from the Turkish media against Christians.

Just three days after the Malatya murders, Sabah newspaper targeted a British Christian living in Malatya, publishing his full name and complete home address.

In the April 21 article, reporter Mevlut Yuksel claimed that the expatriate had tried in vain to telephone and visit the “Kayra Publishing” office on the morning of the murders. The Sabah reporter claimed the expatriate finally reached Necati Aydin on his mobile telephone, only to hear him say, “Beware, don’t come here!”

But the targeted Britisher told Compass the Sabah account was full of lies. “He just made up things!” he said.


“Just before Tilmann’s funeral, the reporter came to my door and asked for an interview. But I told him I didn’t want to give an interview. Then he said, ‘If you don’t talk to us, then we won’t be responsible. Don’t blame us for what we write.’”

Threats and Attacks ContinueA flurry of threats and incidents of attempted violence against Turkish Protestants and their places of worship have been documented by Compass over the four weeks since the Malatya murders.

The threats have ranged from e-mail, telephone and postal messages to face-to-face warnings. Most of the Christians involved asked that the incidents not be reported publicly.

But Diyarbakir pastor Ahmet Guvener told the press two days after the murders that he had issued an official power of attorney for his wife and children to a trusted friend. “Certain individuals are continually making us a target,” he said. “I know that they will kill me.”

Two attacks have been reported against the Eskisehir church of the Istanbul Protestant Foundation since the Malatya killings, the most recent attempt last weekend.

Windows on the second floor of the building were broken out and several Molotov cocktails thrown at the church on Saturday night (May 19). Although a car parked next to the building started to burn, neighbors managed to put it out.

Local police had been stationed to protect the Eskisehir church since an earlier attempt to burn it down the previous week. But when a disturbance broke out on Saturday night in another area of the city, the guards were called away, leaving the church unguarded.

“We have detected a passive attitude in the political will of the authorities, who are now focused on the July 22 elections,” Pastor Madrigal said. “Their negligence towards this kind of intolerance will affect negatively all the society.”

In a formal statement released yesterday, the Istanbul Protestant Foundation expressed shock and dismay over the “inexplicable irresponsibility” demonstrated in leaking Gunaydin’s confidential, unconfirmed police deposition to the press, thereby “targeting innocent individuals with lies.”

After three days of interrogations conducted by a 24-member team of experts from the terrorism division of Turkey’s General Security Directorate, Gunaydin appeared before Malatya’s Third Criminal Court on May 19. He was promptly sent to prison awaiting trial on accusations of “forming a terrorist cell, directing activities to kill persons and trying to deprive individual freedoms.”

According to a Vatan newspaper report, the court ordered psychiatric testing of Gunaydin to determine his mental condition.


END

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***********************************Christian Lawyers Sentenced for ‘Defaming’ VietnamAuthorities send attorneys to prison for human/religious rights efforts.Special to Compass Direct News

LOS ANGELES, May 16 (Compass Direct News) – After a trial of only four hours last Friday (May 11), a Vietnamese court convicted Christian attorneys Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan of “propagandizing against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” and handed down prison terms for each of them.

Dai, 38, was sentenced to five years in prison and four years of probationary detention (house arrest). The 28-year-old Nhan received a four-year prison term and three years of probationary detention.

“I reject this trial,” Nhan said after the verdict was announced.

Neither she nor Dai, a Protestant church leader who had documented cases of state religious persecution, admitted guilt and are expected to appeal to the People’s Supreme Court. It is the last court of appeal in Vietnam.

In a run-up to the verdict, the state news agency accused the lawyers of “posting information on the Internet . . . [and] painting biased and distorted pictures of the country and its internal affairs.” It accused Dai of instructing his law office staff members to “travel to the north-western, Central Highlands and southern provinces to contact Protestant clergymen and their followers who have shown hatred toward the government.”

The article accused them of compiling “evidence of Vietnam’s suppression of the Protestant religion” and providing it to the “U.S.-based Committee for Religious Freedom in Vietnam and the U.S. Embassy. Officials say theses findings were doctored, distorted and fabricated.”

Their lawyer, Tran Lam, told the BBC that the two human rights advocates had done nothing serious or anything that others had not done regularly. He also said that the accused had run into unlawful political obstacles.

They were arrested on March 6 and held incommunicado until May 2, nine days before their trial, for “national security” reasons.

Vietnam’s criminal code requires a period of investigation by police, an examination of the charges and evidence by a review body (Vien Kiem Sat), which issues a written


indictment if warranted. This indictment is supposed to be sent to the People’s Court, which reviews it to determine whether to set a trial date.

But authorities set the trial date for the two young lawyers, an unnamed Communist Party source told Agence France-Presse on April 19, even before the investigation was complete.

During the investigation period, the official Vietnamese press published several articles accusing the attorneys of a wild range of far-fetched crimes, including conspiring with terrorists, in their efforts to promote human rights efforts (including religious rights) and democracy.

In an article entitled, “‘Democracy Movement’ Creates Unrest,” the deputy chief of the Vietnam News Agency accused the lawyers of being “radicals that seem driven to fracture the unity we commonly share.” The lawyers and a young woman intellectual from Ho Chi Minh City, Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, were accused of allegedly conspiring with “criminals and even terrorist organizations responsible for kidnappings, bombings and assassinations.”

The article accused Thanh Thuy of calling on “members of the public to hold general strikes and mass street demonstrations, or to sacrifice themselves and plant bombs.”

These accusations and others were posted in English on the Vietnam News Agency website on May 10, the day before the trial.

In the days immediately following the trial, Vietnam’s official media, including radio and television stations, emphasized the gravity of the case against lawyers Dai and Nhan and their supposed extreme danger to society. The state organs included the Voice of Vietnam Radio, national channels VTV 1 and VTV 3, the People’s Daily, Liberated Saigon (a Communist Party voice), The Workers Daily, Youth Newspaper and many more.

Although family visits to the lawyers were denied on grounds of “national security,” on April 23 reporters of the state media broadcast interviews on national television with the two lawyers dressed in their prison clothes interviewed about their “crimes.”

The Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human Rights said authorities attempted to demonstrate “transparency” by allowing foreign observers such as journalists and diplomats to follow the trial on television but that technical problems prevented them from hearing the proceedings clearly.

Prosecutors reportedly said the activities of the two accused lawyers contributed to “weakening the reputation of the Communist Party and the socialist regime in the eyes of the citizens.”

Dai has been a member of the main Hanoi congregation of the legally-recognized Evangelical Church of Vietnam (North) since 2000. According to Pastor Au Quang Vinh


of the Hanoi church, Nhan had just completed a doctrine course for new believers at the same church in preparation for baptism.

Both lawyers also have friends among Vietnam’s house churches. Dai is also a member of Advocates International, an organization which brings together Christian human rights lawyers from many countries.

END

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**********************************************************************COMPASS DIRECT NEWS

News from the Frontlines of Persecution

Jeff Sellers, Managing Editor

Bureau Chiefs:Barbara Baker, Middle EastSarah Page, Asia


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