• BC Christian News • JUNE ISSUE 1999 • VOL. 19 #6 • Formerly "Christian Info News" •

Hostile conditions in Middle East and Central Asia
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MIDDLE EAST churches are concerned about the number of new believers who flee the region. The Middle East Council of Churches said congregations in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq are worried because so many new Christians leave rather than face the hardship of worshipping in a Muslim country, Servants Fellowship International stated. Muslim converts are often disowned by their families and targeted for violence. "So many see no solution but to leave," the ministry's Don Darling told Religion Today.

"God calls us to bear the cross and if he calls us out of Islam, then he calls us to stay and witness, a North African church leader said. He and 40 other leaders from Asia, North Africa and the Middle East recently attended a conference on the future of the church in the Islamic world, Darling said. The church leaders said they believe persecution will increase. There are examples of this persecution throughout Central Asia as well, along with some positive signs.

Turkmenistan

Government authorities in Turkmenistan called in more than 100 citizens for questioning during the first week of May, apparently in connection with a mounting crackdown against local Christians and churches over the past three months.

The Turkmen citizens were reportedly interrogated about their contacts with various foreign-nationality Christians residing in the country. One expatriate couple was forcibly deported April 22, after having worked in the country since 1995.

Previous measures in March against local Christians included a two-year labor camp sentence against an ethnic Turkmen member of a Baptist church, along with hefty fines against two Protestant church groups accused of holding "unregistered religious meetings."

The strident moves against Protestant Christians were apparent efforts to enforce the Central Asian nation's tightened religion laws, under which only Orthodox Christians and officially sanctioned Sunni Muslims have been granted legal registration since 1997. Any religious group seeking official recognition must have a minimum of 500 members to even apply for registration.

Chechnya

A Chechen pastor has been murdered, Russian Baptists say. Aleksandr Kulakov, 65, reportedly was decapitated and his head displayed in an outdoor marketplace, Baptist Press said. Some believe that Kulakov, the pastor of a small congregation in Grozny, was taken hostage by radical Muslims when he disappeared March 12.

The church's previous pastor, Alexei Sitnikov, was kidnapped in October 1988 and has not been heard from since. Chechen bandits are holding a youth leader from Central Baptist Church in Vladikavkaz for $100,000 ransom; two Orthodox priests were kidnapped in April.

Tuvin people

People in a region between Europe and Asia are hearing the gospel for the first time. The Tuvin are a group of about 250,000 people between Mongolia and Russia, International Russian Radio/TV said.

Their traditional religion is Buddhism, and they didn't know anything about Christianity until recently when the Jesus film was dubbed into their language and shown, a Tuvin worker with the ministry said. There are now many prayer houses in the region, and some prominent people in the arts community are professing Christians, he said. The ministry is working on a Tuvin-language children's Bible. A version in the Russian language produced more than a million letters of response in four weeks, in 1991.

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