Magic Statistics

The Rt Rev Ezekiel Kondo, Bishop of Khartoum, Sudan, reports that All Saints Cathedral (photo at right) was attacked by police near the end of the New Year’s Eve service.  Hundreds of worshippers were praying when the police arrived in force.  A letter from the bishop is posted at the website of Bradford Diocese.

It was about 20 minutes past twelve in the new year that shooting was heard outside the Cathedral it was thought to be fireworks. 10 minutes later, the shooting was in Cathedral fence and then followed by shooting inside the Cathedral. It was a big police force who was firing tear gas inside the Cathedral that made the worshippers ran all over the place in fear rushing to the Altar. The Cathedral was packed with people over 600 people who came to pay a farewell to the year and to welcome the New Year . . .

Bp Kondo also says that the 11 am New Year’s Day service had to be cancelled because tear gas fumes were too strong.  (The letter is undated, but the webpage address indicates that it was posted on 3 January.)

As tear gas canisters were fired into the cathedral, parishioners fled out the front door, where waiting officers beat them with sticks and whips.  Six Christians were injured in the melee, and the church suffered thousands of dollars in property damage.

The police have now denied targeting the cathedral, claiming that they fired tear gas into the building while trying to catch a criminal.

Canon Sylvester Thomas of All Saints Cathedral told Compass that officers firing tear gas into the church claimed they were trying to apprehend a man involved in a stabbing.
. . .
An officer told Thomas that they had not been firing on the church but had been trying to apprehend a group of men fighting in the street, one of whom had been stabbed. The police claimed they opened fire on the group after the men began throwing rocks to resist arrest.

Church staff investigated police claims that a man named Stephen Chol, from Hag-Yousif in Khartoum North, had been stabbed. But the telephone number provided by police turned out to belong to someone else, and no hospital in the area had any record of a patient treated for stabbing, Thomas said.

United Nations employees and Sudanese government officials were among those attending the service when the attack occurred.

Last May, Rev Elia Komondan of All Saints Cathedral was held for several days on suspicion of kidnapping after a Muslim convert to Christianity went into hiding to escape abuse from her family.

h/t: Dhimmi Watch

Previous related post: "Apostate” Sudanese woman returns to Muslim family

The repressive military government of Burma (Myanmar) is intent on eradicating Christianity, according to a document said to originate in the country's Ministry of Religious Affairs.

A shocking new report about a range of tactics used by the military regime in Burma to suppress Christianity is about to be released in London.

Called “Carrying the Cross: The military regime’s campaign of restriction, discrimination and persecution against Christians in Burma” it cites a document, allegedly from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which has been widely circulated in Rangoon with the headline “Programme to destroy the Christian religion in Burma.”

It begins: “There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practiced.”
. . .
[T]he report claims that Burma’s regime is “shaped by a fascist mentality with echoes of Hitler and the Nazis,” found in the junta’s hostility towards ethnic and religious minorities. Citizens who do not conform to the regime’s version of Burman Buddhist nationalism – which, the report argues, is a “perverted and distorted form of Buddhism” – face “potentially serious consequences.” The regime’s tactics range “from churches in Rangoon finding it difficult to obtain permission to renovate their buildings, to pastors in Chin State being killed,” the report claims.

"Carrying the Cross" is set to be released at the British House of Commons on Tuesday, 23 January.  The report's foreword was written by Baroness Caroline Cox, who has entered Burma's border areas several times.

The Most Rev Samuel San Si Htay, Anglican Archbishop of Myanmar, was interviewed by mission agency Crosslinks while on a visit to the UK in 2004.  The interview contains much information on the challenges facing Myanmar's Christian minority.

As part of the 2007 Primates Prayer Meeting Prayer Campaign, Lent & Beyond has posted prayers for Abp Htay and the Anglican province of Myanmar.

h/t Lent & Beyond and Transfigurations

UPDATE (17 Jan.): The Sunday Telegraph carries a report on the secret document, along with more details of anti-Christian persecution in Myanmar.