North Korea surprised the world by releasing an American Christian who had been held illegally in the country for the last six months.
Jeffrey Fowle, who had forgotten his Bible in the bathroom of a restaurant, has been held since mid-May on charges that he was using his tourist visa as a way to commit Christian proselytization.
“We can confirm that Jeffrey Fowle has been allowed to depart the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and is on his way home to re-join his family,” U.S. State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf said in a statement on Tuesday.
Fowle spoke to reporters last month and said that while he was good his situation was getting desperate.
The White House said that while they were very happy for Fowle’s release, they are still demanding the release of two other captured Americans, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller.
A Chinese pastor who was arrested during the recent government crackdown on Christians is thanking God for the “opportunity of going to jail.”
Huang Yizi, 40, is facing up to seven years in prison for his speaking out against the government’s destruction of Christian churches. He was arrested in August when police dragged him from his home in front of his wife and two children.
The official charge is “gathering crowds to disturb social order.”
Beijing rights lawyer Zhang Kai says Yizi is doing well and that from what he can see there is no basis to charge him.
“As a defense lawyer and judging from the evidence so far I don’t think Huang’s actions constituted any crime. Personally, I believe Huang’s arrest is directly related to the general crackdown on churches in Zhejiang.”
Chen Guangcheng, a human rights activist in China, said that the communist government is actually more dangerous than terrorist group ISIS.
“I believe that we have underestimated the threat from the Communist regime like China. They are many, many times more dangerous than the terrorist groups out there. I believe the people will realize later this is true,” Chen said.
At least seven Christians are in jail after Laotian officials raided the home where they were having worship.
The Christians were meeting for lunch and worship at the home of Pastor Sompong Supatto when the chief of Boukham Village and security officials stormed the building. The pastor was placed in handcuffs and leg stocks.
They were charged with violating an order from local officials for Christians to stop gathering for worship.
The Human Rights Watch for Lao Religious Freedom confirmed the arrest and said the local authorities simply said they don’t want Christians to gather for worship.
“The HRWLRF urges the Lao government to respect the right of the Lao people to religious freedom and the accompanying rights as guaranteed in the Lao constitution and the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Laos in 2009, upholding the individual’s right to adopt a religion/belief of choice as well as the right to manifest that religion/belief in a corporate worship (Article 18),” a HRWLRF spokesman wrote. “Any form of coercion impairing the freedom to have and manifest one’s religion/belief of choice is condemned in the Covenant.”
This is the latest in a series of attacks on Christian freedom in the village. On June 24, a pastor and four others were arrested on murder charges after a sick woman they prayed over later died.
Chinese officials raided house churches on Sunday and arrested more than 100 Christians for worshiping in a manner the state considered illegal.
Children were among the arrested, being taken from their parents.
The raid in the Guangdong province included over 200 police officers who stormed into the home during the service. The move is believed to be part of a government crackdown on Christianity within the country.
“We don’t know exactly why they raided our church,” a local believer told watchdog group International Christian Concern. “The government does not want us to get together and worship as a church.”
Multiple surveys show that Christianity is growing fastest in the world within China.
An ICC spokesman says most of the people have been released but the incident has been traumatic, especially on the children.
“What the government here is doing is so barbaric,” local church leader Chen Zhi’ai told CNN.
An elite unit of the Israeli Defense Forces announced they had captured a Hamas operative who was planning a terrorist attack near Hebron.
The arrest led to Israeli police and the IDF carrying out a sweep in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that led to the arrest of nearly 60 people who were connected to the plot or to inciting riots.
The IDF did not release the name of the suspect or the details of the attack saying that the information was withheld for national security reasons.
The arrest is the latest in an IDF crackdown on those leading riots or attacks in Israel. The investigations into many of the arrested suspects had been placed on hold or in a lower priority because of the conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
Tbe IDF said that 12 suspects were arrested late Monday and Tuesday nights in the West Bank on top of the almost 60 arrested today.
Officials say that rioting has increased in the Jerusalem area as Arab groups took advantage of decreased IDF presence.
A New York woman pushed her baby from a subway car onto a platform and then casually turned and got back on the train, leaving her child defenseless on the subway platform.
New York police arrested the woman about 12 hours later thanks to a tip from a person who passed the woman on the street and recognized her from security footage aired on local television news.
Police have not released the name of the woman and charges had not been flied as of Tuesday morning. Police sources say that the women attributed her abandoning of the child to not being able to handle the amount of care a child required.
The 6-month-old girl was taken to St. Luke’s hospital after she was found and determined to be in good health and condition. She’s currently in the care of the Administration for Children’s Services.
In an interview with British newspaper The Guardian, persecuted Christian Meriam Ibrahim says her newborn daughter is physically handicapped because she was forced to give birth with her legs shackled to a wall.
Ibrahim, who is currently seeking refuge inside the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, gave her first interview after being released from her incarceration on charges of apostasy and adultery.
Ibrahim said that she was shackled with chains, not cuffs, and that her legs were forced together by the chains. The guards would not release the chains so that she could open her legs for the birth and her daughter’s legs were injured during the birth.
“I couldn’t open my legs so the women had to lift me off the table,” Ibrahim told the Guardian. “I wasn’t lying on the table.”
Ibrahim said it wasn’t clear yet if the child will need help walking as she grows older because of the injuries.
Sudan is forcing Ibrahim to stay in the country claiming she forged her papers to leave. Ibrahim told the Guardian that she has a document from South Sudan because that is where her husband is from and that is proper under international law. The family has visas to enter the United States when she is able to leave the country.
An American Christian is facing trial in North Korea on charges that he was trying to undermine the country’s government.
His crime? He left a Bible in his hotel room after he and his tour group checked out to head back to America.
Jeffrey Fowle, 56, is being charged with leaving the Bible in his room, which is “inconsistent with the purpose of a tourist visit.” The North Korean government has not officially named charges against Fowle, just stating he will be tried for leaving behind the Bible.
“The significance of these arrests and trials cannot be overstated: North Korea is choosing to publicly blame Christian missionaries for its human rights problems and internal difficulties,” Seoul USA CEO Pastor Eric Foley told The Christian Post. “There are important lessons to be learned from the arrests by Christians seeking to reach North Korea in the future. Now is not the time to comment on the strategies of those being detained. But what we can conclude with certainty is that there is no ‘back door’ into North Korea – no strategy for sharing the gospel there that does not involve paying the highest of personal prices. This is what North Korean underground Christians have known and practiced for years.”
A spokesman for Fowle’s family said that he was not in North Korea on any kind of church mission. They denied there was anything that he could have done to “confirm suspicions” of undermining the government as claimed by North Korean prosecutors.
The U.S. State Department has repeatedly warned American citizens traveling to North Korea that they could be detained for any reason and imprisoned without trial or charge. The U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea.
Meriam Ibrahim, the Christian woman who had been facing the death penalty on charges that she converted from Islam because her father was a Muslim, is reportedly in hiding at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum while she and her family attempt to leave the country.
Ibrahim had been arrested attempting to leave the country a day after her death sentence was overturned because Sudanese officials say she was using her Christian name on travel documents rather than her Islamic name and had documents from South Sudan rather than Sudan.
Ibrahim was reportedly released on the charges related to her attempt to leave the country on the grounds that she not leave Sudan.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department says it’s entirely up to the Sudanese government to say when Ibrahim can leave the country. Marie Harf said that the State Department confirmed Ibrahim has all the correct documents to leave Sudan according to international law.
A BBC report says that Ibrahim’s arrest was made by members of the National Intelligence and Security Service that was unhappy with Ibrahim’s release from her death sentence. The arrest was reportedly a way to send a message to the rest of the Sudanese government.
A day after being released from prison because her death sentence for apostasy was thrown out by an appeals court, Meriam Ibrahim was arrested at the airport in Khartoum as she was preparing to leave the country with her family.
Elshareef Ali Mohammed, the lawyer representing Ibrahim, said he was at the airport with the family when 50 security force personnel hostilely confronted her and her family. He said the security forces would not give a reason for why they were arresting Ibrahim. He said they knew she had been cleared by the court but arrested her anyway.
She was taken to a detention center with her two children and her American husband Daniel Wani.
A Sudanese court initially convicted Ibrahim for apostasy because her father was a Muslim. The court said it did not matter that she was raised a Christian and had always been a Christian.