Magic Statistics

Gospel singer Helen Berhane (at right) was imprisoned in Eritrea for two years and tortured in an effort to force her to renounce Christianity.  The effort failed.  She fled to Sudan after her release in December 2006, and has finally been given asylum in a safe country.

This week she and her daughter Eva arrived in Copenhagen.

32-year-old Helen Berhane is one of the most high-profile former prisoners from Eritrea, and her case was widely publicized around the world. She was a member of the Rhema Pentecostal Church and was incarcerated in May 2004 after she released an album of gospel music popular among young Eritrean Christians.
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In early 2006 Ms. Berhane was severely assaulted by a guard who beat her and left her for dead. She did not receive adequate treatment until a month before her release in November when she was admitted to hospital still showing signs of the physical mistreatment that disabled her.
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Helen spent most of her time in detention in a metal shipping container, suffocating hot during the day and freezing cold at night. Despite promises of release if she abandoned her faith and religious singing, Helen persistently refused to do so.

Ms Berhane uses a wheelchair because of the injuries inflicted on her legs and feet.

An estimated 2000 Eritrean evangelical and charismatic Christians are detained in appalling conditions.

h/t: International Christian Concern

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Rebecca Hagelin devotes her column today to publicising the work of two organisations that monitor persecution of Christians: Compass Direct and Open Doors.

When I met with them, I felt humbled by their courage and inspired by their commitment to Christians they will never know. I marveled at the depth of their own faith. Sitting in a room with these warriors for truth made me reflect on my own commitment (or lack thereof) to my brothers and sisters in Christ. Reading the disturbing Compass reports has moved my spirit and deepened my understanding – and made me question my own willingness to “risk it all.”

In India, for example, numerous Christians have been beaten and threatened by Hindu extremists. One was tied to a tree and tormented for three hours before being banished from his village. What did he do to merit this treatment? He was handing out Christian tracts. Forcible “conversions” to Hinduism or other religions occur in some places. Other stories report on beatings intended to warn believers to stop attending prayer meetings. In another village, Christian families were banned from all shops and wells.

Ms Hagelin also spotlights Eritrea, a country where believers are subjected to unspeakable torture at the hands of government agents just for being Christian.  Tanya Datta of BBC News brings the latest horrific story from there.

An Eritrean refugee lies contorted on the ground. Balanced on his belly, his hands clutch his feet behind his back, bending his legs back almost double.

Paulus is demonstrating a torture technique known colloquially as "the helicopter".

It is one he knows well. It was in this excruciating position, he claims, that soldiers left him tied up for 136 hours, in an attempt to force him to recant his faith.

"They kept asking me to sign a document," he recalls, "and agree to not participate in church activities or express my faith in any form. I was told I would be untied and released the minute I agreed to their requests."

Thankfully, Paulus is now able to worship the Lord Jesus in the relative freedom of a refugee camp in northern Ethiopia.

Both Ms Datta and Ms Hagelin end their reports with requests for prayer.  Please pray for the persecuted, the imprisoned, and their families.

h/t for BBC News: Transfigurations

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Open Doors reports that Nigsti Haile, 33, has become the fourth Eritrean Christian in the past year to be killed in custody for refusing to recant her faith.  She was tortured to death Wednesday, 5 September, at the Wi'a Military Training center near Massawa.

Haile was one of 10 single Christian women arrested at a church gathering in Keren who have spent 18 months under severe pressure.

Eritrea outlawed independent Protestant churches in May 2002, closing their buildings and banning them from meeting even in private homes.  Haile was a member of a Rhema church, an independent Protestant group, according to Open Doors.

Last February, Magos Solomon Semere died from the effects of torture and pneumonia after four years in an Eritrean jail.  In October 2006, two Christians died of torture after two days of incarceration.

Since May 2002, all churches except Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical Lutheran have been illegal in Eritrea.  Despite their presumptively legal status, Orthodox and Catholic churches have been persecuted.

Over 2000 Christians, mostly independent charismatic Protestants, are presently jailed without charge and held in appalling conditions.

h/t: Voice of the Martyrs Canada

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Increasing persecution in Eritrea has driven Christians to flee to Sudan and Libya.  Authorities in Libya, however, have recently arrested and brutalised 70 Eritrean refugees and are threatening to return them to their home country, where they will almost certainly be imprisoned and tortured.

According to reports received from several of the detainees, all the approximately 70 Eritrean nationals are male, mainly aged in their twenties and were rounded up during the night of 8 July 2007. When they arrived at the detention facility, they say that they were asked to strip naked and were beaten by guards with implements such as metal chains. Some have reportedly been beaten on numerous subsequent occasions. The detainees say that they have been threatened by the guards with deportation on a number of occasions.

An estimated 500 other Eritrean refugees are being held in Libya under threat of deportation.  The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has recommended that Eritrean applicants for asylum should not be repatriated.  The recommendation is believed to have been respected by the international community.

Eritrean government officials have in recent months repeatedly denied that Christians are persecuted in their country.  Christian agencies have rejected the denials, pointing out that over 2000 Eritrean believers are currently held without charge in domestic jails.

If Christians aren’t being persecuted, why are they fleeing to Libya?

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Last weekend Eritrean security forces entered a Presbyterian church and detained the pastor and 80 members of the congregation.  The raid occurred at the end of the Sunday worship service at Mehrete Yesus Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Asmara.

Following the raid Pastor Zecharias Abraham and around 80 of his parishioners were detained. Among the worshippers on the day were some foreign nationals at least three of them Americans.

Mehret Yesus Church was one of the few churches that had escaped the decree that closed down all churches not belonging to the Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran Churches of Eritrea, five years ago. At the time of his detention Reverend Zecharias was serving as the current head of the Eritrean Evangelical Alliance, following the arrest of Haile Naizghi who was detained in May 2004.

Four days after the arrests, the Americans were allowed to leave, on condition that they do not teach or preach.  At last report, Rev Zecharias, church elder Mikias Mekonnen, and an unknown number of others remain in custody.

Only days earlier, the government announced the appointment of a new patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Eritrea.  Priests, monks, and members of the church reject the appointment as illegitimate and contrary to the church’s constitution.

In direct violation of the church’s canon laws, the Asmara government stripped ordained Eritrean Patriarch Abune Antonios of his ecclesiastical authority in August 2005, after he protested the imprisonment of three priests from the Medhane Alem Orthodox Church.

The government replaced him with Yoftahe Dimetros, a layman appointed as interim administrator of the church.

Antonios was officially removed from office in January 2006, when he was placed under formal house arrest. Four months ago, his patriarchal vestments and insignia were taken away from him by force.

Since he was placed under house arrest, Patriarch Antonios has been prevented from attending Orthodox worship services or receiving Holy Communion.

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Thousands of Eritrean Christians are walking to Sudan to escape brutal persecution.  Conditions in Eritrea must be hellish indeed for them to risk crossing the Sahara Desert on foot.

Torture, beatings, arrests, imprisonment. These are among the brutal acts imposed by the Communist government of Eritrea against Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians in this East-African nation.

As a result, thousands of Christian refugees are fleeing Eritrea in search of safety in neighboring Sudan – primarily in the capital city of Khartoum. They come on foot, walking hundreds of miles with little or no food or water. Many of them are mothers carrying babies. If they are caught stumbling across the arid wastes of Eastern Sudan, the Sudanese authorities transport them back across the Eritrean border where they face certain arrest.

Those who make it to Khartoum find shelter in crowded, squalid, ill-equipped structures where they fight a torturous battle for legal refugee status and for some source of economic support from which to eke out their temporary survival.

Some of the refugees move on from Khartoum, seeking to walk across the Sahara Desert, (can you imagine?) into Libya and on to the Mediterranean Sea, with the objective of "sailing" to freedom in Europe.

Most of them die in the desert or at sea.

Khartoum has two Eritrean Christian churches, one with 300 members and one with 500.  The news story also says that Eritrean agents target leaders of the churches for assassination.

h/t: International Christian Concern

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Magos Solomon Semere had been in jail for over four years for worshipping in an outlawed Protestant church.  He was told that, if he signed a statement renouncing Christ, he would be given medical treatment for his injuries and illnesses.  He refused, even though three others who signed were released.

Last week, Mr Semere died at age 30 from torture and pneumonia.

A member of the Rema Church, Semere had first been jailed in the fall of 2001, when he was arrested for evangelizing and starting meetings for worship with six other Christians.

“The government gave hard-labor work punishment to believers for preaching the gospel and starting fellowships,” a Christian once jailed in Assab with Semere told Compass. “If they persisted, they would be kept imprisoned for ‘violating’ the government law.”

Semere had been released after 18 months in prison, only to be re-arrested three months later with a large group of Protestants caught worshipping together in July 2002.
. . .
Semere had been engaged to marry shortly before his July 2002 arrest, but he was refused permission to see his fiancée again during his years in prison.

He is the third Eritrean Christian known to have been killed in custody during the past five months.

Since May 2002, all churches except Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical Lutheran have been illegal in Eritrea.  It is believed that many hundreds of Christians, mostly Pentecostal and charismatic, are presently jailed without charge and held in appalling conditions.

Even legal religions are subject to government harassment.  Just over two months ago, the government took over the finances and administration of the Eritrean Orthodox Church.

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Last month the government of Eritrea ordered international relief agency Samaritan’s Purse out of the country.  It has now emerged that, on 4 December, nine truck drivers working for the Christian charity were arrested as they drove toward the Eritrean-Sudanese border.

A U.S.-based evangelical Christian organization, Samaritan’s Purse is the 11th international aid group expelled from Eritrea this year. Officials in Asmara insist that these expulsions are simply protecting the country from the aid dependency rife across Africa.

The detained drivers, most of them known to be evangelical Christians, remain under arrest in Police Station No. 6 in Asmara.

“Aid dependency” is typically associated with government-to-government foreign aid, not aid originating from private charitable donations.  Be that as it may, why arrest and detain the workers if they were on their way out of the country, as per the government's order?  Is this an attempt to foster greater aid dependency extort bribes from Samaritan’s Purse for their release?

Previous related post: Gospel singer released from Eritrean prison

Christian singer Helen Berhane has just been released after thirty months' imprisonment in a military camp near Eritrea's capital city of Asmara.  Last month it was reported that the 31-year-old Ms Berhane had been admitted to hospital twice, once for treatment of unspecified injuries inflicted during beatings, and once for treatment of leg injuries.  Although she was seen in a wheelchair last month, the latest report says she can walk with a cane.

Ms Berhane was imprisoned for refusing to stop singing at religious activities or sign a statement renouncing her Christian faith.

The Voice of the Martyrs Canada has the good news of her freedom.

Helen, who is now with her parents in Asmara, is said to be in very good spirits despite her plight for the sake of Christ. The Voice of the Martyrs (Canada) joins the chorus of praise to our Lord for this good news which has come in the wake of the martyrdom of two Eritrean Christians three weeks ago in the town of Adi-Quala which is about ninety kilometres south-west of Asmara.

Please continue to pray for the release of more than 2000 Eritrean Christians that include most the leadership of the evangelical churches in the nation. Pray for God's grace to abound in them in prison as they suffer for Christ's sake with love and prayer for their persecutors (Romans 12:14). Also pray for the families of the imprisoned Christians. Pray that God's grace will likewise abound in them and that our gracious Father will provide for their every need (Phil. 4:19). And please join our Eritrean brothers and sisters around the world who are rejoicing and praising God for the release from prison of this faithful believer and servant of Christ, Helen Berhane.

Eritrea is another country where Christians are increasingly coming under attack.  The small African country bordering the Red Sea gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1991.

Last month it was reported that two Christians arrested while attending a house worship service had been tortured to death in police custody.  Ten others arrested at the same time remain in detention.

Then, last week, over 150 Christians were arrested, detained in a military fort, and beaten.

It is estimated that over 2000 Eritrean Christians are presently imprisoned for their beliefs, many in deplorable conditions.

Eritrea has outlawed all religious groups except Sunni Islam, Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Lutheranism.  The persecuted Christians generally belong to independent and charismatic Protestant churches.