Asia
China: ‘more painful than death’
23 January marked a year since the coronavirus lockdown chaos in Wuhan City when 11 million people were isolated for 76 days as authorities tried to contain the spread of a virus that…
Iran: abuse of prisoners continues
International Christian Concern has released its annual report, documenting the abuse and condition of prisoners in Iran’s prisons. Their treatment has long been of major concern for the international community. Iran violates not…
Israel / Gaza: putting citizens’ health above politics
The Gaza Strip recently took advantage of the latest technologies used to produce drinkable distilled water, thanks to Israeli cooperation. Damour for Community Development, a nongovernmental organisation based in Ramallah in the West…
Indonesia: earthquake, volcano eruption
Many earthquakes hit Indonesia: The most recent, of 6.2 magnitude, struck Sulawesi island early on 15 January, killing at least 46, destroying houses, flattening a hospital, setting off landslides, and injuring hundreds. Then…
India: Christian community banned from religious services
On 8 January Karnataka state police banned a community of fifty Christians from having worship services indefinitely. They claimed that none of them were Christian by birth and must have been coercively or…
Hong Kong: national security
55 Hong Kong activists and former politicians were arrested for subversion under the controversial national security legislation. They were later released on bail without their passports or travel documents. Next they held a…
China: pastor jailed and heavily fined
Recently the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sentenced House Church Pastor Li Juncai to five years in prison and fined him 210,000 yuan (£23,902). His church is the largest in the area, attracting 700…
Indonesia: air crash
A 26-year-old Boeing 737 left Jakarta with 62 people on board, but vanished four minutes later. There is no hope of finding any survivors. Search teams have found aircraft parts and human remains.…
Pakistan: arrested for Facebook post
Raja Waris, a 25-year-old Christian lay reader, is in police custody in Lahore after he shared another person’s post critical of Islam on his Facebook page. Raja apologised to the Muslims in person,…
Yemen: explosion rocks peace efforts
As Yemen prepares to move forward with a power-sharing government, two explosions at Aden airport were designed to annihilate the new government officials disembarking from their plane. Saudi Arabia had brokered a peace…
