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Today’s Headlines:

100 CHINESE CHURCH LEADERS ARRESTED WHEN POLICE RAID RETREAT INDONESIAN PRESIDENT VOWS TO BRING PASTOR’S KILLERS TO JUSTICE OPERATION MOBILIZATION, WYCLIFFE FORM STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP U.S. CONGRESSMAN ARRESTED IN PROTEST AGAINST VIOLENCE IN SUDAN CHINESE CENSORSHIP OF INTERNET BLOCKS MANY RELIGIOUS WEBSITES REPORT: 64% OF U.S. WEB USERS HAVE GONE ONLINE FOR RELIGIOUS PURPOSES

Today’s News Stories:

100 CHINESE CHURCH LEADERS ARRESTED WHEN POLICE RAID RETREAT More than 100 house church leaders were arrested last week in the autonomous region of Xinjiang in western China during a police raid. Members of the group were meeting at a retreat center for training and mutual encouragement when they were surrounded by more than 200 military police and officers from the Public Security Bureau. Thirty of the leaders continue to be held by the PSB near the retreat center. The rest have been transported to their home areas and are being held by local PSB officers. Some are expected to be interrogated and pressured to renounce their faith or face criminal charges. Among those arrested were Wang Yu Lian, a leader in the Ying Shang Church for more than 20 years, and Jin Da, the 34-year-old general secretary of the TSPM in Ningbo City, Zhejiang province. The meeting was sponsored by the Ying Shang Church, a large house church network headquartered in Anhui province. Those who traveled to the event from other provinces face additional scrutiny from authorities since it is illegal to cross a provincial border to hold religious meetings without approval from the Religious Affairs Bureau and state-sponsored Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) church. Also last week, 40 Chinese house church leaders were arrested while attending a seminar in Cheng Du City, Sichuan. They were later released, but the whereabouts of the Taiwanese couple leading the seminar is unknown. Local contacts expect them to be deported and blacklisted by the Chinese government. (Voice of the Martyrs)

INDONESIAN PRESIDENT VOWS TO BRING PASTOR’S KILLERS TO JUSTICE Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has met with Christian leaders in Jakarta and sent National Police Chief Dai Bachtiar to Palu to personally supervise the investigation of murdered preacher Rev. Susianty Tinulele. She was gunned down at the conclusion of her sermon just after 7 p.m. Sunday, July 18, at Effata Presbyterian Church in Palu, Central Sulawesi, in eastern Indonesia. Four other congregants were also shot and injured. Eye witnesses said five men were involved in the attack. Two were on motorbikes, and three were in a car parked on street. It is believed the assassins were able to hide their weapons in the car to avoid detection before and after the shooting. Following the murder, many Christian leaders began receiving text messages on their mobile phones, warning them that the purpose of these attacks was to provoke a reaction from the Christian community and that “if the church was not provoked then more attacks would continue on your wife/children.” There have been a total of 17 shooting incidents in the region since last October. (Religious Media Agency)

* HCJB World Radio worked with local Indonesian partners to establish a local Christian station in Sumba Island. Plans are also being made to establish stations on Roti Island and at Kupang in West Timor. Equipment was sent from the HCJB World Radio Engineering Center in Elkhart, Ind.

OPERATION MOBILIZATION, WYCLIFFE FORM STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP A partnership between Operation Mobilization (OM) is expected to boost short-term missions and Bible translation worldwide. Called “Spectrum,” the agreement was signed Monday, July 19, by OM USA President Rick Hicks and Wycliffe USA President Bob Creson while aboard the ship Doulos in France. Creson is excited about this new initiative. “We believe that there are a number of OM people who would be interested in Bible translation, and Rick has opened up the door for us to place people on the ships to see if some of those people who are completing their service on the Doulos might be interested in Bible translation in the future. We’ll be doing some training opportunities on ship to expose those people to those opportunities.” The need for translators couldn’t be greater, Creson says. “There are 2,737 Bible translations left in the world, and we’re hoping that OM will provide some of the people needed to help complete that task.” (Mission Network News)

U.S. CONGRESSMAN ARRESTED IN PROTEST AGAINST VIOLENCE IN SUDAN Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Hoeffel and his wife, Francesca, along with activist Dick Gregory were arrested at the Sudan Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, July 20, reported Christian Solidarity International in a press release. In a campaign reminiscent of the anti-apartheid demonstrations outside the South African embassy in the 1980s, activists are deliberately getting themselves arrested to draw attention to the crisis in western Sudan. Joe Hoeffel is among those who support a joint resolution before Congress that calls on the U.S. to declare the Sudan slaughter genocide. “The crisis in Darfur fits every definition of genocide, and must be labeled as such by the U.N. and its member countries,” he said. “The U.N. Security Council must immediately pressure the Sudanese government to end its support for the violence and to drop its restrictions on the delivery of much-needed aid to the region. We must act now before this catastrophe escalates any further.” The Congressional Black Caucus is demanding that the Sudanese government end its support of the Arab militia accused of murdering thousands of black Africans, and it also wants sanctions imposed against the Sudan government. An estimated 2 million people have died in more than 20 years of civil war in Sudan. (Religion Today/Christian Solidarity International)

CHINESE CENSORSHIP OF INTERNET BLOCKS MANY RELIGIOUS WEBSITES Chinese web users are being denied access to a range of religious sites based abroad as the Chinese government’s “Golden Shield” firewall is used to censor the Internet. While blocking undesirable sites promoting pornography and violence, the firewall also limits religious web content such as sites related to the Dalai Lama, the Falun Gong cult and various Buddhist and Muslim movements. Also blocked are sites covering persecution of religious communities in China and a number of Catholic sites, including the website of the Hong Kong diocese and the Divine Word Missionaries in Taiwan. Not blocked are sites in European languages covering religious freedom issues, even those covering repression within China. While overall Internet usage in China may be low by developed country standards, it has been rapidly growing, especially in the capital of Beijing and the coastal region. The official China Internet Network Information Center puts the number of Chinese with access to the Internet in June 2003 at 79.5 million. This number has been doubling every six months. Internet censorship is part of a comprehensive attempt to censor all means of communication. While printed publications have long been censored in China, authorities also have tried to keep up with technological developments. The Global Internet Policy Initiative warned in June of new technology from a Chinese firm that monitors “subversive” text messages sent by mobile phone. (Forum 18 News Service)

REPORT: 64% OF U.S. WEB USERS HAVE GONE ONLINE FOR RELIGIOUS PURPOSES An April 2004 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that 64 percent of Americans online have used the Internet for religious or spiritual information. The report also found that 38 percent have sent and received e-mail with spiritual content; 35 percent have sent or received online greeting cards related to religious holidays; 32 percent have gone online to read news accounts of religious events and affairs; and 17 percent have looked for information about where they could attend religious services. Lee Rainie, director of the project, will address the findings of this report and others conducted by Pew during the annual meeting of the Internet Evangelism Coalition in Chicago Sept. 14-15. Rainie will discuss who is online, what they do, how they feel about it and what impact it has had on them. He will also describe the three major pieces of research his organization has done on how people use the Internet to get religious and spiritual information, how churches have begun to move their missions and evangelical work online, and how “private piety” has become a part of the e-mail world. In addition, Rainie will show how people especially use the Internet in times of great national stress — such as after the 9/11 terror attacks and at the dawn of the Iraq War. (Assist News Service) * * * * * * * * * * * * * James A. Ferrier HCJB World Radio U.S. Ministries Communications Director E-mail: Phone: 1-719-590-9800 Fax: 1-719-590-9801 Web: http://www.hcjb.org http://www.beyondthecall.org * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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