Police Beat, Arrest Evangelist in Sudan

Harassment continues amid growing hostility toward Christians.

KHARTOUM, Sudan, January 20 (CDN) — Police this week beat and arrested a church leader in Khartoum, sources told Compass.

Evangelist James Kat of the Evangelical Church of Sudan was arrested on Tuesday morning (Jan. 17), with officers beating him as they took him to a North Division police station, the sources said. He was released on bail the same day.

Police detained Kat, who lives at the church site, apparently because he was using the place as his home.

“They forced him to go with them to the police station,” an eyewitness said.

The arrest came amid increasing harassment of Christians by Sudanese authorities following the secession of South Sudan on July 9, 2011. In a Jan. 3 letter to Sudanese Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) leaders, Sudan’s Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowments threatened to arrest pastors if they carry out evangelistic activities and do not comply with an order for churches to provide the leaders’ names and contact information.

Hamid Yousif Adam, undersecretary of the Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowment, warned “We have all legal rights to take them to court” in the letter. SPEC leaders said the government is increasingly trying to limit church activities.

Church Takeover
Another church leader was arrested on Monday (Jan. 16) in a SPEC church property dispute in which police and courts have been unjustly biased in favor of Muslims, Christian leaders said.

Officers arrested SPEC worker Gabro Haile Selassie, as he lives on the church property that has been transferred to a Muslim businessman in a disputed agreement; he has refused to be evicted without police providing him an official document indicating the basis for the action.

Selassie, who was released on bail after a few hours, said he fears being arrested again; police are threatening him and his family, warning them to evacuate the house on the church property in downtown Khartoum, so they are staying with friends, he said.

Police have already started demolishing the church compound fence, Selassie added.

“They will definitely demolish my house” he told Compass. “I am in great terror; I’m afraid to sleep in the house, because they may come again and arrest me. This is a clear form of terrorism against Christians.”

Armed police were deployed Sunday evening (Jan.15) to the site to take the property by force, as authorities are supporting Muslim businessman Osman al Tayeb’s efforts to take control of the plot as part of planned confiscation of church property, church leaders said (see “Police in Sudan Aid Muslim’s Effort to Take Over Church Plot,” Oct. 25, 2011). A court has ruled in favor of al Tayeb.

“The government is still trying to get involved in the affairs of the church by supporting people like Osman al Tyab,” said one church leader.

The church had signed a contract with al Tayeb stipulating the terms under which he could attain the property – including providing legal documents such as a construction permit and then obtaining final approval from SPEC – but those terms remained unmet, church officials said.

Church leader Deng Bol said that under terms of the unfulfilled contract, the SPEC would have turned the property over to al Tayeb to construct a business center on the site, with the denomination to receive a share of the returns from the commercial enterprise and regain ownership of the property after 80 years. SPEC leaders had yet to approve the project because of the high risk of permanently losing the property, he said, and they had undertaken legal action to recover it.

SPEC leaders said Muslims have taken over many other Christian properties through similar ploys.

Christians are facing growing threats from both Muslim communities and Islamist government officials who have long wanted to rid Sudan of Christianity, Christian leaders told Compass. They said Christianity is now regarded as a foreign religion following the departure of 350,000 people, most of them Christians, to South Sudan since the secession.

Sudan’s Interim National Constitution holds up sharia (Islamic law) as a source of legislation, and the laws and policies of the government favor Islam, according to the U.S. State Department’s most recent International Religious Freedom Report.

END

Karnataka Most Dangerous State in India for Christians

Detail of painting symbolic of assaults on Christians in India,
 displayed at exhibition in New Delhi last year.
(Photo: Compass)

Southern state remains most volatile place for third straight year.

NEW DELHI, January 13 (CDN) — Attacks on Christians accelerated over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays in the south Indian state of Karnataka, which was identified as the most unsafe place for the religious minority for the third consecutive year in 2011.

With 49 cases of violence and hostility against Christians in 2011, Karnataka remained the state with the highest incidence of persecution, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India’s annual report, “Battered and Bruised…”

The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), which is based in Karnataka’s capital of Bengaluru and initially reported most of the incidents, also documented at least six anti-Christian attacks between Christmas Eve 2011 and New Year’s Day.

On the evening of Jan. 1, about 20 men disrupted the New Year’s Day worship service of the Blessing Youth Mission Church at the house of a believer in Hunnur village, in Jamkhandi division of Bagalkot district. Suspected Hindu extremists from the Bajrang Dal, the men manhandled pastor Siddu Seemanth Gunike, accusing him of forcibly and fraudulently converting Hindus. Local police intervened and rescued the pastor and other Christians.

On New Year’s Eve, more than 10 men trespassed onto the premises of the Karnataka Calvary Fellowship Church, in the Ganeshgudi area in Joida division of North Canara district, and disrupted a service of thanksgiving. Believed to be Hindu nationalists, the men forced the church to stop the service. Police arrived but only to summon the pastor, identified as P.R. Jose, to the police station the following morning. After GCIC’s intervention, however, a senior police official assured the Christians of security.

On the evening of Dec. 28, 2011, a group of men from the nationalist Hindu Sriram Sene disrupted the prayer meeting of the Divyadarsana Ministry Church at the home of a Christian, Bima Naik, in SS Layout in Davanagere city, the headquarters of the central Davanagere district. Alleging the meeting was to convert Hindus, the men tried to manhandle the Christians. Police arrived, but instead of detaining the intruders took pastor Raju Doddamani, Naik and three other Christians to the police station for interrogation. They were released late at night.

The same day, unidentified persons burned a Christmas tree and a crib that were part of Christmas celebrations by local Catholics in Maripalla area in Bantwal division of the Dakshina Kannada district. Police arrested two men, but their identities were not disclosed.

Police reportedly said the decorations were burned over suspicion of “conversions.” Evangelizing and conversion are legal in India.

Also on Dec. 28, suspected Hindu nationalists ransacked and broke windows of the Hebron Assembly Church in the Haleangadi area of Mangalore division in Dakshina Kannada district. The attackers also destroyed household items in the house of the pastor, identified only as Prasanna. Police registered a case against the attackers, but at press time no one was reported to have been arrested.

On the evening of Dec. 25, about 20 people beat Christians with stones and wooden clubs as they celebrated Christmas at a house in the Maindguri area, near Surathkal, a few miles from the city of Mangalore, in Dakshina Kannada district. The attackers, allegedly from a local extremist Hindu Jagran Vedike (Hindu Revival Forum), attacked the Christians, including women and children, indiscriminately.

A 27-year-old man identified only as Joyson fractured his leg; a pastor’s wife identified as Lata, sustained chest injuries; a 29-year-old woman identified as Roshini and another woman identified as Annamma received head injuries; and a 23-year-old man identified only as Deepak broke his nasal bridge in the attack. A local Christian told Compass by phone that police arrested five of the attackers, but that they had been released on bail.

The attacks on Christians in Karnataka are “shameful” and “a blot on the secular and democratic India,” GCIC President Sajan K. George said. The local government and authorities were “complicit in the persecution against Christians,” he added.

Anti-Christian attacks increased in the state after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to sole power in May 2008. At least 28 attacks were reported in less than two months in August and September of that year. In 2009, Karnataka witnessed at least 48 attacks, and the number grew to 56 in 2010, according to the EFI.

In its 2010 report of Christian persecution in India, the EFI had warned about increasing attacks on Christians in Karnataka, remarking that “although in 2007 and 2008 two major incidents of violence occurred in eastern Orissa state’s Kandhamal district and hit headlines in the national as well as international media, little efforts have been taken by authorities in India to tackle the root causes of communal tensions, namely divisive propaganda and activities by powerful right-wing Hindu groups, who do not represent the tolerant Hindu community.”

The violence in Kandhamal district during Christmas week of 2007 killed at least four Christians and burned 730 houses and 95 churches, according to the All India Christian Council (AICC). These attacks were preceded by around 200 incidents of anti-Christian attacks in other parts of the country.

Violence re-erupted in Kandhamal district in August 2008, killing more than 100 people and resulting in the incineration of 4,640 houses, 252 churches and 13 educational institutions, according to the AICC.

Christians account for about 2.3 percent of India’s population, which is more than 1 billion.

END

Hostility Toward Christians. Until They Are Needed

By Rick Marschall
Special to ASSIST News Service

SWARTZ CREEK MI (ANS) -- Laus Deo! We can handle so-called Acts of God, we should believe, even through earthquakes and hurricanes. But may God save us from acts of men!

As we write this, Hurricane Irene is bearing down on Washington, New York, and the Northeast. Some related news items have prompted thoughts, as did last week's earthquake felt across the same territory, Irene's path. No doubt we will all be reflecting on the events of 10 years ago whose flash points were in the same areas: airports in Maine and Boston, from which flew planes that crashed in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC.

A well-meaning post has been making internet rounds of late. It recounts how the Washington Monument sustained damage from the earthquake; how the aluminum capstone has a Latin phrase praising God; and how an exhibition a few years ago censored and obscured that fact. This much is true.

The post also claims that the Monument, by law, must be the tallest structure in the nation's capital, which is not true. And that it is at the center of a perfect cross of malls and streets planned by the capital's architect Pierre L'Enfant. It is not. And the post quotes a prayer by George Washington that proves he was a Christian. The prayer, however, is altered.

There is a lesson that is a good life lesson, whether it about history quizzes or the Gospel of Jesus Christ: you cannot improve on the truth. Exaggeration leads to suspicion. I hold nothing against well-meaning viral messages, but let us read them with discernment.

The U S Capitol, although shorter than the Washington Monument, stands higher because it is on a rise. The National Cathedral and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception are also higher. The District's regulation is that a building may be no higher than the width, plus 20 feet, of an adjoining street. L'Enfant designed the Mall years before the memorials to Washington and Lincoln; and the obelisk is off "center" anyway because of weak ground under the original site.

And I will skip Washington's doctored prayer and present his original -- which is a powerful enough statement of faith: I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.


Changes in the viral message have him addressing "Almighty God" and closing with "Through Jesus Christ Our Lord." Those elements need not be snuck in to convince anyone that Washington believed in God and honored Christ.

I am not nit-picking. For believers and patriots to stretch the truth, to "gild the lily," can obscure more important things we should very well notice. and be upset about. For instance, what the internet message also stated was that there is a capstone on the tip of the Washington Monument, and it contains an inscription in Latin, Laus Deo (Praise God), and that a few years ago an exhibition at the base of the Monument committed two offenses. A display case held a replica, but one side of the glass display case was tight against a wall, making it impossible for visitors to read one of the four inscriptions. Yes: the Laus Deo. The others commemorated the designer, the dedication ceremony, and the US president at the time, Chester Alan Arthur. Coincidence? Well, the captions in the display case likewise censored the Latin phrase and its meaning -- no mention at all.

These things originally occurred in 2007, during George Bush's term. Offenses to the Gospel and America's Christian heritage continue today, of course -- sadly, too many to mention. It is the world-system, not individuals alone, we need to discern. What I mean to say is that our government seems to think that "freedom of religion" really means "freedom from religion." If you watch the musical video following, you can see what Founding Fathers and Christian patriots through Lincoln's time thought on the subject.

But I want to highlight a larger offense, a larger issue; and it ties the three "natural disasters" together in another way. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has banned any religious aspects, spiritual observances, and all prayers from the city's 9-11 events in a couple weeks. He violates the Constitution, of course, in proscribing freedoms of religion and assembly. In my opinion ("Writer's Opinion"), on the anniversary of the attacks, he declares victory -- he himself has becomes the victor -- in the war on America's spiritual heritage and our biblical foundations and our values. If he is not booed off the speaker's stand I should wonder about Christian patriots' ability any more to be outraged.

However, this is not Bloomberg (I should say the world-system that is engulfing us) at the worst. As Hurricane Irene aimed for New York City, the mayor issued a statement listing what measures the city would take. and that he expected "religious organizations" to do their duty also.

This becomes the week when "H" no longer stands for Hurricane, but hypocrisy. And the dictionary should change the term "Fair-Weather Friend" to either "Foul-Weather Friend" or "Fair-Weather Enemy."

"Acts of God," so-called, we can handle. May God save us from acts of men in these end times. Laus Deo!

photograph of Washington Monument
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5135/5452163152_1cc0afe49c.jpg
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Click for music video: Faith of Our Fathers

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Rick Marschall is the author of 65 books and hundreds of magazine articles in many fields, from popular culture (Bostonia Magazine called him "perhaps America's foremost authority on popular culture") to history and criticism; country music, television history, biography and children's books. He is a former political cartoonist, editor of Marvel Comics, and writer for Disney comics. For 10 years he has been active in the Christian field, writing devotionals; co-author of The Secret Revealed with Dr Jim Garlow. His biography of Johann Sebastian Bach for the "Christian Encounters" series (Thomas Nelson) was released in April, 2011. His history of cartoon Advertising, Drawing Power, will be published in July 2011 by the Marschall Books imprint of fantagraphics Books. In October his major biography of Theodore Roosevelt, BULLY!, will be publ;ished by Regnery History of Washington DC. He is currently working on a One-Year CDevotional for Tyndale House; and edits the the reissue of Harper's Weekly -- the Civil War Ye ars for NOVOink e-books. Rick is a former Director of Product Development for Youth Specialties. He is recipient of the 2008 "Christian Writer of the Year" award from the Greater Philadelphia Writer's Conference, and produces a weekly e-mail devotional, "Monday Morning Music Ministry." His e-mail address is: RickMarschall@gmail.com.