Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 109 | Wed 25 May 2011

By Elizabeth Kendal

WELCOME to the intercessors who have joined the list this month.

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he
trusts in you. (Isaiah 26:3 ESV)

MAY 2011 UPDATE — During May we prayed for . . .

SYRIA, where Christians — including hundreds of thousands of
Assyrian-Chaldean refugees from Iraq — are deeply concerned that they
will suffer if the regime falls. Whilst the protests did arise out of
social and economic grievances, the Melkite Patriarch of Antioch and All
the East, Gregory III Laham, warns that they are being hijacked by armed
criminals and Islamists. For more details see
http://elizabethkendal.blogspot.com/2011/05/syria-christians–
vulnerable.html expanded blog version.

* UPDATE: If Iran is to remain ascendant it cannot afford to lose Syria as
a strategic ally. Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy notes
regarding this that Iran has ‘hedged its bets’ by forming close ties
with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan). Furthermore, according to
D&FA (3, 2011), ‘jihadist youth are now the backbone of the Syrian
Intifada’. [‘Jihadist youth’ have been recruited and trained by Syrian
Military Intelligence for jihad against the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.]
The situation is indeed grim. Syria’s Christians will either be
protected by a dictator in the shade of the anti-Semitic, belligerent
‘Shi’ite Crescent’ or they will be left at the mercy of the increasingly
radicalised, Islamist-led masses. AINA reports that on 20 May Syrian
security forces made successive raids on the headquarters of the
Assyrian Democratic Organization (ADO) in Qamishly, arresting dozens of
Assyrians. Those arrested had not taken part in any protests.

EGYPT, where Islamic fundamentalists are spreading false accusations to
incite mass hysteria against the Church. The situation is extremely
serious.

* UPDATE: Copts are determined to continue their ‘sit-in’ protest outside
the State TV building in Maspero until the Virgin & Bishop Abram Church
in Ain Shams district is re-opened and the Maghagha Diocese in Minya is
rebuilt. When police attempted to re-open the Ain Shams church on
Thursday 19 May they were impeded by hundreds of Salafis. As one
protesting Copt despairingly asked, ‘How is it that the government and
the army can’t control some Salafis and re-open a church?’

IRAQ, where the US withdrawal and the Battle for Kirkuk are both looming.
If war erupts for control of Kirkuk’s oil, al Qaeda in Iraq will
doubtless exploit the chaos to target the Christian presence. This
could well be the final blow for Iraq’s remnant Assyrian-Chaldean
Christians.

MAY 2011 ROUND-UP — also this month . . .

* CHINA: UPDATE ON SHOUWANG CHURCH

Twenty-second May was the seventh consecutive Sunday that members of
Beijing’s Shouwang Church gathered for worship in the open in Zhongguancun
shopping area, only to be arrested by police. Six of the church’s senior
leaders remain under house arrest. Since 10 April over 200 members of the
Shouwang Church have been arrested; more than 30 have been forced to move
after their landlords evicted them under government pressure; others have
lost their jobs for refusing to leave the church. In a courageous show of
solidarity, 19 leaders of unregistered churches have signed an
unprecedented appeal dated 10 May to the National People’s Congress,
requesting that their right to worship freely be upheld. (Background: RLPB
103, Wed 13 April 2011 http://www.ea.org.au . More details and updates are
on http://www.chinaaid.org )

[The initial confrontation on 10 April was caught on film by Australian
Broadcasting Corporation’s Stephen McDonell, reporting for Foreign
Correspondent. His report, ‘True Believers’, provides an excellent insight
into Christianity in China. The transcript and 26-minute film can be found
at http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2011/s3219470.htm ]

* NIGERIA: FIFTH PASTOR MURDERED IN BAUCHI IN A MONTH

Around 2am on 16 May militants attacked Jaruma village in the Toro Local
Government Area (LGA) of troubled Bauchi State. They invaded the home of
Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) pastor Irmiya Maigida (55) and his
wife Keziya (48). Keziya, a mother of seven, was shot as she fled outside.
There, militants repeatedly struck her with machetes, stabbed her and
rubbed a painful white substance into her wounds until she was
unconscious. Left for dead, Keziya, however, awoke to hear her husband
wailing in pain from multiple gunshot wounds to the abdomen. Family
members got the injured pastor and his wife into a car and headed for the
hospital only to be held up by police demanding they give statements
before being permitted to proceed. Pastor Maigida’s son, Ishaya, laments
that his father died before they could reach the hospital. His neighbour,
church secretary Brother Joshua Mana, was also killed. Pastor Maigida was
the fifth pastor to be murdered in Bauchi State in the past month.

On 4 May COCIN pastor Joshua Reke (36) narrowly escaped death when Fulani
militants attacked Kurum Dodo village, Bogoro LGA, Bauchi State, about
midnight. His wife Dune (35) and three of his four children were, however,
amongst the 16 dead. Dune had been fleeing with Fyali (1) and Faith (4)
when they were struck down by men wielding machetes. When Pastor Reke
found his wife, she was still alive, so he comforted her and prayed with
her as she died. Their daughter Sun (13) was abused as an ‘infidel’ before
being hacked to death in her bed, while their surviving son Seth (7)
miraculously remained unseen and slept through the whole attack. The
Reke’s adopted daughter, Wulhim (mid-teens), is recovering from a machete
wound to the neck. ‘I look up to God despite what happened,’ says Pastor
Reke. ‘I have forgiven them.’

* SUDAN: KHARTOUM ANNEXES ABYEI

The hotly contested province of Abyei (straddling the north-south divide)
is supposed to get its own referendum to determine whether it will be part
of the South or the North after the Southern secession. Whilst Abyei is
inhabited by southern Dinka Ngok, pro-Khartoum Misseriya Arabs drive their
cattle through the region annually. Speaking to a rally of mostly
Misseriya Arabs in neighbouring Southern Kordofan (North Sudan) on 27
April, President Omar al-Bashir pre-empted any referendum by declaring,
‘Abyei is located in North Sudan and will remain in North Sudan.’

On Thursday 19 May, Khartoum accused the Southern-based Sudan People’s
Liberation Army (SPLA) of attacking a convoy of the Sudan Armed Forces
(SAF) in Dokura north of Abyei town. Though the SPLA denied
responsibility, the government responded with force. SPLA troops retreated
after being bombed and shelled for several hours and Abyei’s remnant
20,000 southern Dinka Ngok residents fled south as SAF tanks and thousands
of troops moved in. The MSF hospital in Agok, 40km south of Abyei, had
received 42 wounded by early Saturday morning. By Sunday it was being
reported that Khartoum had seized and annexed Abyei. Southern Sudanese
leaders have accused the north of ‘an act of war’, something Khartoum
denies, saying it was merely removing illegal elements so as to improve
security and ensure peace and stability. Abyei, now under the control of
Khartoum, has since been heavily looted and torched. War looms. Pray for
the Church in Sudan.

DARFUR: Compass Direct News reports that Hawa Abdalla Muhammad Saleh was
arrested on 9 May in the Abu Shouk camp for Internally Displaced Persons
in Al-Fashir, Darfur. While she is yet to be officially charged,
authorities have accused her of possessing and distributing Bibles. She
could also be tried for apostasy, which carries the death sentence in
Sudan. Sources fear she could be tortured, a plight familiar to Hawa
Abdalla as she was detained and tortured for six days in 2009. Please
pray.

—————–

We usually provide a summary to use in news-sheets unable to
run the whole of an RLPB. As a summary is not practicable with
this monthly update posting we suggest one or more of the above
items be used instead.

—————–

For more information, updates and helpful links see Elizabeth Kendal’s
blog ‘Religious Liberty Monitoring’ <http://elizabethkendal.blogspot.com>.

This RLPB was written for the Australian Evangelical Alliance Religious
Liberty Commission (AEA RLC) by Elizabeth Kendal, an international
religious liberty analyst and advocate, and a member of the AEA RLC team.
Previous bulletins may be viewed at <http://www.ea.org.au/ea–
family/Religious-Liberty/Prayer-Postings.aspx>.

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