PAKISTAN
1) A group of Muslim men went into a Christian district, abducted a 7- year-old boy, and took turns gang-raping him before finally strangling him to death with a rope. Locals found the child´s body the next day dumped in a field: "[T]he body was sent for post-mortem examination which revealed that the 7-year-old was killed after being brutally raped," a local said. "The suspects belonged to rich families and were drunk when they kidnapped the child, took him away and they raped him."
2) A week later, another group of reportedly "rich and drunk" Muslims in a car accosted three Christian girls walking home from work. They sexually harassed them, saying "Christian girls are only meant for one thing, the pleasure of Muslim men." When the girls tried to run away, the Muslims chased them down in their car and ran them over, killing one 17-year-old girl.
3) A Christian man was brutally tortured to death by police in an attempt to get him to confess to stealing from his Muslim employer. Khurram, the son of Liaqat Masih, the 47-year-old slain Christian, was also tortured by police for the same reason; he shared his eyewitness testimony of the beating his father endured before expiring. Police stripped him naked, made him stand on a chair, tied his hands behind his back, and hung him from the ceiling, causing Liaqat´s shoulders to become dislocated. Each time the captive´s feet hit the floor, a police officer would pull the rope to lift him up again and continued applying tension to his arms and dislocated shoulders. Because both Khurram and Liaqat adamantly maintained their innocence during the ordeal, the officers continued to beat his tied-up father with wooden logs until he eventually died. About an hour into the beating, the guards noticed that Liaqat was no longer breathing. The officers then released the tension on the rope and laid the father´s beaten body down in a pool of his own urine, said the son who watched. At the autopsy, doctors concluded that Liaqat died of a heart attack and failed to record the numerous injuries and bruises suffered during the beating.
BANGLADESH
ISIS claimed responsibility for the murder of an 85-year-old Muslim man for reportedly converting to Christianity. He was found lying in a coffin-like structure with blood on his chest. It is believed that he was stabbed to death while working at his homeopathic practice. According to the report, "Soldiers of the caliphate were able to eliminate the apostate, named ´Samir al-Din´, by stabbing him with a knife." Although al-Din´s son claims that his father never converted to Christianity and frequently prayed facing Mecca, One Way Church disagrees, stating that he was just "in a meeting of the church at Gopinathpur village on Jan 3" and that he had told others that his life was in danger. "The local church has shown us papers confirming his conversion to Christianity in 2001," said local police.
SYRIA
A bomb attack on a mostly Christian neighborhood killed three people and wounded 10 others, all Christians. The attack occurred on January 24 in the Kurdish city of Qamishli. While rumors began that ISIS was behind it, according to one Christian leader, "So many people think that behind the bombing there could also be Kurdish masterminds and executors. It is another disturbing factor of this war: there is terrorism, but sometimes we do not know who really terrifies us."
EGYPT
"The tombs of the Copts [Egypt´s indigenous Christians] are being turned into garbage dumps." This was the message from Fr. Ayoub Yousef, who heads the Coptic Catholic church of St. George in the village of Dalga, in Minya, Upper Egypt. According to the priest, local Christian cemeteries are in a "piteous state," with all types of sewage and waste being dumped into them to the point of filling the tombs. He has filed numerous complaints with the prime minister and many other officials "to no avail, to the point that the situation has become unacceptable" and urged "immediate intervention."
Separately, during a televised Egyptian talk show that aired January 18, Ahmed ´Abdu Maher, a lawyer, denounced Al-Azhar, the Islamic world´s oldest and most prestigious university, for continuing to radicalize its students. By way of example, he said: "There is a book in Al-Azhar that calls for the forceful shaving of the heads of the Copts, placing a sign on their homes [so Muslims know where the ´infidels´ live], and refusing to shake hands with them." As it happens, the Islamic State and similar Muslim groups all make it a point not to shake hands with "unclean" Christians (one Egyptian cleric said he finds Christians utterly "disgusting") and that Christian homes should be distinguished with signs, as ISIS did when it placed the Arabic "N" (nun) letter on their homes in Mosul and elsewhere. Even forced head-shaving is being practiced. Back in 2013, jihadi groups in Libya abducted around 100 Copts and abused them— including shaving their heads.
TURKEY
Out of almost two million Syrian refugees within Turkey´s borders, 45,000 are Christian and are finding that "life is only slightly better at best." Many have to pretend to be Muslims in public in order to avoid being attacked. They restrict their Christian worship to the privacy of their tents and homes.
According to the report, another group of refugees in Turkey that was attacked is the Armenians. Zadig Kucuk reportedly found his 85-year-old mother murdered in December 2012, even though she was living in a large Armenian community in Istanbul. When her body was found, a large cross had been carved into her chest. There have also been incidences of refugees being beheaded.
IRAN
Instead of receiving much needed medical treatment, a Christian prisoner was instead given five additional years in prison. Ebrahim Firouzi was first arrested by agents of the Islamic Republic in 2013. He was later condemned by a court of law to one year in prison and two years´ exile. After his sentence ended, Firouzi was kept in prison when new charges of "acting against national security" were levied against him. He remains in prison even though he has been suffering acute pain in the left side of his chest for over a year, and his condition has continued to deteriorate in the last three months.
KAZAKHSTAN
After he appealed the decision, a court in Astana, the nation´s capital, increased the sentence originally handed to Yklas Kabduakasov, a convert from Islam, from seven years’ house arrest to two years’ hard labor in a prison camp. The father of eight was arrested last year on charges of "inciting religious hatred." He was convicted last November and allowed to go home to begin his seven years of house arrest. Local Christians believe the real reason behind the arrest of Yklas Kabduakasov is his conversion from Islam to Christianity and that he was sharing his Christian faith with Muslims.
MALI
A Swiss Christian missionary abducted for ten days in 2012 has been kidnapped again in Timbuktu. On January 8, Beatrice Stockly, a woman in her 40s, was taken from her home before dawn by armed men who arrived in four pickup trucks. Militant Islamic groups are active in the area in which she lives and had launched two attacks in the previous weeks, one of them on a Christian radio station just before Christmas, which left 25 people dead. In 2012, when the jihadis ruled the area, they outlawed the practice of Christianity and desecrated and looted churches and other places of worship.
KUWAIT
Lawmaker Ahmad Al-Azemi said that he and other MPs will reject an initially-approved request to build churches because it "contradicts Islamic sharia laws." He added that Islamic scholars are unanimous in banning the building of non-Muslim places of worship in the Arabian Peninsula.
GERMANY
Hegumen Daniil, Father Superior of St. George the Victorious Monastery in Gotschendorf and a member of the Integration Committee at the German Federal Chancellery wrote In a letter to the Federal Minister of Germany for Special Affairs:
”Christian refugees from Syria, Eritrea, and other countries are exposed to humiliation, manhunts, and brutal harassment at the camps for refugees by their Muslim neighbors. This also relates to the Yazidi religious minority. The cases when humiliation turns to injuries and death threats are frequent. …. According to the Islamic tradition, they [former Muslims, who are at special risk] should be punished, because they moved away from Islam. They are exposed to great pressure and are afraid for their lives, because ‘renegades’ lose any right to it as far as radical Muslims are concerned. Many Christians who came from the Middle East are suffering from such great harassment that they want to return home, because their situation there seems to them to be a lesser evil as compared with the circumstances in the German refugee accommodation centers.”
INDIA
Pastor Sumati Prakash was badly beaten and his hands and legs broken on March 23, 2016. He was attacked by 25-30 people including the Sarpanch. He pastors a church in Sabli village in Doongerpur, Rajasthan.
