Paying a price
Recent stories from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, China, Myanmar and Eritrea
The persecuted turn persecutor as Rohingya Christians are violently attacked within refugee camps in Bangladesh. Barnabas Fund has received news that a tiny and unknown group of Rohingya Christians amongst the 750,000 mainly-Muslim Rohingya people, who fled genocide at the hands of the Myanmar Army as refugees, are now doubly persecuted as they face renewed violence from Muslims within refugee camps in Bangladesh.
A church leader has contacted Barnabas to tell of an upsurge in violence this month and to plead for prayers for an isolated group of an estimated several hundreds of Rohingya Christian converts from Islam. Already belonging to what some have called the “most persecuted people on earth”, the small community of Rohingya believers are now being subjected to anti-Christian violence from extremist Muslim Rohingya around them in the camps in Cox’s Bazaar district.
In May 2019, a group of 17 families (69 people) living next to each other in simple shacks, some with only mud walls and tarpaulin roofs, were violently attacked on at least three consecutive nights by a Muslim mob of several hundred men armed with knives, swords, iron rods, stones and catapults.
A Christian boy was stabbed in the back and needed hospital treatment. A film shared with Barnabas showed large stones flying over the heads of Christians, including young children, fleeing in a small open truck. The mob also looted possessions including the equipment of a Christian barber, before destroying his small shop and forcing him to go to the mosque to reconvert to Islam.
The May attacks culminated with the threat that the Christians would be killed if they did not leave the camp. The Christians attempted to flee the next day only to be forced back to the camp by police and security guards. No camp security personnel attempted to protect the Christians and there has been no investigation into the attacks.
At another camp, a bamboo-andtarpaulin church building and a Christian school were demolished on 27 March, and Muslim Rohingya immediately performed their ritual prayer on the site to turn it into a mosque.
The rise in violent persecution against Rohingya Christians this year follows on from calls by Rohingya Muslims in December 2018 for the Bangladeshi government to expel Christians from the camps. One asked for Muslim leaders around the world to “chase them out of this place”.
Rohingya Christians were reported to be struggling in May to buy food and other necessities due to camp shopkeepers boycotting them under pressure from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA, formerly called Harakah al-Yaqin), an extremist group active in the camps. Christians are also often completely left out when international aid, such as rice and mosquito nets, is distributed by Muslim Rohingya in the camps.
Barnabas Fund is working discreetly to get essential supplies including food, clothes and medication to Rohingya Christians, as well as materials to repair homes that have been damaged or destroyed, either by violence or by the frequent heavy rains Bangladesh.
Christian man tortured to death while in Pakistan police custody
A Pakistani Christian man died on 3 September as a result of severe torture inflicted while held in police custody in Lahore, according to a post-mortem examination.
The examination found evidence of torture on the hands, back and arms of Amir Masih, a gardener who went to Nth. Cantonment Police Station voluntarily to give a statement to clear his name following a minor theft from his employer’s home. His ribs were also broken.
Amir Masih was taken to an undisclosed location where he was tortured in an attempt to force a confession for an offence he did not commit. His brother claimed that police had urinated on him while cursing him for being a Christian.
CCTV footage later emerged that shows two policeman drawing up at a hospital on a motorcycle with Masih on the back. He is unable to stand and one of the officers kicks him while he is on the ground before both officers drag him inside.
Days later, on 8 September, the Governor of Lahore, Muhammad Sarwar, visited Amir Masih’s home and offered condolences to his bereaved family. He said the policemen involved in torture were criminals and would be treated accordingly. Six police officers are currently under investigation over the allegations.
A local Christian leader said, “Impunity for officials or police involved in brutality towards Christians only encourages others to be abusive. The governor’s involvement promoting justice for victims is very helpful and sends a message that this criminal activity will be punished by the police.”
Bookseller jailed in Iran for selling a Bible
A Kurdish bookseller will spend months in prison in Iran for selling a Bible in the Farsi language, according to reports.
Mustafa Rahimi, who was seized by government security agents, was fined and given the prison sentence on 11 June and then bailed, only to be summoned to jail a few days later.
Reports varied as to whether Rahimi was sentenced to six months and one day or three months and one day. The bookseller’s family reportedly said he was jailed for selling the Bible by the Islamic Revolutionary Court in the city of Bukan.
Bukan is in the far north-west of Iran, close to the border with Iraq, and about 100 miles south of Tabriz, where an Assyrian church was recently sealed by government agents.
The Iranian authorities have a long history of attempting to block the distribution of the Bible, especially if it is in the Farsi language. Although the Iranian authorities permit historic Assyrian and Armenian Christian minorities to meet together for worship, converts from Islam, who worship in the national language Farsi, are persecuted.
Security forces confiscate Bibles and Christian literature, including hymn books; and the government forcibly closed the Bible Society in 1990.
In November 2010, 300 Farsi New Testaments were reportedly seized in a bus at the Iranian border and burned, and in August 2011, the authorities announced they had seized 6,500 Bibles between Zanjan and Abhar in the same north-west region as Bukan.
China orders churches to replace Ten Commandments with presidential quotes
Churches in China’s central province of Henan have been forced by the authorities to take down the Ten Commandments and replace them with quotes of President Xi Jinping, according to a Bitter Winter report.
Every state-registered “three-self” church and meeting venue in one county of Luoyang, a prefecture-level city, received an order to remove the ten Biblical commandments from display as part of the authorities’ on-going campaign to “sinicise” (make Chinese) Christianity.
Some churches that refused to obey have been shut down and other congregations have been told their members will be “blacklisted”, meaning the travel, education and employment options of Christians will be restricted by the authorities.
A pastor from a state-registered church told Bitter Winter that the replacement of the Ten Commandments with excerpts from Xi Jinping’s speeches was the latest in a series of moves against churches, which have included the enforced replacement of crosses with the national flag, and the installation of surveillance cameras to monitor congregations and religious activities.
In November 2018, the authorities ordered a registered church in Dongcun village, Henan province to erase the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me”, from the Ten Commandments on display in front of the pulpit, saying it was “national policy”. In another incident the words Bible, God and Christ were removed from Robinson Crusoe and other classic novels that feature in a new Chinese school textbook.
Christian children in Myanmar rescued from war zones, settled in safe villages
An eleven-year-old Christian boy is now spending his days studying and playing football in a safe environment, rather than running into the jungle to hide from soldiers and gunfire, a local Barnabas Fund partner in Myanmar told us in August.
“Shein” is just one of 39 Christian children that a Barnabas-supported ministry has helped to escape from war zones or transfer from Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in the conflict-ravaged south-east Asian country in 2019.
The children are now living in a safe village that has a school where they can study and churches where they can worship. They are making new friends and sharing their testimonies at local churches, said the Barnabas project partner. In Shein’s home village there is no school or hospital and in the last month he was there, he was forced to flee three times into the jungle to hide from the Myanmar Army that has turned mainly Christian areas into war zones.
“Shein has adjusted to the new life and school well. He has already made many friends and loves the daily devotions and worship,” the Barnabas partner told us.
“Khin”, a ten-year-old boy, was raised by his grandmother in an IDP camp and has only been in the safe village for a few months. Food can be scarce in the camps and schooling often difficult to provide so Khin’s uncle asked the Barnabas-supported ministry to help.
“He wants to study hard to become a medic and his favourite subject is maths,” said the Barnabas partner. “He loves to play soccer with his new friends and loves Jesus very much.”
In 2018, in both Kachin and Shan States, whose populations are predominantly Christian, there were more than 100,000 people living in 169 IDP camps in total, according to UNHCR figures. In May 2019, Barnabas Fund sent a large aid package to help 5,400 Christians who had been forced to flee from their homes in Myanmar during an intense phase of aerial bombardment by the military.
Christian woman who refused to renounce faith starts prison sentence at notorious Iranian jail
A Christian woman started a prison sentence in Iran on 31 August for “propaganda” against the government after earlier refusing pressure from judges to renounce her faith.
Fatemeh Bakhteri was told she would serve one year in prison in September 2018 after her Christian activities led to her being convicted.
In an initial appeal hearing in January 2019, Fatemeh, also known as Ailar, was pressured by the two judges to renounce her faith, but she refused to do so. In May 2019, her appeal was then rejected. She was finally summoned to start her jail term at Evin Prison in Tehran on 31 August. The prison is notorious for prolonged interrogations and the abusive treatment of inmates.
Fatemeh was also banned for two years from engaging in any social activity with more than two people.
She had been appearing in court with a fellow Christian convert from Islam, Saheb Fadaie, who was convicted of “acting against national security” and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment and two years in exile in Hamedan, a city and province about 160 miles west of the capital Tehran. Saheb, who also refused to renounce his faith, is already serving a ten-year prison sentence for other Christian activities.
Another Iranian Christian woman, Roksari Kanbari, 65, was handed a oneyear prison sentence on 29 July after being convicted two days earlier for “propaganda against the system”. Friends who witnessed proceedings said that the judge was rude and tried to humiliate Roksari, previously a Muslim, when she disagreed with him. Roksari had been forced to go to an Islamic religious leader to be “instructed” and “offered the opportunity to return to Islam” before she was sentenced. She will appeal, according to a Barnabas contact.
The appeals against prison sentences of three Assyrian Christians, Pastor Victor Bet Tamraz, his wife, Shamiram, and their son, Ramiel, imposed for “acting against national security” were postponed on 3 September after the judge failed to turn up.
Pastor tells of torture, starvation and hard labour endured by Christian prisoners in Eritrea
An Eritrean pastor, now resettled in Australia, has described how Christians are tortured, starved and forced into hard labour in Eritrea’s notorious jails, and how his faith sustained him during long years of cruel incarceration.
“Gabriel” was first imprisoned in 1998 when he was rounded up with his church congregation and detained for a month. His next jail term was supposed to last six months but went on for three agonising years, because he was a pastor.
He told Barnabas prisoners were given only small amounts of food every 18 hours, yet they were all forced to do backbreaking manual work collecting stones for building materials. “Sometimes you break the stones with a heavy hammer. You hear a sound here, in your back, because everyone has malnutrition,” he said. The guards discriminated against Christian believers, refusing them medical treatment if they fell sick.
Like thousands of other Christian prisoners in Eritrea, Gabriel was held in a metal shipping container by authorities. He described the stress of two weeks he was locked in a container by prison authorities, in solitary confinement, with baking hot temperatures during the day and freezing cold at night. He begged the guards to allow him some painkillers but they refused.
As a pastor and theological graduate, Gabriel was singled out for beatings. On one occasion he was tied up on the orders of the colonel in charge of the jail who then hit him repeatedly on the head with a stick for an hour “like a donkey” in front of 230 other prisoners “to make them afraid”. A sympathetic nurse who treated Gabriel’s wounds urged him to renounce his Christian faith in order to stop the beatings, and resume it again when he was released from prison. But Gabriel refused to deny the Lord who had laid down His life for him.
He recalls other Christians received similar treatment. Two converts who made the decision to follow Christ while they were in jail were beaten for three days and tortured by having cold water poured on them each night in punishment, but they stood firm in their faith. “Whatever you like you can do [to us], for now we are born-again Christians,” they said. Eventually the guards gave up their torture campaign and released them saying, “We cannot not stop this Christian thing.”
Bibles were forbidden in prison and the discovery of any Scripture resulted in severe punishment. Gabriel recalls how the Christian prisoners divided up a Bible and hid it underneath their bedding. He was sustained by the book of Revelation, which he taught to other prisoners.
At times Gabriel struggled with his faith. He said, “Sometimes you dispute with God, why you let me go through this hardship? … But when you start reading the Bible, when you pray devotion daily, automatically your mind clicks, you are in the main way – the way you are supposed to go.”
A few years after his release, Gabriel became aware that there were plans to arrest him yet again, and therefore fled Eritrea for Kenya, before he eventually resettled in Australia.
In Eritrea, since religious registration policies were introduced in 2002, only three Christian denominations are legally permitted – Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran – as well as Sunni Islam. In June 2019, the latest victims of an ongoing government crackdown on Christians in Eritrea were women, some pregnant, and children who were arrested by security forces in a raid on a church in the city of Keren.
From Barnabas Fund contacts.