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Listen to our latest podcasts
SUPPORTING THE SUFFERING IN ERITREA Our latest Voice podcast is
a conversation with our partner Dr Berhane Asmelash, who runs Release Eritrea. He speaks about the background to persecution in that country and how his ministry has been supporting those who are persecuted. He also talks about his forthcoming autobiography, which Release International will be publishing later this year.
PERSECUTION TRENDS 2024 Persecution has always been one of the ways the powers of darkness seek to stop the spread of the gospel. That’s why it’s important that we pray. But to pray
with understanding we need to know who to pray for and what to pray for. We need to be informed. In this edition of Release International’s Voice podcast we hear from Tom Hardie. Tom edits our quarterly Voice magazine and recently compiled our annual Persecution Trends report, which is available on our website: releaseinternational.org
HOPE AND HELP WHEN HEARTS ARE OVERWHELMED India is the world’s largest democracy. A country whose constitution grants its citizens the freedom not only to profess and practise, but even to propagate, religion. And yet it is a country where the persecution
of Christians continues. In this edition of the Voice podcast we hear about recent violent attacks on Christian communities, particularly in the northeast of India.
UKRAINE: ENDURING FOR CHRIST AND THE GOSPEL The second part of our conversation with Maciek, from our sister ministry in Poland, about the situation for evangelical Christians in Ukraine. Listen in to hear about the work that is being done there – and also of
the growing zeal among Christians in Ukraine to share the gospel.
Mayflower Church student Beth is pictured recently celebrating starting school in the US with her parents. Beth, who began her first college classes recently in pursuit of becoming a nurse, is part of the so-called Mayflower Church, which was forced to flee China and found refuge in the US. As the church’s own school in China was banned and deemed illegal by communist party officials, neither Beth nor any other Mayflower student would have been able to go to college or pursue any form of education in China. (Source: ChinaAid)
Life sentence for ‘blasphemy accused’ Christian
Fanson Shahid has been sentenced to life in prison
Fanson Shahid, aged 56, had been beaten in his home in Lahore when arrested in March 2022 and tortured into confessing after he was accused of posting a derogatory remark about Islam’s prophet Mohammed in a comment on a post that
A judge sentenced a Christian to life in prison under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws for a social media message that relatives say was posted using a phone stolen from him, sources said.
another Christian had shared, his wife, Safia Shahid, said.
The phone on which the Facebook comment was made had been stolen from him in 2019, she said.
Justice Zafar Yab Chadhar of the Additional Sessions Court Gujranwala District, Punjab Province, handed down the sentence in January.
‘We were praying for Shahid’s acquittal because he’s innocent, but the verdict has shattered our hopes for justice,’ his sister, Sonia Shahid, told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News.
Investigators found Fanson’s Facebook account was logged on in the new phone they recovered in 2022 and presented that as evidence that he had made the comment. His wife, Safia Shahid, said at that time, ‘We believe that the lost phone was misused by someone to post the blasphemous comment, because my husband did not use a passcode for its security, and his Facebook account was also logged in.’
Fanson Shahid was convicted under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s blasphemy statutes, which calls for a mandatory death sentence, but Chadhar cited as a ‘mitigating circumstance’ that the comment was posted ‘only once’.
Sonia Shahid said the verdict shocked the family, members of the Full Gospel Assemblies church. Fanson has two children, and his family has been forced to relocate from their house due to fears for their security.
Prominent Christian lawyer Lazar Allah Rakha said the verdict showed the court had disregarded the defence’s arguments without giving
a reason for doing so. ‘Moreover, there are glaring contradictions in
the statements of the prosecution witnesses which discredit the entire prosecution evidence,’ Rakha told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. (Source: Christian Daily International-Morning Star News)
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