Release International said that in the latest raids on villages in the region several Christians had been arrested. The authorities have refused to disclose the whereabouts of 58 Christians – including women and children – seized in the latest crackdown on the church. [More]

A Christian religious freedom group gave approval for the U.S. State Department’s removal of China from its human rights blacklist despite reports of the government’s increased crackdown on house churches ahead of the Olympic Games. [More]

The Catholic Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, was found dead Thursday in a shallow grave in that northern Iraq city. On February 29, Islamist extremists had abducted the 65-year-old prelate while he prayed [More]

Eight Muslims wielding razor-sharp machetes and knives broke into two village churches in southern Ethiopia earlier this month and began wounding worshipers, instantly killing one Christian. [More]

A Baptist in the eastern city of Fergana, Eduard Kim, was fined the equivalent of nine months average wages, after a raid by ten state officials on his house where about 40 local Baptists were meeting for Sunday morning worship. [More]

Laotian officials arrested 15 Hmong Christian families in Bokeo district on February 22, a day before a court sentenced nine area Hmong church leaders to 15 years in prison for conducting Christian ministry and meetings that had grown beyond acceptable levels for communist officials. [More]

Pastor Neil Edirisinghe of the House Church Foundation died at the scene, while his wife was shot in the stomach and was expected to recover. The couple's two-year-old son also received minor injuries [More]

The government in Beijing needs to turn into reality what it says about religious freedom, says Chinese pastor, the Rev. Bob Fu, founder of the Texas-based China Aid Association, who was once a member of an underground house church in China. [More]

In the period covered by this report (December 2006 - December 31, 2007), Christians continued to experience severe persecution for their faith on an alarming scale. Several trends of note were:
1. A crackdown on house churches in China in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics,
2. A continuing campaign by radical Muslims to exterminate Christians from Iraq, and
3. An escalation of radical Hindu attacks against Christians in India, which culminated at the very end of 2007 with a series of mob attacks on Christians villages in the state of Orissa. [More]

On a recent Sunday, families gathered in the courtyard of the Saint Elias Church in Ainkawa, a Christian town inside the semiautonomous Kurdish region. Nearly every one had a heart-wrenching story to tell about kidnapping, extortion, and displacement at the hands of Islamic extremists intent on driving Christians from the region. [More]