Operation Capitals of Europe and Gatekeepers of Europe in Athens, Greece, will hold a joint event, 20-26 March 2012.
George & Evi Markakis
Shalom Center Athens
Shalom Apostolic Network international
Shalom Center House of Prayer for all Nations
3rd flr, 8, Akominatou str. Omonia Athens, Greece
Hundreds of praying protestors took part in a series of demonstrations for human rights and the liberation of North Korea that were held in major cities on December 9. That day was the 63rd anniversary of the adoption of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which North Korea acceded in 1989. Here are some pictures from the Seoul demonstration.
In addition, Kim Jong Il, one of the most evil, oppressive dictators in the world, died suddenly on December 17 and has been replaced by his son, Kim Jong Un as the new president. Let’s be in prayer for North Korea as this new regime begins to rule that Kim and his officials will be open to dialogue with South Korea and the other nations in the Six Party Talks. Pray that the transformation we have all been asking God for will happen and that it will lead to the liberation of North Korea and the reunification of North and South. Pray especially for the food aid to reach those at risk of starvation and for the closing down of the prison camps in which hundreds of thousands of men, women and children continue to suffer slave labor, summary execution, and horrific tortures at the whim of their captors.
For Immediate Release
January 27th, 2012 – Worldwide General Strike and Call to Mass Demonstrations for the North Korean Liberation and Human Rights
Seoul, Dec. 27, 2011 – January 27th marks the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, the largest Nazi death camp where an estimated 1.1 million innocent men, women and children were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated this date as an annual international day of commemoration to remember the victims of Nazism and the sacred promise of “Never Again”. (For more information on the important meaning and significance of this date, read: http://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/).
The Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, a nonpartisan coalition consisting of human rights activists and groups from around the world, is calling for an international general strike on this date to protest against genocide and crimes against humanity in North Korea.
Genocide and Crimes against Humanity in North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) runs a network of concentration camps where an estimated 1 million innocents have been murdered in silence, and 250,000 political prisoners, one-third of them children, are currently being forced to perform slave labor on starvation rations, are subject to systematic rape and torture, biological and chemical weapon experimentation, and summary execution.
North Korea is actively targeting for destruction every group protected under the U.N. Genocide Convention, through its decades-long policy of killing the half-Chinese babies of North Korean women forcibly repatriated by China (constituting genocide on national, ethnical and racial grounds), and its systematic annihilation of its indigenous religious population and their families (genocide on religious grounds). The regime’s treatment of political prisoners and its exploitative and discriminatory food policy which is responsible for the deaths of several million North Koreans constitutes crimes against humanity as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
At the historic UN World Summit in 2005, heads of state and government leaders from around the world committed to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. According to the Responsibility to Protect principle, the world has a duty to intervene to stop mass atrocity crimes first by 'appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means' and then by force, if necessary.
North Korea, as a genocidaire of the first order, is in the category of state perpetrator and is manifestly demonstrating this failure to protect. It is high time for the international community to act in North Korea.
LETTER OF DEMANDS TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY:
To the Leaders of Korea, America, China, Russia, Japan, the United Nations and the Entire International Community,
We Refuse to Allow the North Korean Genocide to Continue Any Longer. Over 4,000,000 Innocent North Koreans have been Murdered through Starvation by the DPRK regime since 1995, and an estimated 1,000,000 North Koreans have been Murdered as a result of Slave Labor, Rape, Torture, Starvation and Execution in North Korea’s Political Concentration Camps. The Very Existence of these Concentration Camps makes the North Korean State Illegal, Illegitimate, and Criminal, and Demands the Immediate Intervention of the International Community.
Our Demands, based upon the foundation of International Law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are as follows:
1) The Immediate and Total Liberation of All North Korean Political Concentration Camps
2) Compensation and Re-imbursement to All North Korean Victims of Slavery, Starvation, Torture, All Concentration Camp Survivors and Their Families for Immeasurable Loss and Suffering
3) The Immediate Stepping Down from Power of the DPRK Leadership
4) Prosecution of Kim Yong-nam, Chang Sung-taek and All Individuals Responsible for Commissioning or Carrying Out Acts of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
5) Through the Guidance and Oversight of a Coalition of North Korean Refugee Leaders and Human Rights Activists, in Partnership with the Republic of Korea and the International Community, WE DEMAND THE LIBERATION AND REBUILDING OF NORTH KOREA BASED UPON THE FOUNDATION OF ENSURING AND GUARANTEEING WITHOUT FAIL THE HUMAN RIGHTS AND SAFETY OF EVERY NORTH KOREAN INDIVIDUAL ACCORDING TO THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW, WHICH WAS COMPOSED TO PREVENT THE ATROCITIES OF NAZI GERMANY FROM EVER OCCURRING AGAIN. WE, THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY, HAVE ALL FAILED TO KEEP OUR PROMISE AND UPHOLD INTERNATIONAL LAW, AND MOST MISERABLY IN THE CASE OF NORTH KOREA.
Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea (Nonpartisan)
Please refer to:
"Responsibility to Protect in North Korea": http://hir.harvard.edu/responsibility-to-protect-in-north-korea
"North Korea and the Genocide Convention": http://hir.harvard.edu/north-korea-and-the-genocide-movement
Documentary Evidence of Genocide in North Korea: http://www.watch-documentaries.com/children-of-the-secret-state
Documentary Evidence of Concentration Camps, Gas Chambers, Chemical and Biological Weapon Experimentation on Human Beings in North Korea:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7096673757347175289
Documentary - Public Execution in North Korea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAQE7kDwPZY
Contact: http://www.stopnkgenocide.com, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Facebook: Stop Genocide in North Korea
http://www.facebook.com/groups/stopnkgenocide/
Please do all you can to mobilize others and arrange a prayerful protest outside any North Korean diplomatic office in your nation or Chinese embassy or consulate. China is complicit in all the horrific treatment of people in North Korea and sends back refugees to certain enslavement in the prison camps or death. It is important that pressure also be put on China since it provides up to 80% of the resources for the regime in Pyongyang. Pray for the January 27 demonstration to be a significantly large one within South Korea and other nations and especially that it will catch the notice of the international community, moving them to take action to safeguard human rights in North Korea.
Kim Jong-Un, son of late North Korean leader Jim Jong-Il, accompanied by military officers, visiting the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where his father's body lies in state, in Pyongyang.
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators will meet again for the first time in more than a year in an effort to revive stalled peace talks. They will meet in Jordan along with the Jordanian officials and representatives from the U.S., Russia, the E.U. and the U.N. There is no expectation on any side of significant progress because of the issue of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank as well as in East Jerusalem and Palestinian demands for a settlement freeze. King Abdullah of Jordan has intervened in the process over the last few months because of his interest in a moderate Palestinian state being established in the West Bank and the Gaza and does not want to encourage any thoughts of a Palestinian state being established in Jordan instead. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his administration fear that any Palestinian state in the West Bank would ultimately be taken over by Islamists.
Such talks are crucial to the wellbeing not only of the Middle East but of the whole world. Please pray for all those involved in these peace talks and that they will be guided and helped by the Lord into a process of real reconciliation and healing of this longstanding feud between the two peoples.
The United Nations says more than 5,000 people have died as the Syrian government tries to crush the 9-month-old uprising there. Now, a pan-Arab body is calling for the immediate withdrawal of Arab League Monitors in Syria because the government has continued to kill opponents in spite of the monitors’ presence. The monitors are supposed to be ensuring that Syria complies with the Arab League’s plan to end Syria’s bloody suppression of dissent—a plan that the Syrian government agreed to already. Advocates said more than 150 people have been killed since the observers began their mission on last week.
Please pray that the Syrian government will heed the calls of the Arab League and the others in the international community “to remove its security forces and heavy weapons from cities, start talks with the opposition, allow human rights wrokers and journalists into the counrty, and release all political prisoners.” Pray for Christ’s peace and transformation of this important nation in a tumultuous region.
January 2012
Earlier this year, American Christian radio host Harold Camping stated that the Rapture and Judgment Day would take place on May 21, 2011, and that the end of the world would take place five months later on October 21, 2011. Obviously this didn’t happen, and he was wrong to try and predict it. However, 2011 was full of an intensifying number of catastrophic natural disasters such as the Japan tsunami and nuclear meltdown, the massive Thailand floods and the famine in East Africa. It was also a year of unsettling socio-political and economic changes like the “Arab Spring” of popular uprisings in the Middle East or the worldwide economic recession. Such developments do compel us to wonder if they might represent some of those “signs” of the end of the age and the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
2012 is also being hailed as a time of profound change. Though professional Mayan scholars and astronomers dispute this, some adhere to the Mayan calendar and December 21, 2012, as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in which the sun’s alignment with the center of the Milky Way will bring about the end of our world. One thing we can be sure of is that we are living in a time in which God is shaking the nations as foretold by Haggai the prophet. The good news is that the Lord ties this shaking to the coming of the “Desired of All Nations” (Hag. 2:6-7) and the filling of His house with greater glory. Another minor prophet with a major message says that indeed the whole earth will be filled with the glory of His presence (Hab. 2:14).
Jesus told us that when the nations give way to anguish and perplexity, with men fainting with terror over what is coming on the world as even the heavenly bodies are being shaken, we who believe in Him are to lift up our heads in expectation because our redemption is drawing near. He repeatedly warned that our posture should be prayerful watchfulness to be ready to respond to Him and also presumably, as urged elsewhere, to be His instruments in bringing transformation. For example, through Isaiah, the Lord said that the prayers of the watchmen/intercessors are critical to His transformation of the world (Is. 62:6-7).
The Apostle Peter echoes a similar theme when he writes: “The end of all things is near. Therefore, be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.” Even husbands are urged to be considerate and respectful of their wives so “your prayers will not be hindered” (I Peter 4:7, 3:7). Prayer is so important that nothing must be allowed to distract us from it even in the midst of the tumult and terror of a world that seems to be coming undone. Indeed, that is the reason we need to watch in prayer and partner with the Lord for the fulfillment of His purposes in it all.
Fortunately, the World Prayer Assembly is happening several months before the doomsday scenario of December 21, and you are invited to be there! Please see the attached invitation. Most importantly, the WPA will be a once-in-a-generation convergence of praying leaders, networks and movements from both church and marketplace along with a rising force of on-fire youth and children in prayer. It will be a time of deep encounter with the Lord and strategic planning for the future. Those of us in the IPC as well as our colleagues from the Indonesian and Korean prayer movements who are co-hosting the WPA believe that the Lord is bringing us all together in Jakarta to connect and expand a global, interactive movement of watching in prayer that He will use to reveal His glory to the nations.
Please use this issue of Connections to watch and pray for our world, and also we would appreciate your interceding for the arrangements and for the people from around the world that should be part of the World Prayer Assembly. If you haven’t seen it, check out the new video about the WPA and how it will reflect the pivotal time in which we live and respond to Christ’s global agenda.
Let not your heart be troubled and have an extraordinary 2012!
John Robb
IPC Chairman
“Musalaha’s women’s leadership committee recently decided to discuss forgiveness at their annual fall women’s conference. We spent time discussing what forgiveness is (a unilateral decision, an intentional process) and what it is not (a feeling, forgetting/avoiding, exoneration/excusing). …We also discussed the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Reconciliation entails the restoration of trust and a commitment to a relationship where both sides are willing to be vulnerable and allow the relationship to grow into something different than it was in the past; forgiveness can occur without reconciliation, but reconciliation cannot occur without forgiveness.
We also discussed intergroup forgiveness, redeeming violence and suffering, confronting issues, and bearing one another’s burdens. We then began to discuss intergroup forgiveness with each other, as we were divided into two groups of Israelis and Palestinians for separate discussion. We asked the Israelis to write how they have been hurt by the Palestinians, and then we asked them to write a list of how they think they have hurt the Palestinians. We asked the Palestinians to do the same – to write how they have been hurt by the Israelis, and how they think they have hurt the Israelis. Both sides honestly took time for self-reflection and self-criticism and came up with long lists of hurts and offenses.
We then brought the women back together to discuss this. Both sides brought up the issues of safety and security; both sides acknowledged the fear of the other. The Palestinian side expressed hurt at the imbalance of power, the misuse of Scripture for political purposes, the distortion and de-legitimization of Palestinian identity, and of land confiscation, among many other things. The Israeli side perceived that they hurt the Palestinians by treating them like second class citizens politically, socially, and through a flawed justice system, by being unwilling to listen to or believe their stories and history, and by confiscating property, to name a few. The Israeli side expressed hurt at the fear they live in due to Palestinian aggression, by the lack of understanding of their interpretation of Scripture, by Palestinian maps that make no mention of Israel’s existence, and by the fact that anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are not denounced in Palestinian society, among other things.
The Palestinian side perceived that they hurt the Israelis by violence, through challenging Messianic Jewish theology, for those living in Israel refusing to declare their Israeli identity, and by downplaying the Holocaust, to name a few. It was striking to see that, many times, each side had correctly articulated how the other side had been hurt by them. This session was eye-opening, and the women were sincere and honest with each other, and they truly heard and acknowledged one another’s hurts…
This conference was a breakthrough for our women. The women felt heard and better understood, and they felt their hurt was acknowledged. This does not mean that they necessarily agree with each another, but that they learned to better listen to one another. The other side’s acknowledgment of one’s hurt is part of the forgiveness process, and it helps in the healing process. They left excited by the furthering of their relationships and the newly found openness they achieved as they were vulnerable with one another. The women are taking this teaching back to their own congregations, as they saw the fruits of acknowledgement and forgiveness in this conference. It was a huge step in our journey of reconciliation, and we truly feel that we were able to better understand and live out.”
Please pray for a growing reconciliation movement to arise between Israelis and Palestinians and that the cycle of hatred and mistrust will be broken.
In apparent reaction to the imposition of new sanctions by the West, Iran is asking for a new round of talks about its nuclear program with the United States and five other world powers. Tehran’s uranium enrichment program could result in the development of nuclear arms. It is important for us to pray because the last round of negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany that happened a year ago were unsuccessful. The Iranian negotiator said, “We formally declared to them to return to the path of dialogue for cooperation.”
Please prayer that these talks will go ahead successfully and that the Iranians will agree to comply with concerns of the international community and discontinue any plans to build nuclear weapons which would destabilize the security of the whole region and our world. Pray that Islamic radicalism and apocalypticism would be discredited and rejected by the Iranian people and that moderate, good leaders will be raised up within that nation who will pursue the wellbeing of their own people and the region. God is able to bring change in this dangerous situation as we pray in faith!
“An Iranian pastor facing a death sentence for refusing to renounce his Christian faith and embrace Islam is expected to spend another year in jail, awaiting an appeal on his death sentence, while government authorities try to force him to convert to Islam.
However, the delay could be a ruse and the Iranian government could kill him in secret, warns the founder of Present Truth Ministries, which was the first to report on Pastor Yosef Nadarkhani’s arrest in October 2009.
Nadarkhani, who has been jailed since he was arrested and charged with apostasy, came within two days of being hanged in September until Iranian court officials — perhaps influenced by international outrage from the Rev. Franklin Graham, House Speaker John Boehner, and other notables around the world — decided to let him appeal the sentence.
The 34-year-old Nadarkhani, who became a Christian at the age of 19, was tried and convicted in December 2010. The pastor of several home congregations in a small Christian community called the Church of Iran, he has refused repeatedly to recant his faith.
The apostasy charge stems from the government’s allegation that he converted from Islam to Christianity, while his defense claims that he had not been a Muslim before becoming a Christian. The government contends that he was a Muslim because he was born into a Muslim household.
He refused three times during the three days running up to his execution date to recant, and his death appeared to be imminent until he received a reprieve of sorts.
The evangelical pastor’s lawyer was confident at one time that his conviction would be reversed. But he was told that Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary, asked the presiding judge to delay judgment on his appeal and keep him in prison for another year, the Christian Post reported last month.
The deliberate delay is meant to let the case “slip away from international attention” even as the authorities continue to “use whatever means necessary to cause him to convert to Islam,” the Christian Post quotes Present Truth Ministries’ Jason DeMars as saying.
The case has taken several outrageous turns since Nardakhani’s arrest, including the arrest of his wife in an attempt to force him to recant, as well as the addition of other trumped-up charges of rape, security violations, and Zionism that Iranian officials added around the execution date. That was the first time in the two-year process that such charges had been mentioned, and many observers regarded the additional charges as an effort to rationalize the death penalty.
Various reports have indicated that his health is deteriorating in prison.
Although the Iranian court very well could wait another year before deciding Nadarkhani’s fate, “there are no assurances that he will not be executed,” DeMars warned. “It could happen at any time. This is the way that the Iranian government operates with executions. They do not give advance notice, and it is done in secret.”
Please pray for Pastor Nadadakhani that he will be encouraged and strong in the Lord, that the plots of evil men will be overturned and that he will be released from prison soon. Pray for his family as well and for the Iranian believers to not be intimidated but rather emboldened to bear witness so that the church grows greatly as a result.