Displaying items by tag: Africa

Martyrdoms by Boko Haram splinter group occur as US finally adds West African nation to religious freedom watch list.

In another filmed massacre, 11 Nigerian Christians were executed by the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) over the Christmas holiday.

Wearing the orange jumpsuits made familiar by similar executions of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians in Libya, the first Nigerian victim was shot in the head by the black-clad terrorists who then slit the throats of the remaining ten. It is understood to be the largest group killed by ISWAP, a Boko Haram splinter group, so far.

“This message is to the Christians in the world,” stated the 56-second propaganda video, released December 26, in both Arabic and Hausa, according to The New York Times. “Those who you see in front of us are Christians, and we will shed their blood as revenge for the two dignified sheikhs.”

The reference is to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former ISIS caliph killed by US troops in an October raid in Syria, and Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, his purported successor, who was killed the next day.

The video offered no information about the victims, other than that they were recently seized in Nigeria’s northwest Borno state. But an earlier video was released by ISWAP in which captured aid workers appealed to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, as well as to the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

The International Crisis Group estimates the jihadist group consists of between 3,500 and 5,000 fighters.

“These agents of darkness are enemies of our common humanity, and they don’t spare any victim, whether they are Muslims or Christians,” stated Buhari, according to al-Jazeera.

Nigeria’s population of 200 million is evenly divided between Muslims and Christians.

Muslim victims have been many, agreed CAN in an earlier statement. But it stated the widespread killing in Nigeria’s north has predominately targeted Christians, who make up 95 percent of those currently detained by jihadists.

“The government has been paying lip service towards securing their freedom,” stated CAN, mentioning in particular the case of Sharibu.

The Christian Association of Nigeria disagreed with the Nigerian government’s position, and commended the US State Department for “standing with the oppressed and the truth.”

The association also criticized Buhari for creating an imbalance in the religious composition of the security council, through recent appointments. “The bitter truth,” CAN stated, “is that Christians are yet to be given any sense of belonging since this government came on board.”

Report by JAYSON CASPER

Full article at: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/december/isis-nigeria-executes-christians-iswap-christmas-boko-haram.html

Pray: for these brutal terrorists to be brought to justice and for ISWAP to be defeated by the Nigerian authorities.
Pray: for the families of the 11 victims, that they will know divine comfort and the assurance of the Gospel amidst their grief.
Pray: for the Christian Church in Northern Nigeria, who have suffered persecution and terrorist attacks for many years. May it remain strong and practice biblical forgiveness in the face of adversity.
Pray: that the rights and freedoms of Christians in Nigeria will not be marginalised by changes to the law and constitution.

Hassan, a fervent Muslim in an African country, was fanatical about converting Christians to Islam. He accepted a missionary organisation’s offer to help translate the Bible into the Ndam language. After all, many Christian scriptures are deemed holy books in the Koran. In a secular country where tolerance marked relations between Muslims and Christians, he welcomed the opportunity to discuss Scripture with prospective converts to Islam, but he was constantly exposed to Scriptures at translation workshops, and ended up accepting Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Now he is growing through discipleship and constantly interceding for the salvation of his community.

Heavy rain and severe flooding in South Sudan have caused severe damage to refugee camps, destroying housing, roads, and schools. Many have been left in search of dry ground. With water levels often over a metre high, 200,000+ people are estimated to have been affected, causing large displacement of local and refugee communities. Significant damage to food crops and livestock has diminished the communities’ ability to begin effective recovery from the most devastating flooding experienced in over four decades. Infrastructural damage to bridges and roads prevents access to communities whose day-to-day survival is dependent on humanitarian assistance. Agencies reported serious flood damage in office compounds, warehouses, staff housing, and student learning and sleeping areas.

Adults were murdered, children were kidnapped, and people robbed in Boko Haram attacks on mainly-Christian villages in the far north of Cameroon. The army has difficulty combatting militants in an area dotted with small, isolated villages linked by poor roads where militants strike and then escape via main roads back to Nigeria. On 1 December gunmen attacked mourners at a funeral in Kotserehé, killing four and wounding three. The following night, they murdered three and wounded another when they swarmed into Zangola, stealing food and clothing; they similarly looted Yagoua. In Mbreche, militants kidnapped 21 young people aged between 12 and 21; next they attacked Tahert, stealing a motorbike and wounding a girl. Those abducted will be forced to become Boko Haram ‘soldiers’ and fight for the extremists. In November a Christian boy was hacked to death for resisting militants’ attempt to abduct him as a ‘soldier’.

In July Filmon, an Eritrean victim of anti-Christian persecution, applied for political asylum via Port Elizabeth (PE). The Department of Home Affairs told him to return after a month. Despite a court order for the department to reopen its Cape Town office, people like Filmon have to make repeated trips to PE. When he finally had a hearing on 9 October, the official concluded he was a genuine victim of religious persecution - but in November his application was refused, and despite being assisted by an experienced lawyer he got a permit for only one month. His wife Sharon, a medical doctor, who fled from their Marxist-governed country ahead of her husband, was also refused asylum. Filmon has been advised to pay a bribe, as the only way to be successful, but as a matter of principle he does not wish to do this. He now has to go to PE for the fifth time, unless God intervenes.

Egyptian TV News Report Alleges Turkey Supplying Weapons to Nigeria's Boko Haram.

Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow in Journalism at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and an expert on the Middle East and Islam, appeared on Thursday's afternoon's edition of CBN's Newswatch to talk more about Turkey's alleged ties to Islamic terrorism. Newswatch is seen weekdays on the CBN News Channel.  For a programming schedule, click here.

Turkey is clearly a terrorist state with a broad reach, according to an Egyptian television news program. Ten.tv reports Turkey is supplying weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria.  Ten.tv host Nasha't al-Deyhi reported on a leak confirming an intercepted phone call from a few years back – confirming the action.

He reported in part: "Today's leak confirms without a doubt that Erdogan, his state, his government, and his party are transferring weapons from Turkey to – this is a shock, to where you may ask – to Nigeria; and to whom? – to the Boko Haram organization."

Raymond Ibrahim is the Shillman Fellow in Journalism at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an expert on the Middle East and Islam. During an interview Thursday on CBN's Newswatch, Ibrahim said he's not surprised by the Ten.tv report.

"The tape was made in 2014 or 15 and it was reported widely in certain areas, in the US and the west not so much and not much came out of it," Ibrahim said. "The reason I think is that (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan didn't have his fingers so much in Islamist politics outside of his own nation."

"But now that we've seen Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS Islamic state caliph that was killed recently, and he was found just three miles from the Turkish border, which is, in fact, the last bastion of jihadi-so-called 'freedom fighters' attacking the Syrian government," he told CBN News.

"It has brought it up again, he (Erdogan) is supporting ISIS," Ibrahim noted. "Now we're remembering and that was I think the point of the Egyptian show, we're bringing back to see that there's some continuity here. He's involved with some of the worst Islamic terror groups. If you remember, Boko Haram, whose name loosely means 'western education is forbidden', (Haram) was basically doing what ISIS was doing and is notorious for – years before ISIS was doing it.

"One of the things international observers have been noticing, especially increasingly, is that their armaments, their weapons are very sophisticated," he continued. "It's even spilled into the Fulani tribesmen in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. For example, in Burkina Faso, also in western Africa the attacks on Christians have become horrific in just the last few months."

As CBN News reported, a senior State Department official said last week that Turkey is backing forces in Syria who have the same radical ideology as ISIS.

"The problem is that the people doing the fighting are these ill-disciplined Arab militias, some of whom we've worked within the past when we were arming the opposition, but many of whom are (a) ill-disciplined, and (b) relatively radical, and their ideology is essentially Islamic ideology," the official said.

A fragile government in northern Syria called the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAA) released a statement on Tuesday saying that Erdogan seeks to subjugate them through radical Islam.

"Erdogan plans to turn our free, democratic region back into turmoil under radical Islamic occupation," the government said.

Critics of Erdogan's invasion say he is trying to revive the Ottoman Empire and establish a new caliphate. "Their open intention is to restore the original caliphate which was disbanded in 1924," said Dalton Thomas of Frontier Alliance International.

Recently Turkey's defense minister posted a map to his social media that shows portions of Greece, Syria, and Iraq as part of a greater Turkey.

Defense Minister Hulusi Akar posted a message alongside the map: "We have no eyes on anyone's soil. We will only take what's ours."

The map reflects the 1920 Ottoman National Pact that includes lands Turkey believes it deserved at the end of World War I.

More: https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2019/november/egyptian-tv-news-report-alleges-turkey-supplying-weapons-to-nigerias-boko-haram?cid=EU_CWN-20191115-PROD_DM31096&bid=678577184&inid=553F01FE-F484-486B-8897-0CB4CC336C5F

Pray: that Turkey stops arming Boko Haram and other radical Islamic groups.

Pray: for the divine protection of Christians in the most vulnerable regions of Nigeria.
Pray: that any subversive intentions by Turkey’s government will be brought into the light.
Pray: that Nigeria and neighbouring governments will successfully redouble their efforts to disarm Boko Haram, the Fulani Herdsmen and the other Islamic terrorist groups.

Thousands of children aged between three and seventeen live in slavery on Lake Volta, working up to 18 hours a day in the fishing industry. They are paid in daily abuse and threats, and the only way out is to drown or be rescued. Praise God for two convictions when the accused men pleaded guilty to human trafficking. One of them, who used the children for labour on his fishing boat, must also pay a fine or spend an additional year to the five-year sentence if unable to pay. While IJM has previously seen convictions for child labour in Ghana, these are their first for human trafficking, and a significant step toward ending slavery in the fishing industry.

In 2018 Rami Kamil, a prominent human rights activist, joined a UN fact-finding visit to investigate the situation of members of the Coptic community who had been displaced from their homes following sectarian incidents. On 23 November he was arrested: the police refused to allow him to change his clothes, carry his medications, or speak to a lawyer. They confiscated his laptop, mobile phone, camera, and books, and took him to an unknown location, where he underwent intensive physical and psychological interrogation. He later appeared before the state security prosecution without legal representation, and was given fifteen days’ pre-trial detention. He was accused of joining a terrorist organisation, receiving foreign funding, disturbing public order, inciting the public against the state, and using social media to provoke tensions between Muslims and Christians.

Iceland’s largest fishing company, Samherji, exploited legal loopholes and secrecy jurisdictions to enable corruption and environmental exploitation on a global scale. It used an anonymous shell company to launder and transfer 70 million dollars’ worth of illegal fishing activities off the coasts of West Africa, and bribed members of the Namibian government. Two Namibian ministers have already resigned over allegedly giving preferential access to fishing grounds. Samherji used shell companies in Dubai, Mauritius and Cyprus. Most of the money was traced to a bank account at a state-owned bank: the bank’s largest shareholder is the Norwegian state, which holds a 34% stake.

Ever since the missionary era, Christianity has had a positive impact on Africa. In addition to evangelism and discipleship, Christian communities were behind the founding and growth of educational institutions, health facilities, poverty alleviation projects, children’s homes, and even civic initiatives. As a result, Christianity not only continues to grow, but has also achieved significant acceptance as a force for social good. Now, however, false prophets are chipping away at its moral credibility and public strength. Among these self-proclaimed ‘servants of God’, the values that have traditionally distinguished Christian ministry are increasingly absent. Humility, compassion, selfless service, and servant leadership are replaced by a preoccupation with image consciousness, self-aggrandisement, and enlargement of personal influence. This is in sad contrast to the faithful pastoral care and preaching of countless African Christians who are not motivated by self-promotion and gain. For truths supporting the above, click the ‘More’ button.