7 – Pastor Cai Jailed in China
In China, a judge on November 8 found house church pastor Cai Zhuohua and three other relatives guilty of “illegal business practices” – a little more than eight months after new Regulations on Religious Affairs, effective March 1, strengthened a ban on illegal religious publications and increased the penalty for printing or distributing them without government approval. Judge You Tao sentenced Cai, 34, to three years, his wife Xiao Yunfei to two years and her brother to 18 months. Cai’s sister-in-law Hu Jinyun was found guilty of concealing illegally acquired goods but escaped prison because she had provided information to police. Cai’s mother, Cai Laiyi – now caring for Cai’s 5-year-old son – told Reuters that the prosecution had not found a single witness to testify that Cai had earned money from the sale of the books. Cai, who led six Beijing house churches, said the books were printed for free distribution within house church networks. The four were held for 10 months before the case finally went to trial on July 7. Defense lawyers acknowledged that the literature was printed without permission but argued that the defendants could not be charged with “economic crimes” since the Bibles were never intended for sale. Gao Zhisheng, a key lawyer on the defense team, received notice on November 4 to suspend his law practice for a year, making an appeal extremely difficult. (Gao said police have made attempts on his life and harassed his family, and he now faces imminent arrest after releasing two reports in late 2005 on the torture of Falun Gong members and the rights of minorities in Xinjiang province.) Moreover, a clerk from the court visited Pastor Cai to warn him that his sentence would be increased if he “annoyed” judges with an appeal. The defendants appealed anyway, which the court rejected on December 20 (leaving their verdicts and sentences unchanged).
8 – Legal and Physical Assaults in India
In a year of weekly incidents of violence against Christians and the introduction of a bill that could make Rajasthan the sixth state restricting religious conversions in India, the Supreme Court on November 28 deferred – for the third time – ruling on whether Dalit Christians (low-caste “untouchables”) can be denied job and education rights. Dalits belonging to Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh faiths qualify for a government plan that reserves 26 percent of jobs and educational places for them. Under current laws, Dalits who convert to Christianity or Islam lose their reservation privileges. Christian leaders said India’s 16 million Dalit Christians are extremely frustrated and demoralized by the government’s position. In October, government attorneys had delayed a ruling by telling justices that a commission had been set up to study a broad range of issues surrounding government reservations for Dalits. That commission, which Christian leaders dismissed as a way of stalling the issue, is due to finish its work next year. Additionally, throughout 2005 police routinely refused to register complaints from Christians who were assaulted by Hindu extremists.
9 – Islamization in Northern Nigeria
Christians in Nigeria’s northern quarters were frequent targets of violence in 2005 as the imposition of sharia in 2001 in 12 states continued to feed Islamic rage. A Muslim militant attack on the Christian community in Demsa village, Adamawa state, on February 4, killed 36 people and displaced about 3,000 others. In Niger state, where Christians make up half of the population, Islamic officials seized Christians’ property, discriminated against them in the public sector, and forced Christian girls to marry Muslims. As of October, nine cases of forceful conversions of Christian girls below the age of 14 were reported to the office of the Niger chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria; many other cases go unreported. State authorities found pretexts to force churches to relocate out of their towns. In Kano state, Christian children were denied admission into public schools, and those that were admitted were forced to study Arabic, Islam, and say Islamic prayers. Christians in Bari Dorayi village built a nursery and primary school for their children, but the government halted construction. The state has recruited 9,000 Muslims, known as Hisba, who have been trained as enforcers of sharia, acting as instruments of coercion, intimidation and harassment. Even in Christian-majority Plateau state, where sharia has not been imposed, Muslims worked for “Islamization” to break the state’s position as a launch point for missions to the north – destroying churches, appointing Muslims into political positions of power and denying Christians land to build churches.
