The questionnaire asked the number of missionaries, their activities, and sources of foreign funding. The questionnaire also sought to know whether missionaries resort to religious conversions, which are banned under a stringent anti-conversion law.
Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and workers celebrate their victory in the Madhya Pradesh legislative assembly polls, on Dec. 3, 2023. Police in the central Indian state are circulating a questionnaire seeking details of Christian missionaries and their activities in the state. (Photo: AFP)
The state government run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party government sharpened the law in 2021. This is the second such attempt in less than a year. Police sought similar details in July 2023, but gave up the effort after the questionnaire got leaked to the media.
Bishop Almeida is planning to seek legal opinion before sharing any information as police was trying to gather the information unofficially.
Lawyers for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party have targeted a civil rights activist and a leader of an opposition party for potential litigation ahead of the Feb. 25 Senate elections.
They have filed a complaint in the Phnom Penh Municipal Court against Soeng Senkaruna, vice president of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, according to government mouthpiece Fresh News. The lawyers also warned that comments made by Son Chhay, vice president of the opposition Candlelight Party, were politically motivated, undermining the ruling party and damaging the judiciary.
Son Chhay, vice president of Candlelight party, speaks to media representatives in front of Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Oct. 7, 2022. A prominent Cambodian opposition politician — who also has Australian citizenship — he was convicted of defamation for criticizing the country’s local elections in which strongman Hun Sen’s party won a landslide victory. (Photo by AFP)
Former prime minister Hun Sen recently posted on Facebook that attacks against the ruling party will not be tolerated and singled out Senkaruna. This year, so far, four senior members of Candlelight Party have been detained while three Cambodian refugees were held in Thailand ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Hun Manet.
Human rights groups say there are about 60 Cambodian political prisoners behind bars, including Khmer Bible editor Theary Seng, former opposition leader Kem Sokha, and prominent trade unionist Chhim Sithar.
Police in northeast China raided a gathering of Christian villagers and arrested 200 participants for allegedly joining a church that refused to abide by a theological doctrine promoted by a state-sanctioned body.
Some 150 police officers stormed the gathering in Xiaotuan, a village in Mudanjiang City of Heilongjiang province last month and arrested the Christians. This was reported on Monday by Bitter Winter, an online magazine covering religious freedom and human rights in China.
The Chinese national flag flies in front of St Joseph’s Church, also known as Wangfujing Catholic Church, in Beijing on Oct 22, 2020. Members of religious groups including Christians continue to face persecution in China. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
Following the raid, the arrested Christians were driven away in three large buses and some in cars. Their whereabouts remain unknown. Those arrested were members of a house church that is part of the Sola Fide network.
Sola Fide, Latin for “faith only,” is a Protestant theological doctrine taught by Martin Luther, a German theologian and reformer who started the Reformation Movement in the 16th century. Hundreds of local Christians from faraway places have been joining the gathering in Xiaotuan every month. However, in China, the state-controlled Three-Self Church, which oversees the affairs of Protestant Churches, contests the doctrine.
Christian villagers in a southern province in Laos have expressed frustrations after local officials allegedly burned Bibles and destroyed a house church during a Sunday worship.
The authorities led a mob of Buddhist villagers who stormed into a makeshift church in Kaleum Vangke village in Savannakhet province’s Xonboury district, Radio Free Asia reported on Monday. No one was hurt in the attack. The site was being used as a place of gathering and worship by several Evangelical Christian families.
An armed Lao policeman is seen in a village near the capital Vientiane in this file image. Christians in Laos face various forms of abuse in rural areas of Buddhist-majority nation. (Photo by Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP)
The incident is the latest in a string of similar assaults against Christians in the communist state. Such actions continued even after Laos passed a law in 2019 that allowed the free practice of faith.
The law has received very little publicity and is practically not applied in the villages where Christians continue to face discrimination from officials and Buddhist villagers who view Christianity as an alien faith. Laos is a Buddhist-majority nation that also recognizes Christianity, Islam, and the Baha’i faith.
About 30 percent of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities, mostly coming from South and Southeast Asian nations, face higher risks of mental disorders due to various factors, says a new survey.
Some 28.6 percent of 273 people surveyed by the charity group, Hong Kong Christian Service, said they have faced mental problems. They identified cultural and language barriers, expensive mental health services, and extremely busy lives as the cause of this, the group said in a press release last week.
A new survey found about 30 percent of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong face higher risks of mental health disorders. (Photo: Hong Kong Christian Service)
The survey was carried out from January to August last year in collaboration with the Department of Psychiatry of the Faculty of Medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong.
The research team advocated for cross-sectoral collaboration to remove barriers to help-seeking for ethnic minorities.
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