RLPB 715. North Korea: Nearly 600 Defectors Repatriated on 9 Oct.

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 715 | 18 Oct 2023
RLPB is published weekly to facilitate strategic intercessory prayer.

Sign up for the RLPB at www.ElizabethKendal.com  
View RLPB archives at Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin blog.
For bite-size follow religiouslibertyprayer on Instagram

NORTH KOREA: NEARLY 600 DEFECTORS REPATRIATED ON 9 OCT
- 2000 more, in detention awaiting deportation.
By Elizabeth Kendal

North Korea (NK) is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian. The Kim dynasty must be worshipped and obeyed; consequently, Christianity is treated as a political crime. Furthermore, ‘reactionary thought’ is punished with imprisonment or death. Anyone found in possession of a Bible or in attendance at a prayer gathering will be either publicly executed, or sentenced to hard labour in a prison labour camp. Sentences can range from 15 years to life, with punishment not limited to the person found guilty, but extended to three generations of the immediate family. Public executions are common. Christians not currently struggling to endure horrendous prison labour camps, endure prayerfully as secret believers. [See: RLPB 697, ‘All for Jesus. even in death’, 14 June 2023; and ‘North Korea: Sang Chul’, a short (7 min) film by Voice of the Martyrs Korea (VOMK), based on a true story.]

Screenshot from ‘North Korea: Sang Chul’.
(View at VOMK or YouTube)

Despite the persecution, the Church survives and is believed to number between 100,000 and 400,000 (1-2 percent of the population); most are Protestant. In his October 2021 report, the then UN special rapporteur on North Korea estimated that, while there are no known Catholic priests inside NK, some 300 Protestant pastors and five Russian Orthodox priests are ministering in the country [US State Department Report on International Religious Freedom 2022].

Most Koreans who flee NK have been driven to desperation by starvation brought on by the regime’s failed policy of socialism with ‘self-reliance’ (near total isolation). If they make it across the border into China, NK defectors will likely encounter Christian South Korean, Korean American, and Chinese missionaries who have established a vast network of safe houses where NK defectors receive assistance and Gospel witness. [See: RLPB 609, Desperate for a Breakthrough, 4 Aug 2021 and ‘The Spy’, a short (4 min) film by Open Doors, on safehouse ministry in China]. Pyongyang deems defection as ‘treachery against the nation’, a crime deserving detention with hard labour or even death. Despite this, Beijing refuses to recognise NK defectors as refugees. When NK defectors are caught in China – which is easy with facial recognition technology being so pervasive – they are arrested and forcibly repatriated under a 1986 bilateral border protocol.

Screenshot from 'The Spy'.
(View at Open Doors or YouTube)

 

In January 2020 North Korea closed its borders ostensibly to keep COVID 19 out of the country. With the borders closed, NK defectors arrested in China could not be repatriated, but were instead held in detention. In August 2023, NK started to relax its border restrictions. According to a report by Human Rights Watch (12 Oct), ‘Chinese authorities forcibly repatriated 80 North Koreans on August 29 and 40 others on September 18 …’ Then, on Monday 9 October, the day after the close of the Asian Games (a quadrennial event held this year in Hangzhou, the capital of China’s Zhejiang Province, from 23 September to 8 October) China forcibly repatriated nearly 600 NK defectors. According to The Korea Times (15 Oct), a further 2000 detainees remain in detention awaiting deportation.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports (16 Oct), ‘Most of the defectors were civilians and religious figures who were attempting to travel to South Korea from China.’ An official from the J.M. Missionary Union, which works to rescue North Koreans, told RFA that the detainees had been arrested during the COVID pandemic. It seems Beijing and Pyongyang had agreed that, to avoid protests and negative media coverage, the mass deportation would take place after the Asian Games. The J.M. Missionary Union official told RFA: ‘At around 7:30pm local time on the 9th of this month, after dark, the repatriation was secretly carried out through various Chinese customs offices along the border between North Korea and China.’ Stephen Kim, an underground missionary told Human Rights Watch that the detainees were transported in truck convoys to more than five separate border crossings. We can assume that many will have heard the Gospel, some will be Christian, and all will be returning to imprisonment, hard labour, torture and possibly death. Lord have mercy!


PLEASE PRAY THAT OUR MERCIFUL GOD WILL:

* protect, sustain and richly bless North Korea’s long-suffering and severely persecuted remnant Church.
-Dear Father, please hide NK’s secret believers ‘in the shadow of your wings’; shield them from those who would betray, arrest or murder them. And please dear Father, protect, defend, sustain and liberate all believers currently incarcerated in NK labour camps where brutality, torture and starvation are the norm. Lord have mercy!

‘Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.’ (from Psalm 57)

* infiltrate and redirect the hearts and minds of the increasing number of North Koreans who are turning to traditional ancestor worship and ancestral rites in the desperate hope that ancestral spirits [that are in reality demonic spirits] might provide relief. As trust in the Kim regime evaporates, may the Lord, in grace and mercy, reveal himself to be alive, gracious, supreme and faithful – in answer to the prayers of many.

* bring openness, liberty and healing to North Korea. ‘… with God all things are possible’ (Jesus, in Matthew 19:26 ESV).

For more background on North Korea – including a short history of Korean Christianity, political and geopolitical context, and possible way forward – see https://www.elizabethkendal.com / Global Persecution / North East Asia.


SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
------------------------------------------
NORTH KOREA: CHRISTIANS RETURNED TO IMPRISONMENT AND DEATH

North Korea (NK) is a dangerous place to be a Christian. Anyone found with a Bible or at a prayer gathering will be publicly executed or sent to a prison labour camp along with three generations of their immediate family. Starvation forces many to flee across the northern border into China where they are likely to encounter Christian South Korean, Korean American and Chinese missionaries who risk their own lives assisting NK defectors. Many NKs become Christian through this ministry. If caught inside China, NK defectors are arrested and forcibly repatriated to certain imprisonment, torture and possibly death. On 9 October nearly 600 NK defectors were forcibly repatriated. According to Radio Free Asia, the defectors were mostly ‘civilians and religious figures’, and some 2000 more remain in detention awaiting deportation. Please pray.

------------------------------------------

Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate for the persecuted Church. The Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin (RLPB) is a donor funded ministry. To support this ministry visit www.ElizabethKendal.com

Elizabeth has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016). She is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

For more information see www.ElizabethKendal.com

RLPB 697. North Korea: 'All for Jesus. even in death.'

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 697 | Wed 14 Jun 2023
RLPB is published weekly to facilitate strategic intercessory prayer.

Sign up for the RLPB at www.ElizabethKendal.com 
View RLPB archives at Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin blog.
For bite-size: follow religiouslibertyprayer on Instagram.

NORTH KOREA: ‘ALL FOR JESUS, EVEN IN DEATH’
By Elizabeth Kendal

North Korea
(click on map to enlarge)

Outside Sunchon – a city around 45km due north of Pyongyang in North Korea’s South Pyongan province – lies an inconspicuous farmhouse. Every Sunday morning at 5am, five Christians (all relatives) have met at that Tongam village farmhouse for a secret time of prayer and worship. Local North Korean sources told Radio Free Asia (RFA, 28 May) that on Sunday 30 April, the five believers gathered at the farmhouse at 5am only to discover that someone had betrayed them. Responding to a tip-off from a local informant, police were waiting to arrest the believers. The believers’ ‘crime’ is that they were worshipping and serving God in a country where the Kim dynasty alone is to be worshipped and obeyed. Putting God above the Kim dynasty is a political crime in North Korea, the penalty for which would normally be that the accused – along with three generations of their family – would be imprisoned in a concentration camp and condemned to hard labour. These prisons are essentially death camps, where many prisoners die from brutality and starvation.

A local resident told RFA: ‘At the site of the worship service, the police retrieved dozens of Bible booklets and arrested all in attendance.’ A second local resident told RFA that despite pressure from authorities, the five Christians have refused to renounce their faith. ‘A staff member of the judicial agency told us that the [believers] refused to tell where they got their Bibles and said, “All for Jesus, even in death”.’

There might not be a country on the face of the earth whose history is a tragic as North Korea’s. Korea had long been a difficult mission field. Then, in 1904, the Korean Peninsula succumbed to Shinto nationalist Japan’s imperial expansion. With Japanese occupation came the horrendous racist cruelty and anti-Christian persecution that had long defined Shinto nationalism. From within this ‘furnace’, the young Korean Church rose to become the voice of Korean independence. Consequently, the Gospel came to be known not merely by some literate educated elites, but by Korea’s downtrodden masses. The Church grew and Christianity came to be identified with Korean nationalism. That the UK (in 1902) and US (in 1905) supported Japan’s annexation of the peninsula left Koreans – and especially the Korean Church – feeling betrayed and abandoned. Waves of anti-foreign and especially anti-American sentiment swept over the Korean people and into the Korean Church. The 1907 Great Pyongyang Revival was born in repentance of those angry, bitter and divisive sentiments. [See, The Korean Pentecost: and the sufferings which followed, by William Blair and Brice Hunt; Banner of Truth Trust, 1977.] Marked by repentance and tears, the 1907 Great Pyongyang Revival was a true revival driven by the Holy Spirit who convicts us of guilt/sin and makes Christ known (John 16:5-16) [Documentary: 1907 Pyongyang Great Revival in Korea, YouTube, 39 mins.] It is no exaggeration to say that this ‘Korean Pentecost’ transformed the Korean Peninsula, which Japan then officially annexed in 1910.

In 1945, in the final stages of World War 2, the Allies ousted the Japanese from Korea and divided the peninsula between themselves: the North would be controlled by the Soviet Union, and the South by the USA. In 1950, in an attempt to unify the country militarily, the Soviet-backed North invaded the South, triggering the Korean War (1950-1953). Though a ceasefire was declared in July 1953 – with the peninsula divided along the 38th parallel – the war was merely frozen, not ended. After the border closed, an estimated 2,300 churches and about 300,000 church members disappeared from the North. An Iron Curtain descended between North and South Korea in the form of a total communications blackout, and a Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) of landmines, barbed wire and snipers. That the Church has survived and may even comprise as many as 200,000 imperilled and imprisoned, suffering believers is nothing short of extraordinary.

Our prayer must be that North Korea be free. I still maintain that talks are the only option [see RLPB 423, North Korea: Talks the Only Option, 13 Sep 2017]. Those who advocate a military solution have no regard for human life, and often much to gain from waging war. North Koreans desperately need us to pray that God would intervene to ‘do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine’ (Ephesians 3:20-21 NIV). North Korean suffering is so extreme [The Korea Herald, 13 June] and the repression so intense [Daily NK, 6 June] that suicide rates are skyrocketing, up about 40 percent compared to last year [RFA, 5 June]. Despite this, the World Health Organisation (WHO) just elected North Korea to its Executive Board. This too is an obscene betrayal and abandonment of suffering North Koreans. Lord have mercy!


PLEASE PRAY THAT GOD WILL INTERVENE:

* to ‘do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine’ (Ephesians 3:20-21 NIV), that North Koreans might know freedom, so they might seek and find truth, healing and hope in Jesus Christ.

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein… Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in (from Psalm 24).

* sustain and protect the five believers arrested at the Tongam village farmhouse on 30 April – and indeed every North Korean believer currently incarcerated on account of their faith. May violent hands be restrained, and may God supply their every need – physical, emotional and spiritual. May Christ redeem their suffering and may their Christian witness not be in vain.

* to pour out his Holy Spirit in grace in power over the North once again: may North Korean abusers know conviction of sin and that irresistible divine call to repent and make things right. May suffering and starving North Koreans be moved by the Spirit to seek help from God. May everything that stands in the way of change – including arrogance, ambition, pride, folly, fear, hatred, greed and prejudice – be blown away.

‘The nations roar like the roaring of many waters, but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away,
chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind and whirling dust before the storm.’ (From Isaiah 17:12-14)


SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
------------------------------------------
NORTH KOREA: ‘ALL FOR JESUS, EVEN IN DEATH’

At 5am on Sunday 30 April five Christians gathered at a farmhouse in Tongam village for a secret time of prayer and worship, as was their custom. This time, however, police were there to arrest them. The believers’ ‘crime’ is that they were worshipping and serving God in a country where the Kim dynasty alone is to be worshipped and obeyed. A local resident told Radio Free Asia: ‘At the site of the worship service, the police retrieved dozens of Bible booklets and arrested all in attendance.’ According to a second resident, the believers have refused to renounce their faith. ‘A staff member of the judicial agency told us that the [believers] refused to tell where they got their Bibles and said, “All for Jesus, even in death”.’ Please pray.

------------------------------------------

Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate for the persecuted Church. The Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin (RLPB) is a donor
funded ministry. To support this ministry visit www.ElizabethKendal.com

Elizabeth has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016). She is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

For more information see www.ElizabethKendal.com

RLPB 612. August Update, incl. North Koreans, Afghanistan, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Cuba, India, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan.

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 612 | Wed 25 Aug 2021
RLPB is published weekly to facilitate strategic intercessory prayer.

To subscribe (free) or view archives, visit the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin blog. The RLPB is sponsored by Christian Faith and Freedom Inc. 

AUGUST 2021 UPDATE
By Elizabeth Kendal

DURING THIS PERIOD, WE PRAYED CONCERNING:

* NORTH KOREA [RLPB 609 (4 Aug)]. after North Korea's Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in agreed to restore communications and take steps to recover trust and improve ties. The rapprochement comes as North Korea faces its most severe humanitarian crisis in decades. We also prayed concerning 'Advocacy for North Koreans Detained in China', after China repatriated some 50 North Korean escapees, each of whom will face severe punishment.

UPDATE: CHINA ARRESTS NORTH KOREAN WIVES

Radio Free Asia reports (RFA, 20 Aug) that Chinese police have started arresting North Korean wives of Chinese men in Liaoning and Jilin, two provinces in north-eastern China which border North Korea (NK). NKs have been escaping into China for decades and many NK women have married Chinese men - some by force (up to 80 percent, having fallen prey to sex-traffickers) and some by choice, be that pragmatism or true love. One Chinese citizen in Tonghua City (90km north of the NK border in Jilin Province) told RFA about the arrest of a NK woman who arrived in Tonghua 10 years ago, who was married to and had a child with a Chinese man. This 'kind-hearted' woman had spent many years helping and serving 'everyone in the neighbourhood, not only [NK] refugees'. Locals in Tonghua are so upset about this woman's arrest - which has left the couple's nine-year-old child distraught - that they have petitioned the police for her release. While no further details are known about this woman, we do know the border provinces are rich in Christian presence. Many Chinese and Korean Christians chose to live and work there precisely so they might help and witness to NK refugees. It seems the NKs - even those with Chinese husbands and children - now risk being arrested, separated from their families, charged with human trafficking and repatriated to North Korea. Please pray.

REALITY CHECK: If the West cannot find a way to work with NK's other neighbours - South Korea and Russia - to draw and lead NK in a different direction, then Communist Party-ruled China will simply devour it. Please pray!

* CHINA [RLPB 610 (11 Aug)] where two courageous and influential unregistered house churches in Taiyuan (the capital of Shanxi Province) are experiencing severe and escalating persecution. Please continue to pray for Xuncheng Reformed Church and the Golden Lampstand house-church network as they navigate the increasingly treacherous path ahead and deal with the arrests of senior church leaders.

* ETHIOPIA [RLPB 611 (18 Aug)] after the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) - now going by the name, Tigray Defense Force (TDF) - rejected the government's unilateral ceasefire (forced on it by the US Biden administration) and advanced their war beyond Tigray. The TPLF has since killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands in neighbouring Afar and Amhara Regions. It has also disrupted the delivery of, and stolen (for its soldiers), humanitarian aid. The TPLF has forcibly recruited hundreds of child soldiers, making a lot of enemies in the process! Critically it has brokered an alliance with the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA or OLF-Shane, the group responsible for numerous massacres of Amhara Christians throughout Oromia including hundreds of forcibly recruited child soldiers). These two groups - both enemies of Ethiopia - could neither survive nor advance their genocidal campaign without the foreign support they receive from Egypt, the Sudanese military and Washington. Now the ceasefire is over, the TPLF-OLA will move to escalate their anti-government propaganda. Indeed, this has already begun! Please pray.

Ethiopia is a phenomenally strategic country, both geo-politically (for the Horn of Africa and the greater Middle East) and spiritually (with its dynamic Church and great missionary-sending vision). Ethiopia's collapse would trigger a Christian crisis of monumental proportions. This is first and foremost a spiritual battle. The future of Ethiopia hangs in the balance. Please pray.

AUGUST 2021 ROUND-UP - also this month:

* AFGHANISTAN: CHRISTIANS IMPERILLED
[update to RLPB 600 (2 June 2021)].

Global Catalytic Ministries - an organisation which supports underground churches in Islamic countries - has released a video in which an Afghan Christian pleads for Christians around the world not to abandon the Church in Afghanistan. Clearly fearful and distraught, our brother laments: 'All of our work over the past 20 years has been lost overnight,' adding that he feels like the 'whole world has abandoned us.' International Christian Concern (ICC) estimates the Christian population at between 10,000 and 12,000. An Afghan Christian leader told ICC that while he does not think any Christians have been executed yet, it is simply just a matter of time, especially as some believers have already received threatening phone calls warning, 'We are coming for you.' As he explained: 'It will be done mafia style. The Taliban will never take responsibility for the killings.'

Another Afghan Church leader - who estimates the Christian community at 5,000 to 8,000 - warned CBN that the Taliban will move to 'eliminate the Christian population'. Christians will now either hide or flee. That said, they have long been 'sheep among wolves', and as Andrew Boyd of Release International UK reminds us, 'they are used to being an underground church; they are used to working under the most intense pressure and persecution'. Christian aid and advocacy groups which serve the persecuted Church are raising funds and doing all they can to help and support gravely imperilled Afghan believers. God calls us to action: so 'speak up', 'give generously', and pray, pray, pray!

* THE SAHEL: AFRICA'S AFGHANISTAN?
[update to RLPB 607 (21 July 2021)].

As noted in RLPB 607, French troops will pull out of Mali in the first quarter of 2022, ahead of France's presidential election. On 10 August, as the Taliban closed in on Kabul, Iyad Ag Ghali - leader of al-Qaeda affiliate JNIM - paid tribute to the 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on the occasion of the withdrawal of the American invading forces and their allies.' After the Taliban captured Kabul, a headline in the Malian daily Le Soir de Bamako asked: 'Should we brace for the same scenario as in Kabul?' The mostly Muslim Sahel is a religious fault-line region. Until now it has been spared the Islamic radicalisation common across North Africa. Today, the Sahel's many churches and mission-run facilities and its tradition of religious tolerance and openness are all imminently imperilled.

(1) MALI: TERROR ESCALATES
Mali: a secular state with religious freedom; 87 percent Muslim, 2.6 percent Christian.

On Sunday evening 8 August jihadists attacked several villages in the Gao region 'shooting at anything that moved'. Along with killing at least 51 people, the jihadists also looted and burned homes and stole herds of livestock. On 19 August jihadists ambushed a military convoy in central Mali, killing 15 soldiers. According to Mohamed Dicko, a 24-year-old medical student in the capital Bamako, it is only thanks to French and UN forces that 'the major cities in the north are still under state control. Without the presence of the French army,' he said, 'a town like Gao can fall in less than half an hour.' Some in Mali are calling for the government to negotiate with the terrorists to find a political solution. But like the Taliban, JNIM would surely accept nothing less than total submission to Islam. Mali is in trouble! Please pray.

(2) BURKINA FASO: TERROR ESCALATES
Burkina Faso: secular state with religious freedom; 52 percent Muslim, 21 percent Christian.

On 18 August jihadists in northern Burkina Faso attacked a civilian convoy as it was being escorted by military police on the road between Gorgadji and Arbinda. The attack left 80 people dead, including 59 civilians, 15 soldiers and six members of the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland (VDP) corps, an anti-jihadist civilian defence militia that co-operates with the government to protect communities. A further 19 people were wounded and 58 jihadists were also killed. It was the third major attack on Burkinabe soldiers in the past two weeks. On 4 August jihadists killed 11 civilians, 15 soldiers and four volunteer militia members in attacks on northern villages near the border with Niger. On 8 August jihadists killed 12 soldiers in an attack on the Toeni commune near the border with Mali. Burkina Faso is in trouble! Please pray.

(3) NIGER: TERROR ESCALATES
Niger: a secular state with religious freedom; 97 percent Muslim, 0.33 percent Christian.

On 16 August Islamic jihadists attacked the commune of Banibangou, which is close to the Malian border in the Tillabery region of south-west Niger, killing 37 civilians, including 14 children. In March jihadists killed 137 in co-ordinated raids in neighbouring Tahoua region and in January over 100 people were killed in Tillabery, the same region as the 6 August attack. In June they attacked Fantio and Dolbel in Tillabery, killing seven (including two Christians) and burning the Catholic parish, the third parish to be abandoned due to escalating insecurity. Please pray.

* CUBA: PASTOR IMPERILLED
[update to RLPB 608 (July Update 2021).]

JAILED: Pastor Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo,
pictured with his wife Maridilegnis Carballo.
 

Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports that Cuban Protestant Pastor Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo, who was detained on 11 July during peaceful protests, has been transferred to the Boniato Maximum Security Prison outside the city of Santiago de Cuba. He was held incommunicado until 7 August when his wife was finally permitted to speak with him. According to CSW, Boniato Maximum Security Prison is notorious for its appalling conditions, violence and cruelty. It is also usually a prison where convicted criminals already serving sentences are sent, but Pastor Rosales Fajardo has not yet been tried or sentenced. Presumably he is being sent there for deterrent punishment. Please pray. Meanwhile, on 17 August the Cuban government published a new law that effectively criminalises all dissent. Presented as a cybersecurity law, Legal Decree 35 criminalises on-line criticism of the government as well as incitement to 'public disturbances' (i.e. peaceful protests). Please pray.

* INDIA: DIVIDE AND RULE IN BASTAR, CHHATTISGARH.

On 3 August Hindu nationalist leaders held an anti-Christian rally in Jagdalpur, the capital of Chhattisgarh state's volatile Bastar District. According to International Christian Concern, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders who spoke at the rally perpetuated lies and incited violence against the Christian community. Amit Sahu, President of the Chhattisgarh BJP, told the crowd: 'Let us drag people from the church and stop conversions at any cost and make Bastar District a conversion-free zone.' Roop Singh Mandavi, another leader of the BJP, said: 'We will frighten Christians who are involved in conversion work in the region. We will not allow the missionary work to be carried on in Bastar and will protect the Hindu religion by stopping the conversions.' Though Christians were relieved that fewer than 500 people turned out to the well-publicised, high-profile event, they are anticipating a fresh wave of Christian persecution.

Nov 2018: Congress takes Chhattisgarh from BJP.
election results by Times of India

Bastar district (like Chhattisgarh in general), is a hotbed of Maoist/Naxalite insurgency. The Maoism of Nepal and India's tribal belt is less about communist ideology and more a protest against the crippling systemic discrimination, marginalisation and racism of the Hindu caste system. Many tribals who are labelled 'Naxals' are not Naxals/Maoists at all, but have common cause with Dalits and Christians. In November 2018 the BJP lost power in Chhattisgarh. Doubtless what the BJP is doing now is pursuing the policy of divide and rule which worked to reverse its fortunes in federal elections in 2019. Thus the BJP is 'creating a customised enemy for every group' [see RLPB 506, Christian Crisis in North India, 12 June 2019]. It is conniving to split the tribals and turn them against each other over the issue of conversions, thereby turning the problematic Maoists against the Christians and to have them see the BJP as saviour, rather than the racist, self-interested devil it actually is. 

'Though they plan evil against you, though they devise mischief, they will not succeed' (Psalm 21:11). '… the way of the wicked he brings to ruin' (Psalm 146:9c). Please pray.

* MOZAMBIQUE: HEALING, HOPE AND OPPORTUNITY.

On 11 August 2020 militants belonging to Islamic State affiliate ASWJ seized control of the strategic port city of Mocimboa da Praia in Mozambique's northern-most province of Cabo Delgado [see RLPB 564, 'Islamic State Seizes Port' (26 Aug 2020)]. A battle for the city did not eventuate, and ASWJ was able to establish the port city as its headquarters. On 23 June 2021 the 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) approved the deployment of troops to Mozambique to help combat the Islamic insurgency. Rwanda sent 1000 troops, who immediately went on the offensive. By 8 August Rwandan and Mozambiquan troops had recaptured Mocimboa da Praia. While many jihadists were killed, many more fled into the bush and north towards Tanzania. On 9 August SADC officially launched its counter-terrorism operation in Mozambique. On 12 August the governor of Cabo Delgado Province declared the city of Mocimboa da Praia safe for civilians to return. Soldiers from various SADC nations - including 1495 troops from South Africa - will continue the fight against the jihadists.

According to INcontext's contacts in Mozambique, the situation on the ground is dire, leaving many in the mostly Muslim north questioning God. 'As the SADC forces liberate towns and villages, they will potentially open the way for Christian NGOs to reach these communities and provide them with much-needed physical and spiritual support. This enables the Body of Christ to be a physical representation of the love of God the moment their communities have been freed of the physical representation of evil.' An earlier article in Christianity Today (3 August) told of pastors who, despite losing much, had chosen to remain in the traumatised region to serve among their fellow survivors: 'In nearby villages and makeshift camps set up throughout the region, these faith leaders are partnering with a handful of ministries, missionaries and Christian humanitarian organisations to distribute food, supplies and farming kits, as well as pray with people, preach the gospel and hand out thousands of solar-powered audio Bibles to all who ask. In the midst of an unthinkable crisis, they report that thousands are coming to faith in Christ.' Praise and thank God and pray that security will be restored, evil will be defeated, lies will be exposed, and the Gospel will take root in Cabo Delgado.

* NIGERIA: BANDITS EXTORT THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

On 5 July Fulani bandits abducted 121 boarding students from Kaduna's Bethel Baptist High School [RLPB 605 (7 July)]. On Sunday 25 July 28 students were released upon payment of ransom. Having pooled resources in the hope of collectively redeeming the children, parents of children not released were left distraught [RLPB 608 (30 July)]. On Saturday night 21 August, a further 15 students were released upon payment of ransom; 65 students remain in captivity. The Sharia-ruled, Muslim-majority North is a turbulent ocean of insecurity and suffering. According to the PSJ Data Team, at least 3186 persons were killed, 2963 abducted and 161 injured across Nigeria in the first six months of 2021. The violence is concentrated in the North and most of the killings occurred in Christian communities. Please pray.

* PAKISTAN: SHAFQAT AND SHAGUFTA FIND SANCTUARY 

Despite having been acquitted of blasphemy, Christians Shafqat Emmanuel (49) and his wife Shagufta Kausar (52) could not stay in Pakistan. So we prayed: 'may a place of refuge be made available overseas' [see RLPB 601, Acquitted but still imperilled, 9 June]. Praise and thank God that this faithful couple have arrived safely in Europe where they have been granted asylum in a country not named for security purposes. Shafqat told ADF International, 'We are so relieved to be free. The last eight years have been incredibly hard, but we are so happy to be reunited with our children. Hopefully, the blasphemy laws in Pakistan will soon be abolished so others won't suffer the same fate as Shagufta and me.' Praise and thank God for answered prayer; and for his sustaining grace and mercy shown to Shafqat and Shagufta. Please pray that Pakistan's blasphemy law will indeed be abolished. Please pray for the Church in Pakistan.

Free and safe in Europe: Shafqat and Shagufta, August 2021

-------------------------------------

Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She serves as Director of Advocacy at Canberra-based Christian Faith and Freedom (CFF) and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com 

RLPB 609. North Korea: Desperate for a Breakthrough

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 609 | Wed 04 Aug 2021
RLPB is published weekly to facilitate strategic intercessory prayer.

To subscribe (free) or view archives, visit the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin (RPLB) blog.  The RLPB is sponsored by Christian Faith and Freedom Inc. 

NORTH KOREA: DESPERATE FOR A BREAKTHROUGH
plus, advocacy for North Koreans detained in China
by Elizabeth Kendal

On 16 June 2020 the North Korean (NK) regime blew up the inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, unilaterally severing cross-border communications with the South. The action came after activists in South Korea (SK) resumed sending anti-regime propaganda leaflets north across the border in violation of an agreement - brokered during the historic April 2018 Inter-Korean Summit - to end the propaganda war. As the inter-Korean liaison office went up in smoke, so too did more than two years of delicate, hope-filled rapprochement [see RLPB 555, 'Hopes Fade as Tensions Soar', 24 June 2020]. Now, 13 months on, cross-border communications have been restored. The phone call which took place between North Korea's Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday 27 July - the 68th anniversary of the 27 July 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War - was their first in more than a year. Kim and Moon had been exchanging personal letters since April; it was in those communications that the two leaders agreed to take steps to recover trust and improve ties.

The rapprochement comes as North Korea faces its most severe crisis in decades. In January 2020, acutely aware that its totally inadequate health sector would collapse if COVID-19 were to take hold, North Korea sealed its border with China, ending cross-border trade and crippling domestic markets. Today, North Koreans are dying; not from COVID-19, but from famine and other diseases (such as tuberculosis) as their stockpiles of food and medicines run out. NK's Kim regime is acutely aware that SK's pro-engagement President Moon Jae-in - for whom rapprochement with the North is deeply personal [see RLPB 446 (14 March 2018)] - will end his single five-year term as president in March 2022. So, for the Kim regime, if rapprochement is to be advanced and assistance received, time is of the essence.

As hardship has escalated, so too has discontent, especially among the young who have lived better than their parents (and therefore have greater expectations), and are increasingly aware of life outside NK. As Daily NK reports (31 May): 'Recent surveys among defectors show a high percentage of them consumed foreign media while living in North Korea. According to a 2019 survey conducted by Unification Media Group, 91% of respondents said they had consumed South Korean and other foreign content while still living in North Korea. This is despite 75% of them having also witnessed someone being punished for engaging in this same behaviour.' Indeed, black market radios, computers and mobile phones have been creeping into the blacked-out state for years; while American, South Korean and Christian content has long been smuggled in on contraband memory sticks. In February 2018 NK youths had watched as NK athletes marched with SK athletes under the unification flag in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. They watched in hope as their new-generation leader Kim Jong-un met with Presidents Moon and then Trump in April and June of 2018, only to have their hopes dashed in February 2019 when the Hanoi summit [RLPB 490 (20 Feb 2019)] ended in failure.

In December 2020, in an effort to counter ideological contamination and contain unrest, the regime enacted the 'Law on the Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture'. On 28 July Daily NK reported that the prison population had grown by some 20,000 since March 2020 as North Koreans fell foul of COVID restrictions and the law against reactionary thought. Due to COVID restrictions, relatives are banned from delivering food to the prisons; consequently, prisoners are starving. In early July Kim ordered that the military's storehouses be opened, and the grain sold at a discounted price to the masses through government run stores. A high-ranking major-general in charge of logistics openly criticised the order as 'unrealistic' - for as it turns out, military storehouses have been largely empty since the days of Kim's father. In a desperate effort to deflect from his own failings, Kim had the official executed for 'sectarianism'. Amidst escalating purges, punishments and hunger the military is reportedly boiling with discontent.

In his treatise Rebuilding Russia (Harvill, 1990), Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn lamented the 'spiritual catastrophe of 1917' and what it produced: a society built on lies. He called for deep systemic reform that would give Russians back their country and revitalise traditional [Christian] values. 'Time has finally run out for communism,' he wrote. 'But its concrete edifice has not yet crumbled. May we not be crushed beneath its rubble instead of gaining liberty.' 

There can be little doubt that time is running out for the North Korean regime. While the West is full of 'hawks' - supposedly fuelled with righteous indignation - who would love to bomb Pyongyang flat or somehow accelerate the regime's collapse, we need to remember that North Korea happens to be filled with North Koreans, victims of 'spiritual catastrophe', struggling to survive in a society built on lies. And while most North Koreans have no memory or even knowledge of the great Pyongyang Revival of 1907 [see: 1907 Revival, a 10-min film with archival footage] which transformed the Korean Peninsula and saw Pyongyang labelled 'the Jerusalem of the East', God remembers! For 68 years a remnant Church, fortified by martyrs, has endured prayerfully in prisons, labour camps, and underground. For 68 years, Koreans in the South and around the world have prayed with tears for their captive brethren. A furious spiritual battle is underway for North Korea. Please pray!

'O Lord, I have heard the report of you, and your work, O Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy'. (Habakkuk 3:2 ESV)

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY THAT GOD WILL:

* protect, sustain and richly bless North Korea's long-suffering and severely persecuted remnant Church.

* send the Holy Spirit to revive and transform North Korea yet again; may desperate North Koreans be drawn into prayer, to seek mercy from a God they do not know, a God whom they will find is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness (from Exodus 34:1-9). 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.' (from Zechariah 4:6 ESV)

* bind and restrain all evil forces who seek to sow chaos and sustain repression where God seeks to sow peace and deliver liberty. '[Jesus Christ] has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.' (1 Peter 3:22 ESV)

Lift up your heads, O you gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle! (Psalm 24:7,8 ESV)

SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
----------------------------------------
NORTH KOREA - DESPERATE FOR A BREAKTHROUGH

On 16 June 2020 the North Korean regime severed communications with the South. Now, however, cross-border communication has been restored. On 27 July, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in spoke by phone. The leaders, who had been exchanging letters since April, are eager to recover trust and improve ties. The rapprochement comes as NK faces its most severe crisis in decades. In January 2020, NK sealed its border with China to prevent the entrance of COVID-19. Today, NKs are dying; not of COVID, but of starvation and other diseases as their stores of food and medicines run out. Society is breaking down, prisons are filling up, and officials who criticise regime policy are being purged and executed. Please pray for NK and her remnant Church.

-------------------------------------------

ADVOCACY FOR NORTH KOREANS DETAINED IN CHINA

On 14 July China repatriated some 50 North Korean escapees, comprising citizens and defecting soldiers, including an air force officer. They had been held in detention centres in Shenyang and Tumen, China, for as long as two years. Advocates fear they will face incarceration and severe punishment including the death penalty. With hundreds of other North Korean escapees similarly imperilled, the UK's All Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea appealed to UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, requesting he speak with Chinese and South Korean ambassadors in London with the goal of having North Korean refugees sent to South Korea which will automatically receive them under its 'one Korea' policy. Please pray that God will bless this advocacy; and may it be replicated around the world.

---------------------------------------------

Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She serves as Director of Advocacy at Canberra-based Christian Faith and Freedom (CFF) and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com 

RLPB 555. June Update. Incl. Turkey, Syria, Hong Kong, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 555| Wed 24 Jun 2020

RLPB is published weekly to facilitate strategic intercessory prayer.

Please forward this prayer bulletin widely and encourage others to sign up to the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin blog. "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16 NIV) 

 

JUNE 2020 UPDATE

By Elizabeth Kendal

In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.  Psalm 18:6 (ESV)

JUNE 2020 UPDATE - during this period we prayed concerning

* TURKEY [RLPB 552 (3 June)], after a 'Conquest Day' spectacular in which neo-Ottoman and Islamist Turks celebrated the 567th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople; a conquest which saw the city ransacked, the churches looted and the citizens raped, slaughtered and enslaved. This is how the now UNESCO world-heritage listed Greek Orthodox cathedral, the Church of Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy Wisdom), became the booty of imperialist Ottoman Islamic forces.

UPDATE: COUNCIL OF STATE TO RULE ON 2 JULY

Turkey's Council of State will rule on the status of Hagia Sophia on Thursday 2 July. In a poll run by pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak, 73.3 percent of 2,414 respondents answered 'Yes' to the question of whether Hagia Sophia should be converted into a functioning mosque. Bolstered by the poll, President Erdogan expects the Council of State will rule that the cabinet decree of 1934 - which saw Hagia Sophia converted from a mosque to a museum - be annulled. Expectation is high that Hagia Sophia will at least be open to Muslim prayers, even if it must retain its status as a museum (for now). Hagia Sophia's conversion to that of a functioning mosque would signify a great leap forward in the Turkish Islamist long march to reverse Ataturk's secularising reforms. The issue of Hagia Sophia's status serves as a barometer with which we can measure imperialist and supremacist, ethnic (Turkish) and religious (Islamic) pressure, now clearly rising in Turkey. The trend bodes ill for Turkey's remnant Greek, Assyrian and Armenian Christians (the descendants of genocide survivors), as well as for Turkey's growing cohort of Christian converts from Islam. Please pray for the Church in Turkey.

* INDONESIA [RLPB 553 (10 June)], after Indonesia's Communications and Information Ministry had a local language Bible app removed from the Google Play Store at the behest of the governor of West Sumatra. This further consolidates the terrible precedent already established in West Java (where local officials have even defied the Supreme Court) that governors are free to enforce Islamic norms depriving citizens of their liberty, contrary to the spirit of Pancasila and the religious freedom provisions guaranteed in Indonesia's constitution. Please pray.

* SYRIA [RLPB 554 (17 June)], after the US government's 'Caesar Act' came into force, essentially placing long-sanctioned, war-ravaged Syria in a state of economic siege.

UPDATE: 'A DIABOLICAL ACT'

Archbishop Joseph Tobji of Aleppo

Maronite Archbishop Joseph Tobji (49) of Aleppo recently spoke to the Vatican's Fides news agency concerning the US Caesar Act, which elevates sanctions against Syria to the level of an economic siege. The Archbishop told Fides that the US claim that the sanctions are 'targeted' is a lie 'that not even a child would believe'. The Archbishop insists the sanctions are designed 'to increase the suffering of the population to fuel popular discontent and thus produce regime-change. But,' he adds, 'this way of acting is criminal. Putting an entire people in distress at a time like this, where there is also the spectre of the pandemic around the world, is inhuman.' Archbishop Tobji laments that the US government is willing to go to any lengths to pursue its goals, 'even to sacrificing millions of people, poor people and families'. He condemns this as 'a diabolical act'. [More on this next month.] Please pray for the Church in Syria. [See: RLPB 554 (17 June) for prayer points.]

JUNE 2020 ROUND-UP - also this month

* HONG KONG, CHINA: AUTONOMOUS NO MORE

On 22 May China's Premier Li Keqiang announced that the National People's Congress would write national security legislation into Hong Kong (HK) law, bypassing HK's legislative council [see RLPB 551 (26 May 2020)]. A three-day legislative session was held in Beijing over 18-20 June, in which senior Chinese lawmakers reviewed the draft legislation for the first time. Another three-day session will commence on 28 June, during which many believe the new national security law will be passed in time for the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule on 1 July. According to reports, Beijing will set up a dedicated central government office in Hong Kong to manage national-security affairs; provisions in the new national-security law will supersede existing Hong Kong legislation; and China's legislature will be empowered to issue judicial interpretations on the law, meaning Beijing will have the final say over how the law will be implemented. As RLPB has warned repeatedly, the impact this will have on the Church in HK - and indeed on the Chinese Church long served by the Church in a free and autonomous HK - will be devastating. Please pray: may the Lord grant divine wisdom to the Church in China.

* IRAQ: TURKEY BOMBS NORTHERN BORDER REGIONS

In August 2014, ISIS ethnically cleansed Northern Iraq's Nineveh Plains of its indigenous Assyrian Christian inhabitants. While some 70,000 Assyrians fled east to Erbil, some 60,000 headed north to Dohuk Governorate, historically an Assyrian region. On 20 and 21 June, Turkish jets bombed the area around Dohuk's Zakho district. Close to the Turkish border, Zakho is home to almost 200,000 mostly Kurdish and Assyrian civilians. While NATO-member Turkey claims to be fighting 'PKK terrorists', anxious Christians are preparing to flee yet again. On 20 June bombs fell close to the Christian village of Bersev, home to some 300 minority families. Civilian casualties and property damage have been reported. Please pray for Iraq's betrayed, abandoned and gravely imperilled indigenous Assyrian Christians.

* NORTH KOREA: HOPES FADE AS TENSIONS SOAR

On 16 June the Kim regime in Pyongyang blew up the inter-Korean liaison office at Kaesong, North Korea. The next day it announced that it would deploy troops to the demilitarised zone (DMZ), particularly to the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Mount Kumgang Resort. Located in the currently defunct Kaesong Industrial Zone, the inter-Korean liaison office was opened in 2018 as a venue in which officials from the two Koreas could meet and work through the details of various projects aimed at reducing tensions and facilitating rapprochement. The sensational demolition sends a clear message: co-operation is over. Pyongyang claims to be retaliating against North Korean defectors and activists in the South who regularly launch balloons carrying anti-regime leaflets and other 'unauthorised materials' into the North. However, the reality is more complex. In January, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, NK closed its only active border, its border with China. The border closure has served to compound the difficulties caused by US sanctions; the result is a serious shortage of food and medicines throughout the state. The Kim regime is frustrated and growing increasingly desperate. On Thursday 25 June, the Koreas will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. Activists on both sides of the border are preparing to launch propaganda leaflets (hopefully that will be all that is launched!). Tensions are soaring. Please pray.

Once the centre of Korean Christianity [CBN video], Pyongyang under the Soviet-appointed Kim Il-sung sank to become one of the world's most severe human rights abusers and persecutors of Christians. 'There can be little doubt that an intensive and furious spiritual battle is underway over North Korea, and over its integration into East Asia (the spiritual powerhouse of the future!)' [RLPB 490 (20 Feb 2019)]. Please pray that the unprecedented steps taken in 2018 and 2019 will not have been in vain. Please pray that this extraordinary opportunity for positive change will not be lost. Please pray for the long-suffering, severely persecuted Church in North Korea ... may the Lord deliver her.

Background: (in chronological order)

North Korea: Reasons for Hope (RLM, 13 March 2018)

RLPB 446, A Step in the Right Direction (14 March 2018) 

RLPB 458, US-NK Summit (Singapore) (6 June 2018)

RLPB 471, A Stalemate in need of a breakthrough (5 Sept 2018) 

RLPB 490, US-NK Summit (Hanoi) (20 Feb 2019)

* PAKISTAN (1): WAITING FOR JUSTICE

Imran Masih 
(Aid to the Church in Need)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pakistan's courts face a massive backlog of cases. Unfortunately, appeals against blasphemy convictions are not on the court's priority list. Having spent six years on death row, Shafqat Emmanuel Masih (who is paralysed) and his wife, Shagufta Kausar (who worked as a caretaker in a Christian school), were due to have their appeal heard by the Lahore Court of Appeal on 8 April [RLPB 539 (4 March)]. The Christian couple from Gojra, Punjab, were tortured and sentenced to death in 2014 for allegedly sending blasphemous text messages to an Islamic cleric, despite being illiterate. Their appeal has been delayed without a new date being announced. Please pray. Christian grocer, Imran Masih of Faisalabad, received a life sentence for blasphemy in July 2009. He was cleaning out his shop and burning off the rubbish when he was accused of burning pages that allegedly contained Arabic-language verses from the Quran. According to his lawyer Khalil Tahir Sandhu, Imran's appeal has been postponed almost 70 times over the course of nearly eleven years. Imran Masih's next hearing date at Lahore High Court has been set for Monday 6 July. Please pray.

PAKISTAN (2): THE LAW AS A WEAPON

Anwar Masih of Lahore was arrested on 2 June for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. In a case that may be the first of its kind in Pakistan, the complainants are the man's wife and daughter. It is alleged that Anwar's wife, Kausar Parveen, and daughter, Samreen, ran a beauty parlour in Lahore and that Kausar had an illicit affair with Akash Maqsood, a Muslim. She also secretly married him, converted to Islam and become pregnant with his child. When Anwar discovered the deception, he was understandably shocked and furious. In his anger he railed against his unfaithful wife and against Islam. The daughter filmed the outburst on her phone and presented it as evidence. The Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement UK is a Christian charity dedicated to helping persecuted Christians in Pakistan. Its director Nasir Saeed explains: 'This is another example of the misuse of the blasphemy law where a daughter gets rid of her father and a wife her husband, simply because he cannot accept what they have done. Masih will have to wait years and years to prove himself innocent and has no future.' Please pray.

Shagufta (l) and Shafqat (r)

[NOTE: In the case of Shafqat Emmanuel Masih and Shagufta Kausar (pictured right), it seems likely that a 'Christian' neighbour with whom the couple had a dispute may have framed them for the capital crime of blasphemy so as to punish or get rid of them. Lord have mercy!]

* IN BRIEF

* Violent persecution against Christians continues without relief across Hindu Nationalist India. See https://morningstarnews.org (South/Central Asia / India). Please pray.

* Islamic jihad in the form of farm invasions, ethnic cleansing, abductions and terror continue without relief throughout the north and volatile Middle Belt of President Muhammadu Buhari's Nigeria. Visit https://silentslaughternigeria.com and check the incident tracker; and https://morningstarnews.org (Sub-Saharan Africa / Nigeria). Please pray.

-----------------------------------------------------

Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She serves as Director of Advocacy at Canberra-based Christian Faith and Freedom (CFF) and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com 

RLPB 490. North Korea-United States Summit: Hanoi 27-28 February; (plus Nigeria elections update)

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 490 | Wed 20 Feb 2019

Please forward this prayer bulletin widely, and encourage others to sign up to the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin blog. "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16 NIV)


NORTH KOREA- UNITED STATES SUMMIT: HANOI 27-28 FEBRUARY
-- plus Nigeria Elections Update 

-- by Elizabeth Kendal

NORTH KOREA- UNITED STATES SUMMIT: HANOI 27-28 FEBRUARY

Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam, will host the second North Korea-US Summit on Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 February. The choice of Hanoi is really significant for, like North Korea, North Vietnam has fought a war against the US. Like Korea, Vietnam suffered immensely and was left ravaged by the Cold War conflict. However, unlike Pyongyang (the capital of North Korea), Hanoi is now an ally of the US, 'a major cog in the global trading network', and one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Millions of Vietnamese have been lifted out of poverty, despite Vietnam remaining a repressive one-party state. North Korean and United States officials landed in Hanoi on Saturday 16 February to prepare for the summit. Kim Jong-un will arrive on Monday 25 February for bilateral discussions with Vietnamese officials. A key focus of the NK-US (Kim-Trump) Summit will doubtless be Washington's fixation on complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation (CVID) -- a deal-breaker, if ever there was one -- as a prerequisite to sanctions relief.  Pyongyang will continue to press for step-by-step, synchronised confidence-building measures -- a plan supported by neighbours South Korea, China and Russia, and possibly by President Trump himself. [See RLPB 471 (5 Sept 2018)]

Journalists, analysts, diplomats and politicians who say 'nothing has changed -- we've seen it all before,' are wrong. Today's situation is entirely different, giving reason for hope [see RLPB 446 (14 Mar 2018)]. Because virtually all reporting on North Korea is negative (much of it out-dated) few people are aware of how much the situation has changed in recent years. They are unaware that while Kim Jong-un has retained the programs and revolutionary language of his ancestors, he has tweaked the details somewhat. It used to be the case that the central government took all (100 percent) of a farming co-operative's produce before distributing a fixed ration. By providing no incentive to work hard or innovate, the system contributed to famine. In 2012, just months after assuming control, Kim tweaked the system. Since then, the government takes a set quota and the farming co-operative (now defined in such a way that it could be a family) is free to keep and trade everything it produces above that fixed quota. [See Religious Liberty Monitoring, 'Belligerence vs Smart Policy', (19 Feb 2014).] It does appear that every effort is being made to pursue economic reform and raise the standard of living as a prerequisite to increased openness.

On 12 February a delegation of some 250 South Koreans travelled to North Korea's Mount Geumgang (Mount Kumgang) tourist precinct for two days of civilian engagement with North Korean counterparts. The total number of delegates was around 400, with representatives from a wide range of fields, including religion, economy, agriculture, the environment, academia, peace, labour rights, women's rights, youth, art and culture. The aim is to establish co-operative projects, joint symposiums and student exchanges.


And that is not the only engagement that is happening. On Tuesday 19 February the Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast a short documentary ['Out of Breath' (29 minutes)] on its Foreign Correspondent program, showing how American, South Korean and North Korean doctors are cooperating in a project run by the Eugene Bell Foundation (a Christian charity) to treat multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis (MDRTB) in North Korea. Dr Stephen Linton is convinced that most people have an image of North Korea that is both wrong and unhelpful. 'What you think you know is not what you will find,' he says. It is a very moving program and shows what is already possible.

There can be little doubt that an intensive and furious spiritual battle is underway over North Korea, and over its integration into East Asia (the spiritual powerhouse of the future!).

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR GOD TO 

* sustain and richly bless the long-suffering and severely persecuted remnant Church in North Korea.

* interpose himself in the North Korea-United States Summit in Hanoi (27-28 February) and influence proceedings for the benefit of the Church, the nation and the world.

* intervene creatively in the Korean Peninsula, according to his perfect wisdom, in line with his boundless grace, to bring peace, transformation and liberty, to the glory of his name.

May religious freedom be realised. May the Church's days of suffering soon be over. May the Church be free to serve North Korea's 'harassed and helpless' (Matthew 9:35-38) and bring Gospel light to those in darkness.

--------------------------------------------
Update: NIGERIA ELECTIONS
--------------------------------------------

Five hours before the polls were to open on 16 February, Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced that the polls would be postponed by one week. The presidential and national assembly elections will now be held on Saturday 23 February, and the governorship and state assembly elections on 9 March. INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, told a news conference: 'Following a careful review of the implementation of its logistics and operational plan, and the determination to conduct free, fair, and credible elections, the commission came to the conclusion that proceeding with the elections as scheduled is no longer feasible.'

While the presidential candidates are blaming each other for the delay and crying 'conspiracy', the INEC chairman's claim seems reasonable considering that in the past week two electoral offices (complete with many thousands of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) were burned to the ground and a shipping container load of PVC readers was destroyed just days before those machines were to be distributed to polling booths [see RLPB 489 (13 Feb)]. Some election observers have expressed doubts however, that the INEC will be able to do all that needs to be done before the 23 February polls, including auditing ballot boxes.

With tensions soaring, the postponement could have been enough to trigger communal violence. Nigerians, however, heeded calls to remain calm; surely this is an answer to prayer. It is of great concern that President Buhari has declared that anybody who tries to interfere with the election would do so 'at the expense of his life'. The opposition has objected, slamming Buhari's rhetoric as 'a licence to kill'. It seems highly likely that when the results are announced, the loser will immediately cry foul. If Buhari cries foul, Muslims will surely riot. If Atiku cries foul, that too could trigger Muslim riots! The situation facing vulnerable Christian communities and ethnic Igbo throughout the North and Middle Belt is very serious indeed. In praying for peace we are praying for a miracle. The peace to date is nothing short of miraculous.

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR GOD TO INTERVENE

* so that Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission will be able to do all the work it must for free and fair elections.

* so that peace will hold, no matter the result; may the Lord's hand of protection be over his precious and faithful people.


SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE 
-------------------------------------------------------------
 NORTH KOREA-US SUMMIT in HANOI 27-28 FEBRUARY
-- plus NIGERIA'S POSTPONED ELECTIONS.

A second North Korea-US (Kim-Trump) Summit will be held in Vietnam on 27-28 February. Washington continues to insist that complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation be a prerequisite to sanctions relief. Meanwhile, Pyongyang continues to press for step-by-step, synchronised confidence-building measures -- a plan supported by its neighbours South Korea, China and Russia, and possibly by President Trump. The goal must be peace and trust; only then will the situation improve significantly. Economic reform is underway, as is cross-border engagement with South Korea -- including religious engagement -- and co-operation with foreign Christian charities. We must keep praying that our sovereign God will intervene with a miracle: to bring peace, openness and liberty to North Korea and its Christians. Also, may peace, unity and righteousness prevail in Nigeria following the 23 February and 9 March elections.

-------------------------------------------------------------

For research purposes, all Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletins are archived at Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin.

Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She serves as Director of Advocacy at Canberra-based Christian Faith and Freedom (CFF), and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com 

RLPB 479. Oct Update. Incl. Burma, Nigeria, Pakistan, North Korea, Sudan (Darfur), Algeria, India, Kenya, Vietnam,

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 479 | Wed 31 Oct 2018

Please forward this prayer bulletin widely, and encourage others to sign up to the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin blog. "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16 NIV)

----------------------------------------------------
International Day of Prayer (IDOP) for the Persecuted Church
IDOP 2018: Sunday 4 or 11 November
See: Critical Prayer Requests (CPR) for states where Christians are persecuted and/or where religious liberty is threatened.
-----------------------------------------------------

NOTICE: There will be a two-week break in the RLPB ministry as Elizabeth Kendal will be speaking at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya. The Strategic Prayer Network of MANI (Movement for African National Initiatives) will be holding its 2018 conference from Tuesday 6 to Saturday 10 November. The conference -- the theme of which is 'The Convergence of Prayer & Missions' -- will include a special focus on persecution. Please pray for this conference, that all who attend will have safe travel and be greatly encouraged. The next RLPB will be published on Wednesday 21 November. Until then, the material in this RLPB and on the Critical Prayer Requests (CPR) website will provide intercessors more than enough to go on with.

-- Elizabeth Kendal

------------------------------------------------------

OCTOBER 2018 UPDATE -- this month we prayed concerning ...

* BURMA (MYANMAR) (RLPB 475; updated in RLPB 476), where the China-backed United Wa State Army (UWSA) has been destroying crosses, closing and demolishing churches and arresting and interrogating pastors as it moves to exert control over religion in north-east Burma's  unrecognised but de facto independent Wa State.

UPDATE BURMA: On 16 October Catholic media reported that the UWSA had expelled two Salesian priests, three nuns from the Missionary Society of St Paul and three lay teachers from the Wa hills. Furthermore, local believers are now prohibited from reading the Bible and praying together, even in private homes. In a letter dated 22 October, Lahu Baptist leaders called on the UWSA to release the 41 Bible students who had been arrested and forcibly recruited into the UWSA. They also asked that their churches be re-opened and their property returned. According to this later report, a total of 19 Catholics have been expelled, along with twelve pastors from the Lahu Baptist Convention. The Wa region is home to many ethnic groups, with Christians comprising around 30 percent of the estimated 450,000 Wa population. Pray for the Church in Burma's Wa region.

* RLPB 476 of 1000. To commemorate the milestone of 1000 religious liberty prayer bulletins, this RLPB comprised a short article dedicated to those who bear the burden of persecution for Christ's sake as well as those who help bear that burden (see Galatians 6:2) by means of intercessory prayer (i.e. 'advocacy to the highest authority'). RLPB 476 also included updates on Burma; on the Nigerian Christian captive Leah Sharibu (15) whom Boko Haram had threatened to execute; on North Korea; and on Pakistani Christian death-row prisoner Asia Bibi whose Supreme Court appeal had finally been heard.

As the RLPB ministry commemorated the publication of the 1000th religious liberty prayer bulletin, Australian missionary doctor Ken Elliot (84) suffered through his 1000th day in captivity. Dr Elliott and his wife, Jocelyn, had run a 120-bed charitable medical clinic in Djibo, northern Burkina Faso, for over 40 years before they were abducted on 15 January 2016. While Mrs Elliot was subsequently released, Dr Elliot remains captive to a group associated with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). He is being held in the Malian desert along with several other foreigners, most of whom are aid workers and Christian. Pray that the Lord will sustain, comfort, encourage and deliver Dr Elliott and his fellow captives.

UPDATE NIGERIA: CHRISTIAN CAPTIVES DEEMED SLAVES

As updated in RLPB 477 (17 Oct), after executing two Muslim aid workers as apostates (for working with the Red Cross), Boko Haram has now officially deemed Christian schoolgirl Leah Sharibu (15) and Christian nurse Alice Loksha Ngaddah (24, mother of two small children) to be their slaves. In its statement, Boko Haram elaborated: 'Based on our [Islamic] doctrines, it is now lawful for us to do whatever we want to do with them.' Pray for Nigeria and in particular for Leah and Alice; may the Lord protect, sustain and deliver them.

UPDATE NORTH KOREA: PRAY THE DOORS WILL OPEN

When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un indicated that he would welcome the Pope if he were to visit North Korea, South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to extend an invitation. On 19 October Thae Yong Ho -- the highest level diplomat ever to defect from North Korea -- released a video via Daily NK entitled 'Hoping for a brave decision from the Pope'.  Thae's insights are both fascinating and encouraging. Not only does Thae reveal that North Korean diplomats have been engaged in high level 'under-the-table negotiations' with the Vatican since the late 1980s, he also reports that, whilst Pyongyang's churches are definitely fake – existing purely for propaganda purposes, the fake believers dispatched to attend them have mostly become believers. Following that line, Thae believes that while any welcome extended to the Pope would be similarly fake, his visit could however open the door for love, faith and hope to enter North Korea. Pray that God would intervene in North Korea so that its 'gates' and 'ancient doors' might finally be opened 'that the King of glory [the Lord Almighty] may come in' (Psalm 24).

UPDATE PAKISTAN: ASIA BIBI STILL WAITING

Always good at talking, the United Nations has issued a lot of statements this past month, but not a single statement on the situation facing Asia Bibi. Fortunately not everyone is maintaining silence. On Sunday evening 21 October Australian MP Michael Sukkar (LNP, Deakin) highlighted the plight of Asia Bibi as he called on the Australian government to cease foreign aid to Pakistan while that country is persecuting Christians and other minority groups. Meanwhile, Asia and her family waits. On 19 October World Watch Monitor released an informative report which highlights some of the gross inconsistencies in the case and includes a video interview with the family. Pray for God to intervene in Pakistan, for the country's vulnerable minority Christians and especially at this time for Asia Bibi.

* THE CHRISTIAN CRISIS IN IRAQ & SYRIA (RLPB 477), where the Assyrian nation [the indigenous Christian nation of Mesopotamia (Syria-Iraq)] is in a struggle for its very survival. Pray for the Church in the Middle East, in particular for the Assyrians of Mesopotamia for whom the Christian Crisis is most severe.

* SUDAN (RLPB 478), where the Islamist Arab nationalist regime in Khartoum continues its campaign to fully Islamise and Arabise all areas under its control.

UPDATE SUDAN: CHURCH IN SOUTH DARFUR DRIVEN UNDERGROUND

Middle East Concern (MEC) has now confirmed that Tajadin Idris Yousef, the leader of the group of 13 Sudanese Christians arrested in the city of Nyala, South Darfur, on 10 October, will be charged with apostasy. Of the 13 arrested, three believers from the Nuba Mountains were released when it became clear they were all from a Christian background; the rest were detained as apostates (converts from Islam). All but one were released ten days later after they had recanted their faith under torture and paid a fine for 'disturbing the peace'. In their hearts they are still believers. Despite beatings and torture, Tajadin Idris Yousef refused to recant, hence the charge of apostasy. He was released on 22 October pending a court hearing. The Church has since gone 'underground'. Pray for the Church in South Darfur. Pray for the believers who under torture recanted with their lips (but not their hearts); may they know the Lord's grace, comfort, healing and restoration (Psalm 23:3a); may the devil have no victory over them and may no division permeate the Church.  Pray for Tajadin Idris Yousef; may the Lord sustain, embolden and deliver him.

'Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues,  and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour.  For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.' (Matthew 10:17-20 ESV)


OCTOBER 2018 ROUND-UP -- also this month …

* ALGERIA: FIVE TO FACE COURT ON 6 NOVEMBER

Church closed! (MEC)

Five Algerian Christians -- including three from one family -- will face court on Tuesday 6 November accused of 'inciting a Muslim to change his religion' and 'performing religious worship in an unauthorised place'. The complaint was brought by a woman whose husband had converted from Islam to Christianity. In Algeria it is illegal to 'incite a Muslim to change his religion'.  The believers are all from Bechloul town in Bouira Province, 100km south-east of the capital, Algiers. Christians continue to face pressure in Algeria. On 16 October police officers closed and sealed the doors of the Protestant church in Azaghar, a village near Akbou, about 180km south-east of Algiers. The church, which is a member of the legally recognised Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA), has been active for more than five years and has about 300 congregants. As the 2019 presidential poll looms, Islam may well be exploited for political gain. Pray for God to intervene in Algeria.

* INDIA: HINDUTVA ESCALATES IN THE SOUTH

For many decades now, Hindu nationalists have concentrated their activities in the northern tribal belt. Yet Hindutva (militant Hindu nationalism) is escalating in the south. Sources report: 'The southern states of Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala saw at least 60 cases of persecution of Christians in the first nine months of 2018, compared with 36 such attacks in the first nine months of 2017.' Christian leaders in south India told Morning Star News (MSN) that the escalation of persecution can be attributed to the increased activism of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteers who incite local Hindus to attack Christians. Furthermore, police are increasingly implicated. On 6 October a police inspector with close ties to the RSS led five police officers in a violent raid on a house church in Aralvaimozhi, Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu State. This is but one of many attacks. Christian leaders told MSN that the police are misusing their power to persecute Christians and that 'it is all happening under the supervision of RSS and BJP supporters in the local government'. Pray for the Church in India.

* KENYA: CHRISTIAN TEACHERS TARGETED IN NORTH-EAST

At around 1am on the night of 10 October at least 20 militants -- believed to be affiliated with al-Shabaab – targeted non-local teachers at the Arabia Boys Secondary School in Mandera County, close to the dangerously porous Kenya-Somali border. After overwhelming the four security guards, the militants threw an explosive device into the house where the school's four non-local teachers were sleeping, setting it on fire. Philip Okumu (26) and Daniel Wekesa (39) -- both Christians -- were shot and killed as they fled the flames. The school's other two non-local teachers, Elijah Nderitu and Kelvin Lomusi, managed to escape alive. The militants were clearly working from excellent intelligence; they knew exactly where the Christian teachers would be found. It is not the first time al-Shabaab has targeted Christian teachers in this predominantly Muslim region [see RLPB 411 (21 June 2017)].  Pray for the Lord to protect and bless all Christians working in Muslim-majority eastern Kenya.

* NIGERIA: SLAUGHTER IN JOS 

Blessing Kogi (23),
with bullet wounds
to her neck and shoulder.
(WWM)

On the evening of 27 September gunmen -- some in military uniforms, others in all black -- went on a killing spree in the quiet, residential neighbourhood of Rukuba Road, in the south-western outskirts of Jos, the capital of Plateau State. In total, 15 people were killed. Blessing Kogi (23) lost ten members of her family that night and World Watch Monitor (WWM) names them all in its report.  Twelve members of the family had gathered for a meal when the militants burst in, shooting wildly. Blessing and one cousin survived with injuries. Her father arrived home from work to find most of his family dead. According to Blessing, 'The people wearing black clothes spoke Hausa and Fulani, while the others wearing army uniforms spoke correct English.' What's more, as the gunmen were leaving she heard one of the men in army uniform say, 'We have finished our work; they should come and pay us our money.' Blessing requests prayers for her father, whom she described as a broken man. Questions are being asked as to how gunmen can commit such carnage in a suburb of a state capital and within walking distance of a military barracks. Pray for Nigeria; may the Lord intervene in grace and mercy so the Islamisation and terror will end.

* NIGERIA: CHAOS IN KADUNA

Pandemonium erupted in a market in Kasuwan Magani in the Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna on 18 October after a Muslim cried 'thief' to deliberately trigger a riot. The cry quickly changed to 'Allahu Akbar' as Muslims attacked homes and businesses belonging to Christians (mostly ethnic Igbo); one church was also torched. A total of 55 people were confirmed dead, many burned beyond recognition. A later skirmish claimed another 27 lives. On 19 October the revered tribal leader of a majority-Christian area in southern Kaduna came to visit the site of the violence only to be kidnapped; his security detachment was killed. Despite ransom being paid, Raphael Maiwada Galadima, a Catholic, was executed; his body was found on 26 October. The violence has sent ethnic-religious tensions soaring. The Nigerian Air Force has deployed combat helicopters, surveillance aircraft and a detachment of Special Forces to the area to restore order. While commercial activities are slowly resuming, most Igbo businesses remain closed. Pray for Nigeria; may the Lord intervene to save this country from civil war.

* PAKISTAN:  LIFE IN PRISON FOR BLASPHEMY

As Christian death-row blasphemy prisoner Asia Bibi awaits the ruling of the Supreme Court (which heard her appeal on 8 October) harsh and manifestly unjust sentences continue to be handed down to those accused of blasphemy. In June 2015 Yaqoob Bashir, a 25-year-old mentally disabled Pakistani Christian, was accused of burning a booklet that allegedly contained verses of the Quran. On 28 September 2018 the district court in Mirpur Khas, Sindh Province, deemed Bashir guilty of blasphemy and sentenced him to life in prison. His lawyer will appeal, but, as in Asia Bibi's case, the appeal process can take many years during which time the prisoner's survival is not guaranteed. Pray for a breakthrough in Pakistan, and may the Lord protect, sustain, comfort and encourage his Church.

* VIETNAM: IMPRISONED PASTOR'S HEALTH DETERIORATES

Pastor Nguyen Trung Ton after a
beating in February 2017.

 Protestant pastor Nguyen Trung Ton (46) was arrested in July 2017 for his pro-democracy and religious liberty advocacy. At that time, Ton was carrying severe leg injuries acquired during a vicious beating in February 2017 [see RLPB 448 (28 March)]. On 5 April 2018 Ton and five other members of the Brotherhood for Democracy group were tried in a Hanoi Court and charged with 'carrying out activities aimed at overthrowing the People's administration' [RLPB 450 (11 April)]. Ton was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The February 2017 beating left Ton with a torn ligament and crushed leg muscles. Confined to prison and without medical care, Ton's legs have never healed. On 23 October Ton's wife, Nguyen Thi Lanh, told Radio Free Asia that her husband's health is deteriorating. 'Prison authorities have not allowed me to send him any medication, and now he can't walk and is very ill,' she said. On 7 June 2018 two of the Brotherhood for Democracy prisoners -- leader Nguyen Van Dai and his assistant (Ms) Le Thu Ha -- were released from prison and exiled to Germany [RLPB 459 (13 June)]. Pray that God will intervene for Pastor Nguyen Trung Ton.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She serves as Director of Advocacy at Canberra-based Christian Faith and Freedom (CFF), and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com