RLPB 703. July Update, incl. Vietnam, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nicaragua, Nigeria

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 703 | Wed 26 Jul 2023
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JULY 2023 UPDATE & ROUNDUP
By Elizabeth Kendal

UPDATE: DURING JULY WE PRAYED CONCERNING

VIETNAM [RLPB 700 (5 July)], after the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam deployed massive military force into the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak in response to the deadly 11 June attack on two government offices in Dak Lak’s Cu Kuin district. We prayed specifically for the Central Highlands’ indigenous, predominantly Christian hills tribes who feared the deployment could herald an escalation in ethno-religious persecution and displacement. We also prayed for imprisoned Protestant Pastor and religious liberty advocate Nguyen Trung Ton (51), whose health continues to deteriorate as the authorities continue to withhold medical care.

UPDATE: On 21 July the Director of Dak Lak’s provincial police announced that all six suspected ringleaders of the 11 June attacks had been arrested. In total, more than 90 people have been arrested on multiple charges including terrorism. Please pray that the situation will now settle and that the government will withdraw its forces. Pray that no innocent, wrongly arrested person will be condemned; may justice prevail. Pray that the government will not exploit the situation to advance the ethno-religious persecution and displacement of the Central Highlands’ Montagnard/Degar Christians. Pray for the Church in Vietnam.

PHILIPPINES [RLPB 701 (12 July)], where the government of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Vice President Sara Duterte appear set to continue the dangerous practice of ‘red-tagging’ its critics. Since the May 2022 elections, religious workers – including priests, bishops and missionaries – associated with the Protestant Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI, an independent member of the worldwide Anglican Communion), the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) and the Roman Catholic Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) have been ‘red-tagged’ – i.e. falsely accused of recruiting for or financing the New People’s Army (NPA; the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines). Victims of ‘red-tagging’ are often arrested, murdered or disappeared – mostly at the hands of the Philippine Armed Forces, and mostly for doing nothing more than criticising government policy. Please pray.

AZERBAIJAN AND IRAQ [RLPB 702 (19 July)], where remnant indigenous Armenians in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K) and remnant indigenous Assyrians in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains now face political (as distinct from military) efforts to drive them from their lands. While the besieged Christians of N-K face a government-induced humanitarian catastrophe, the displaced Christians of the Nineveh Plains face a political conspiracy of dispossession. If these Christians are forced to surrender their lands – lands they have inhabited for millennia – they will be replaced by land-grabbing Muslims backed by colonising governments. Those colonising Muslims will move quickly to erase millennia of Armenian, Assyrian and Christian heritage, as if it never existed. For up to 400,000 already traumatised Armenians and Assyrians, this is a Christians crisis of existential proportions. Please pray.

JULY 2023 ROUND-UP – ALSO THIS MONTH

* ERITREA: PASTORS MARK 7000 NIGHTS IN PRISON

On Saturday 22 July, as noted by Voice of the Martyrs (USA), Pastors Haile Nayzgi and Kiflu Gebremeskel spent their 7000th night in detention. Arrested on 23 May 2004, the pastors were leaders in the Full Gospel/Kale Hiwot Church of Eritrea, one of the many Protestant denominations banned in May 2002. Pastor Haile Nayzgi also served as chair of that denomination, while Pastor Kiflu Gebremeskel also served as chair of the Eritrean Evangelical Alliance. While Pastor Nayzgi is reported to be in good health, Pastor Gebremeskel has been seen ‘visiting hospital frequently under tight security’. Neither man has ever been charged with any crime. Both are believed to be held in the maximum-security Wengel Mermera Central Criminal Investigation Interrogation Centre. An estimated 400 Christians in Eritrea are currently imprisoned for their faith, many in appalling conditions in shipping containers in military camps, in unsanitary over-crowded prisons, and even in underground cells in the desert [see also RLPB 671, The Horror of Eritrea, 16 Nov 2022]. Please pray for the Church in Eritrea; and may God intervene to deliver Eritreans from tyranny.

Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O Lord, make haste to help me! (Psalm 70:1 ESV)

* INDIA: MANIPUR TEARING APART

On 19 July footage emerged from Manipur showing a mob of hundreds of ethnic Meitei Hindu men parading two naked ethnic Kuki Christian women through the streets. The horrific crime, which took place on 4 May (one day after the violence erupted), went far beyond mere humiliation. According to a report by British Asian Christians (21 July), the terrified women – aged 50 and 19 – were abused, groped and assaulted, before the younger woman was taken into a field and gang raped. When her father and brother tried to rescue her, they were bludgeoned to death. It is alleged (unconfirmed) that the women – who had been hiding in the bush as the Meitei burned their village – were betrayed by police who, instead of helping them as promised, led them into the hands of the mob.

Kuki 'Rally for Separate Administration',
Churachandpur, 20 July. (India Today)

The human toll – which is overwhelmingly Kuki – now stands at: at least 140 dead and 60,000 displaced; with over 4400 Kuki homes and 357 churches (Kuki and Meitei) burned, many razed to the ground. Convinced their relationship with the Meitei Hindus of the Imphal Valley is now damaged beyond repair, the Christian Kuki of the Manipur hills are demanding a separate state. On Thursday 20 July some 10,000 ethnic Kuki gathered in Lamka Public Ground in Churachandpur (in the hills, 63km south-west of Imphal) for the ‘Rally for Separate Administration’. Please pray!

Let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life! Let them be turned back and brought to dishonour who delight in my hurt! Let them turn back because of their shame who say, “Aha, Aha!” (Psalm 70:2-3)

* IRAN: 50 CONVERTS ARRESTED IN A WEEK

Article18 reports (18 July): ‘More than 50 Christian converts have been arrested in a rash of new incidents across five Iranian cities over the past seven days, with fears the number could rise much higher as fresh reports keep coming in. At least 51 of those arrested at their homes or house-churches – in the cities of Tehran, Karaj, Rasht, Orumiyeh and Aligoudarz – remain in detention on unknown charges, while others have been released on bail.’ The evident crackdown on converts and house-churches comes as the Shi’ite regime re-instigates (after a brief pause) its aggressive policing of Islamic norms. On Sunday 16 July the regime announced its morality police patrol units would resume operations. Of particular concern to the regime is women’s compliance concerning the hijab, which has been compulsory since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Christian fear this wave of arrests heralds the beginning of a renewed effort to crush dissent, enforce Islamic norms and revive the values of the Islamic Revolution. Please pray for the Church in Iran.

May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, 'God is great!' (Psalm 70:4)

* NICARAGUA: BISHOP CHOOSES JAIL OVER ROME

Having already chosen jail over exile in the USA, Bishop Rolando José Álvarez (56) has now chosen jail over Rome. Bishop Álvarez was arrested on 19 August 2022, ostensibly for his outspoken criticism of the regime of President Daniel Ortega. On 9 February 2023 the Nicaraguan government forcibly exiled 222 political prisoners, stripping them of their citizenship and putting them on a flight to the USA. Despite being given the option of exile, Bishop Álvarez chose to stay in his native country to be with the Catholic community under repression by the Ortega regime. The next day, on 10 February, the regime stripped Bishop Álvarez of his citizenship and sentenced him to 26 years in prison [see RLPB 681, 22 Feb]. Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reports that, on 4 July, Bishop Álvarez was taken from prison to meet with a mediator ‘assigned by the Vatican who tried to persuade him to go to Rome. The bishop refused the offer and called on the government to grant his unconditional release and that of five other imprisoned priests, to unfreeze the bank accounts of Roman Catholic dioceses throughout the country and to halt its targeting of religious groups and leaders.’ The next day, on 5 July, Bishop Álvarez was returned to La Modelo Tipitapa prison, where he will continue to share in the suffering of the Nicaraguan Church. Lord have mercy! Please pray.

But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay! (Psalm 70:5)

* NIGERIA: CHRISTIAN CRISIS IN PLATEAU STATE

Since mid-May, Christians in central Plateau State have been under sustained attack as large bands of Muslim Fulani herdsmen have attacked village after village, seemingly with impunity. Morning Star News (MSN) reports (7 June) that between mid-May and early June at least 300 Christians, including two pastors, were killed and 30,000 residents were displaced, while some 2,000 homes and 28 churches were destroyed in Mangu Local Government Area (LGA), central Plateau. In June the killings continued and spread west to Barkin Ladi and Riyom LGAs in Plateau’s north-west bordering some of the most conflict-stricken LGAs of south-east Kaduna. On 4 July, Truth Nigeria warned that ‘several hundred terrorists’ were ‘massing in the Fulani ethnic settlement of Bangai [in Riyom LGA] … They are moving on motorbikes, 3 men to a bike and may number as many as 800.’ On Sunday 9 July the new governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang imposed a 24-hour curfew on Mangu LGA in an attempt to restore order as the army sent reinforcements.

TVC News Nigeria, 13 July 2023,
video 3:13mins

On 17 July Governor Mutfwang labelled the wave of killings ‘a clear genocide’, adding, ‘what we are seeing is a deliberated and orchestrated plan to wipe out numbers of people’. As he noted, these killings cannot be described as ‘herder-farmer clashes’, for the villages are attacked at night and the residents are slaughtered in their beds. On 20 July Truth Nigeria warned that the ‘mother of all invasions’ was being prepared. According to intelligence they had received, the ‘invasion’ would start in Mangu LGA, and spread into neighbouring Barkin Ladi, and on through Riyom, Jos South and Bassa, employing not only Fulani herdsmen, but jihadists and mercenaries recruited from across Nigeria and the Sahel. By 24 July officials were reporting that Mangu LGA was housing some 80,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in eleven makeshift camps, relying mostly on donations from local churches. One IDP, Grace Emmanuel (70) laments: ‘The crisis has made us homeless, our farmland has been destroyed and we have to manage to live in this primary school. It’s not easy, we don’t have anything to eat. We go and fetch water from the well, [but] sometimes the water is not enough for thousands of us.’ Lord have mercy! Please pray.

Make haste, O God, to deliver me! … O Lord, do not delay! (first and last words of Psalm 70).

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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 702. Christian Crisis in Azerbaijan and Iraq

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 702 | Wed 19 Jul 2023
RLPB is published weekly to facilitate strategic intercessory prayer.

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This RLPB updates issues raised in RLPB 699 (28 June 2023) concerning the future of Azerbaijan’s remnant indigenous Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Iraq’s remnant indigenous Assyrians in the Nineveh Plains. These ancient Christian peoples are indeed facing a final solution as the governments of Azerbaijan and Iraq – two US-allied, oil and gas-rich, Muslim-majority pseudo democracies – are poised to quietly drive these ancient Christian peoples off heartlands they have inhabited for millennia. The departing remnant Christians will subsequently be replaced by colonising Muslims who will move quickly to erase millennia of Armenian, Assyrian and Christian heritage, as if it never existed.


CHRISTIAN CRISIS IN AZERBAIJAN AND IRAQ
Remnant Indigenous Armenians and Assyrians Face Final Solution
By Elizabeth Kendal

FINAL SOLUTION IN AZERBAIJAN

Armenians protest in central Stepanakert,
14 July 2023
Photo: Marut Vanyan/OC Media.

As reported in RLPB 699, on 15 June, Azerbaijan closed the Lachin/Berdzor Corridor – the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K; also known as Artsakh) – a mountainous Armenian, Christian enclave inside Turkic, Muslim Azerbaijan – to Armenia and the outside world. On Friday 14 July Azerbaijan finally allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to resume medical evacuations, opening the way for eleven critical patients to be transported into Armenia. That same day, 14 July, some 6000 Armenians gathered in N-K’s capital, Stepanakert, to protest Azerbaijan’s siege of the enclave. As Gegham Stepanyan, a human rights defender from N-K has warned (Asbarez, 12 July): ‘Artsakh [N-K] is at breaking point.’ Stepanyan laments: ‘For a month, Artsakh has been completely cut off from humanitarian access, being literally besieged by Azerbaijan. Since June 15, the intentional and total ban on transportation of food and essential goods by Azerbaijan threatens the lives of 120,000 people of Artsakh… The entire population of Artsakh is under the threat of starvation, and the international actors do not take any steps other than statements… My people are being betrayed by everyone’s criminal indifference.’

The siege disregards the binding judgement by the International Court of Justice, issued on 22 February 2023, which demanded Azerbaijan open the corridor pending a final settlement. While negotiations are underway to hammer out a peace treaty, the residents of N-K have no seat at the table. As Joshua Kucera explains (Eurasianet, 15 June), a deal is currently being negotiated ‘on the one side by Ilham Aliyev – Azerbaijan’s dictator-president, who is using oil-and-gas leverage abroad to dictate terms – and on the other by Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s own democrat-turned-petty dictator’ who has already stated he is ready to recognise N-K as part of Azerbaijan. Consequently, Pashinyan is pressing, not for autonomy for N-K, but for ‘security and rights guarantees’ for those living there. ‘It seems,’ concludes the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (28 April) ‘that Yerevan [Armenia] is ready to decisively surrender Karabakh.’ Some fear the stage is being set for genocide, or yet another proxy war between the US (backing Azerbaijan) and Russia (backing the Armenians) for influence in the South Caucuses. Others, like Carnegie’s Kirill Krivosheev, believe conflict will not eventuate. Rather, life will simply become so ‘intolerably difficult’ for the Armenians of N-K that, ‘Confronted with the new, brutal reality, they may decide after all to move to Armenia.’

FINAL SOLUTION IN IRAQ

Assyrians protest outside St Joseph's Ankawa,
13 July 2023.
Photo: Julian Bechoch for Rudaw

As reported in RLPB 699, Iraqi politics is engineered to benefit Iraq’s majority Muslims at the expense of Iraq’s indigenous Assyrian/Chaldean Christians. The pseudo-Christian ‘Babylon Movement’ – which holds four of the five parliamentary seats reserved for Christians – is profoundly compromised. Having won its seats on the votes of Sunni Kurds and Shi’ite Arabs, it is obliged to advance the interests of those communities, not the Christians it claims to represent. Concerning the Babylon Brigades (the paramilitary wing of the Babylon Movement), a profile by Washington Institute (16 March) states that, while it ‘pretends to be a local Christian unit’, its members have been ‘recruited largely from Shia Muslim communities in Baghdad’s Sadr City, al-Muthanna, and Dhi Qar’, and its objective is ‘domination of the Nineveh Plains’. Leading the protest against this existential threat is the Chaldean Patriarch, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako [see RLPB 695 (24 May 2023)].

On 3 July Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid (a Kurd from the Kurdistan Region (KRI)) revoked special presidential decree 147 of 2013, that granted Cardinal Sako powers to administer Chaldean endowment affairs. Rashid’s decision came after he met with the Babylon Movement’s Rayan al-Kildani, whose party and militia are ‘affiliated with the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’ (Rudaw, 13 July).  On the morning of Thursday 13 July, residents of Ankawa – a Christian-majority district situated at the northern edge of the KRI capital, Erbil – filled the street in front of the Cathedral of Saint Joseph to protest Rashid’s decision. Diya Butrus Slewa, a leading human rights defender from Ankawa, told Rudaw (13 July): ‘This is a political manoeuvre to seize the remainder of what Christians have left in Iraq and Baghdad and to expel them… We hope the Iraqi presidency hears our people and revokes this [decision] as soon as possible…’ Slewa explained to Rudaw that Rashid’s decision strips Cardinal Sako’s authority to administer the Church’s assets and carry out decisions such as renovating and building churches across Iraq. The decision renders all Church assets – land and property – vulnerable to Kildani’s land grab in the Nineveh Plains. On 15 July Cardinal Sako announced that he had left the Patriarchal Residence in Baghdad and would move into one of the monasteries in the KRI; he did not disclose any further details.

PLEASE PRAY THAT OUR MERCIFUL GOD WILL:

* intervene for his faithful people, to preserve life and sustain faith in the midst of injustice, belligerence, betrayal and profound trauma. Lord have mercy!

‘O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.” But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head’ (Psalm 3:1-3 ESV).

* awaken the wider Church of the need to speak up, pray for, and give generously to these gravely imperilled Christian communities – the Armenians of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Assyrians of Iraq’s Nineveh Plains – as the Muslims who want them gone threaten to overrun them, and as the post-Christian West turns its back on them. (See Proverbs 24:11-12 ESV)

* protect Cardinal Sako from those who would seek to harm or even eliminate him; may he have wisdom to know how to proceed and how to lead the Church in Iraq. May the fortunes of God’s people be reversed.


SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
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CHRISTIAN CRISIS IN AZERBAIJAN AND IRAQ

A definitive Christian crisis looms over Azerbaijan’s remnant indigenous Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K) and Iraq’s remnant indigenous Assyrians in the Nineveh Plains. The governments of Azerbaijan and Iraq – two US-allied, oil-and gas-rich, Muslim-majority pseudo-democracies – are poised to drive these indigenous Christian peoples off lands they have inhabited for millennia. Some 120,000 Armenian Christians are currently besieged in N-K, which is at ‘breaking point’. Meanwhile, up to 300,000 Assyrian Christians in Northern Iraq are being systematically disenfranchised and disposessed. The departing Christians will be replaced by colonising Muslims who will quickly erase millennia of Armenian, Assyrian and Christian heritage, as if it never existed. All the while, the post-Christian West turns away, ‘ashamed’ of their suffering. Please pray.

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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