International Christian Response

ISTANBUL, April 27 (Compass Direct News) – Separatist Islamist rebels released a Swiss Christian woman kidnapped by a private militia on April 15 amid political turmoil in Timbuktu, Mali, according to a Swiss foreign ministry statement. Armed members of the militant Islamic group Ansar Dine handed Beatrice Stockly to Swiss diplomats on Tuesday (April 24), Reuters reported.

Before rebels captured Timbuktu on April 1, most Westerners had reportedly left due to fears of being kidnapped and passed on to Al-Qaeda cells. The terrorist group’s North African branch, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), has been holding Westerners for millions of dollars in ransom payments from previous kidnappings in recent years. Stockly, a Christian social worker in her 40s, had refused to leave Timbuktu, 705 kilometers (439 miles) northeast of the capital, when it fell to Tuareg rebels and Islamist extremists.

She was in good health “considering the circumstances,” according to the Swiss foreign ministry statement. Ansar Dine militants took custody of Stockly after a shootout with an unidentified private militia that had seized her and wanted to sell her to AQIM. Ansar Dine, which has imposed sharia (Islamic law) in areas under its control in the north, then handed Stockly to the Swiss government without demanding a ransom, according to Agence France-Presse. Stockly is reportedly safe in Burkina Faso.

Court upholds prison sentence, ban on law practice.
By Damaris Kremida

ISTANBUL, May 8 (Compass Direct News) – The main defense lawyer for Iranian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, who is appealing a death sentence, may be facing imminent imprisonment for defending the rights of Iranians, according to Amnesty International.

Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a prominent human rights activist, had been sentenced in July to a nine-year prison sentence and a 10-year ban on legal practice and teaching, and he learned on April 28 that an appeals court had upheld the sentence. Charges against him included “membership of an association seeking the soft overthrow of the government” and “spreading propaganda against the system through interviews with foreign media,” according to a press statement by Amnesty International.

At press time it was not known whether he had been detained, but he has reportedly said he expected to be imprisoned.

Dadkhah is co-founder of Iran’s Center for Human Rights Defenders (CHRD). The CHRD was forcibly closed in 2008, and though its members have continued to carry out their work, they have faced harassment from authorities and some of them are serving prison sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison.

An expert on Iran who requested anonymity said that Dadkhah had been Nadarkhani’s main lawyer, but that if he were imprisoned the effect on Nadarkhani’s fate would be unclear.

“What is clear is that this development is not good news,” the source said. “My sense is that the rule of law in Iran is abused, and the decisions of the Iranian courts are unpredictable and at the whim of the authorities. If Nadarkhani is hanged or released, it will not be primarily on the basis of the arguments of a good lawyer, but based on the whim of the authorities.”

As an Islamic republic, Iran views Christians and especially Christian converts as enemies of the state and pawns of the West out to undermine the government.

Most Christians who face charges are not able to afford legal defense. Those who can afford legal counsel have difficulty finding lawyers who are willing to defend them, because of how subversive Christianity is considered by the regime and the repercussions on lawyers.

“Many of the Christians who face court hearings do so without legal representation,” the source said. “Simply by taking on a case of which the government disapproves, a case which challenges the government, would be high risk for a lawyer. Dadkhah’s arrest has been coming for a long time, so it’s not a surprise. The surprise is that he’s been able to practice for such a long time.”

In September 2010, Nadarkhani was sentenced to death after a court of appeals in Rasht, 243 kilometers (151 miles) northwest of Tehran, found him guilty of leaving Islam. He has been in prison since October 2009.

At an appeal hearing in June, the Supreme Court of Iran upheld Nadarkhani’s sentence but asked the court in Rasht to determine if he was a practicing Muslim before his conversion. The court declared that Nadarkhani was not a practicing Muslim before his conversion, but that he was still guilty of apostasy due to his Muslim ancestry.

Nadarkhani’s case had been sent to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei for a decision on his death sentence, but legally the lower court still has the authority to issue an execution order. Khamenei may or may not make a decision, and if the court were to issue an execution order, Khameni would have the authority to block it. His case is essentially on hold.

In another significant case, the Iranian Revolutionary court sentenced Farshid Fathi, a Christian held in Tehran’s Evin Prison since December 2010, to six years in prison, Mohabat News reported last month. Though his trial was in January, details of the proceedings were not available until recently. Fathi was arrested and tried for “action against the regime’s security, being in contact with foreign organizations and religious propaganda,” according to Mohabat News.

Fathi’s lawyer plans to appeal the case, Mohabat News reported. Married and the father of two young children, Fathi is held in Ward 350 of Evin Prison.

DUBLIN, April 25 (Compass Direct News) – China’s government is engaged in a three-phase campaign to eradicate Protestant house churches, according to a statement released Friday (April 20) by the China Aid Association (CAA). The government’s strategy was clearly outlined in a document released last September during a training class for “Patriots in the Christian Community” run by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, according to an unnamed CAA source.

From January through June of this year, the document called for local authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of house churches nationwide and create dossiers on each of them. In phase two, for the following two to three years, authorities would strongly encourage unregistered churches to affiliate with the government-approved Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM); and in phase three, to be completed within 10 years, churches refusing to comply would be shut down, according to the CAA.

Officials would also ban the words “house church” and all reports on house churches from websites and other media and replace the term with “house gatherings” – a term that would refer to groups meeting in sites affiliated with the TSPM. In a recent random survey conducted by the CAA’s source in several provinces, over 95 percent of house church leaders said they had already felt the impact of these investigations, while 85 percent said local religious affairs departments had already created a dossier for their group. “Since the beginning of 2012, we have noticed an increase in the frequency of persecution,” the CAA said in a press statement. “In addition to the continuing persecution of Shouwang Church in Beijing, the number of similar cases has risen 20 percent over last year and has spread into other areas, including Christian education, publication and bookstores.”

ISTANBUL, April 20 (Compass Direct News) – A recent “reconciliation meeting” between members of a Muslim mob that attacked a Christian-owned school in Egypt and school administrators was nothing less than an attempt at legalized extortion, the director of the school said.

In exchange for peace, members of the sword-wielding mob that stormed the school last month without provocation – and held two nuns hostage for several hours – initially demanded in the meetings that the school sign over parcels of land that include the guesthouse the Muslim extremists attacked. Magdy Melad, manager of the Notre Dame Language Schools in Aswan Province, told Compass that despite the risk of more attacks, he refused the assailants’ demand.

Out of fear of future violence, however, he said he agreed not to prosecute any of the hundreds of people who attacked his school. On March 4, about 1,500 villagers chanting Islamic slogans and brandishing swords and knives surrounded the guesthouse at the privately run, public language school in the village of Abu Al-Reesh. The mob accused nuns trapped inside of building a church in the guesthouse and threatened to burn them out unless they surrendered. The formal reconciliation meeting took place on March 25. The school still owns the guesthouse, but it has essentially been stripped bare – and government officials have ordered Melad not to use it.