Federal agents in Pakistan last week arrested a Christian under a blasphemy law mandating the death penalty in relation to material that appeared on Facebook groups without his knowledge, sources said.
A Muslim in Pakistan on Friday (March 21) slashed the throat of a Christian co-worker on allegations that he had committed blasphemy by touching an Islamic textbook “with unclean hands,” sources said.
An 18-year-old Christian is still languishing in jail a month after winning bail in all three blasphemy cases against him as a trial court is delaying his release, his father said.
Religious freedom advocates this month strongly condemned deterioration of human rights in Pakistan, particularly continued abuse of the country’s harsh blasphemy laws and forced conversions of minority girls.
A village head kidnapped along with seven other Christians in central Nigeria was reportedly found dead on Monday (March 17).
Christian leaders decried a decision by Muslim governors of four northern states in Nigeria to close all schools for five weeks for Ramadan.
In a significant legal victory against forced conversions/marriages in Pakistan, a civil court has annulled the marriage of a Christian woman who was given to a Muslim man as a child and coerced to convert to Islam and marry him, sources said.
Fulani herdsmen on Monday (March 10) killed at least six Christian villagers in central Nigeria after stabbing another to death the prior day because he objected to them grazing their cattle on his property, sources said.
A high court judge in Pakistan resigned last week after a media report exposed his alleged close ties with a criminal gang falsely charging Christians and others with blasphemy, sources said.
The Supreme Court of Nigeria on Friday (March 7) upheld the death sentence for a Christian who defended himself against an attack by Fulani herdsmen.
A 12-year-old Christian girl has reunited with her parents last week after she was abducted two months prior by a Muslim neighbor who forcibly converted her to Islam and coerced her into marrying him, sources said.
Muslim landowners in Pakistan abducted a Christian laborer, shaved his head and facial hair, blackened his face and paraded him on the back of a donkey for allegedly stealing wood from their property, his brother said.
