A protracted court battle is not over for a Finnish MP and bishop after the country's state prosecutor announced it would appeal a recent 'not guilty' verdict. Charges were brought against Päivi Räsänen, former Minister of the Interior, and Bishop Juhana Pohjola after they shared their Christian beliefs on marriage and sexual ethics in a 2004 pamphlet.
Tens of thousands of Christians from the Kuki-Zo tribal community in India’s northeastern state of Manipur continue to be displaced, more than eight months after the onset of ongoing violence. During this period, at least 80 individuals, including women and children, have died due to inadequate healthcare and substandard living conditions in makeshift shelters in one district alone.
Police in Pakistan refused to file charges in the case of a Christian mother who lost her unborn son in a Muslim co-worker’s attempt to rape her, sources said.
Fulani herdsmen and other terrorists on Jan. 7 killed 10 Christians in three villages in central Nigeria, sources said.
Overall, hate crimes against Christians escalated from a previous record of 519 incidents in 2021 to 748 cases in 2022 within 30 European countries, an increase of 44 per cent.
Amendments to Belarus’s religion law are likely to curtail practice and expression of belief by Christians and people of other faiths, according to rights advocates.
Continuing violence against religious minorities in Pakistan belies the government’s Jan. 8 statement that it promotes religious freedom and protects the members of non-Muslim faiths, rights activists said.
A Christian teaching assistant in the United Kingdom who claimed he was fired for street preaching in his free time won the equivalent of a nearly $9,000 legal settlement in a case against his former employer.
Acquittal after a false blasphemy charge has not kept a Christian widow in Pakistan from being driven from her job and village amid threats to her life, sources said.
Islamic extremist rebels on Jan. 1 killed 15 Christians in attacks on two villages in northeastern Nigeria, sources said.
Denmark has changed its penal code to criminalize “inappropriate treatment(s)” of texts of high religious importance, thus introducing blasphemy legislation that the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) criticized as “the wrong approach.”
A pastor and his family have gone into hiding after a Muslim neighbor who raped his 14-year-old daughter tried to kidnap her and force her to convert to Islam and marry her, he said.
