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Proof that Rescue Christians is using donors money for the purposes you gave it

October 21, 2013/2 Comments/in RescueChristians.org Work /by Keith Davies

Among the most important concerns of people who make charitable contributions is that their money actually ends up going directly toward the cause for which it is intended. When that cause is halfway around the world, in a region where corruption is in no short supply, such concerns are even more warranted.

Moreover, when the cause is rescuing Christians in Pakistan, we know about this all too well, as the suicide bombings at the All Saints Church in Peshawar have demonstrated. There are entities and individuals on the ground in Pakistan that take advantage of donors’ good intentions. We are very sensitive to these abuses and it is for that reason that we have decided to produce copies of hospital bills for individuals who’ve benefited directly from your donations.

Here is a message from Keith Davies, Executive Director of Rescue Christians:

While we cannot supply full transparency on how your money is used out of concerns about security, showing you copies of the initial hospital bills to help the victims of bombing is one thing we can do to show some of that transparency. The actual rescue work our people do is not only sensitive but very dangerous. Recently, three of our team members in Pakistan were detained by police only because they spoke with different dialects and looked different while working in the Peshawar area. This shows us how our work is closely monitored by the Pakistani government; there are other examples which we cannot publish.

Thankfully, our leaders on the ground were able secure their release within a few hours. Not only do we have to deal with the Islamic extremists – both inside and outside the Pakistani government – but also with corrupt Church leaders as well as people who look to make money off the tragedy of others’ persecution. Our teams on the ground are doing unbelievable work (I deal with them daily) despite facing these obstacles. Please continue to both pray and – if you can – support this holy work. Please click here to do so.

Below, you will see copies of hospital receipts mentioned above (click each image to enlarge). NOTE: The receipts below are watermarked for one simple, but unfortunate reason. Our concern is that NGO’s might claim these documents as their own for fraudulent purposes.

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Afghan Members Of Parliament Call For Killing Of Christians

September 12, 2013/0 Comments/in Christian Persecution /by Keith Davies

From Prophecy News Watch:

Fifteen months ahead of the planned withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan, an anti-Christian hate campaign involving several leading Afghan lawmakers and some media outlets is raising additional concerns about the future of religious freedom in the conservative Islamic country.

Advocacy groups say the anger is directed at Afghan Christians in India – where thousands of Afghan refugees remain and a small church congregation meets in New Delhi – and that the lawmakers concerned are calling for them to face the death penalty.

Converts from Islam to Christianity should be killed according to Islamic law (shari’a), in a bid to stop the growth of Christianity among Afghans inside and outside the country, according to one leading member of parliament cited by the Afghan Voice Agency news service.

Mohabat News, an independent Iranian Christian news agency, reported on Sunday that Nazir Ahmad Hanafi said several weeks ago that “Afghani citizens continue to convert to Christianity in India.

Numerous Afghanis have become Christians in India. This is an offense to Islamic laws and according to the Qur’an they need to be executed.”

Hanafi, an independent who represents the province of Herat, is a prominent lawmaker who heads the parliament’s Legislative Commission and reportedly received the third highest number of votes in the 2010 parliamentary election.

Barnabas Fund, an international charity that supports minority Christians in Islamic countries, said Hanafi made the comments during a parliamentary session on the subject.

It said that two days earlier another lawmaker, Abdul Sattar Khawasi, demanded that the Afghan government put pressure on Indian authorities to provide a list of Afghans who have converted to Christianity there.

That would enable the Afghan government to arrest and punish them if they return home in the future, he said.

Khawasi has a history of calling for the death penalty for “apostates” from Islam. Last July he began leading a campaign to outlaw popular local television programs modeled on such successful shows in the West as American Idol and the X Factor, complaining that they feature unveiled women singing and dancing.

Mohabat said another lawmaker, Abdul Latif Pedram, blamed the reported increase in conversions to Christianity on the presence of U.S. forces.

“The presence of the U.S. in Afghanistan results in the conversion of Afghans to Christianity,” it quoted Pedram – an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2004 and 2009 – as saying. “The United States’ long-term plan is to attack Afghani culture. Converting Afghan citizens serves that purpose.”

Mohabat and Barnabas Fund both noted that the speaker of the national parliament, Abdul Rauf Rahimi, also waded in to the debate over converts, instructing the parliamentary national security committee to follow up the issue.

Barnabas Fund said that after the parliamentary debates some media outlets got involved.

“For ten consecutive nights at the end of August, two TV channels broadcast photos of the leader of the Afghan church in Delhi, calling for him to be executed, and also showed images of other Afghan converts in India plus footage of baptisms,” it said.

The Union of Catholic Asia News reported last month on the New Delhi congregation of Afghan Christians, quoting a pastor as saying its members are frequently threatened by Afghan Muslims, and saying the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) did not pay proper attention to the plight of Afghan Christians.

Queries sent to the UNHCR did not bring a reply by press time, but the agency has in the past declined to discuss cases.

More than 2,100 American service personnel have been killed in Afghanistan since late 2001, of a total of more than 3,300 foreign coalition troops.

Three days to recant, or face death

Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree reserving one seat in the national parliament for a representative of the Hindu and Sikh minorities. Those tiny minorities are targeted for discrimination and harassment too, although they are arguably better off than their Christian compatriots.

According to the State Department there were 13 Sikh places of worship (gurdwaras) in Afghanistan last year and five Hindu temples, but not a single church for a community which could be anywhere from 500- to 8,000-strong.

The department’s latest international religious freedom report, which covers 2012, also noted that there were no Christian schools. There were several Sikh schools and some Hindus sent their children to those, it says.

Conversion from Islam is a highly sensitive matter.

“Under some interpretations of Islamic law, converting from Islam to another religion is deemed apostasy and considered an egregious crime,” the report said. “Male citizens over age 18, or female citizens over age 16 of sound mind, who convert from Islam have three days to recant their conversions or possibly face death by stoning, deprivation of all property and possessions, and/or the invalidation of their marriage.”

“Legal aid for imprisoned converts from Islam remained difficult due to most lawyers’ personal objection to defending apostates,” it added.

The Taliban seized control of most of Afghanistan in 1996 and ruled it under its ultra-strict interpretation of Islamic law until toppled by U.S.-led military action after September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Refugees who subsequently returned home included a small number of Afghans who had converted to Christianity while living abroad.

A little over two years later Karzai’s U.S.-backed government signed a new constitution into law which both claims to uphold freedom of religion and enshrines the primacy of shari’a.

Article two states that while Islam is the official religion, “followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law.”

But article three states that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.” Article 149 says adherence to the tenets of Islam “cannot be amended.”

Two years after the constitution was approved, a Christian convert named Abdul Rahman was sentenced to death for apostasy in a case that caused an uproar. Only after the U.S. and other coalition countries put pressure on Karzai was Rahman allowed to seek asylum abroad.

In 2010, Afghan Christians were again in the spotlight, when authorities arrested 26 Christians after a television station screened footage of converts being baptized, sparking calls in parliament, from Khawasi among others, for their execution. They were eventually released and many fled to India.

Afghanistan is ranked number three this year on the annual Open Doors USA watchlist of the world’s worst persecutors of Christians.

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Christian Persecution In Cyprus

June 30, 2013/0 Comments/in Christian Persecution /by Keith Davies

From American Thinker:

Violence against Christians has become all too frequent in recent years, with attacks on them in a wide variety of countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Repression and intolerance have been displayed against the Christian community in Nigeria; against the Coptic Christians in Alexandria, Egypt ; by bombing in a chapel in Sulu, Philippines; by bomb arracks against Assyrian Christians in Iraq; by discrimination against them in the Islamic Republic of Iraq; by prosecution under the blasphemy laws in Pakistan and elsewhere.

It was the interruption and disruption by force of the celebration of Christian Mass in the villages of Rizokarpaso and Ayia Triada in northern Cyprus that led the European Parliament in a resolution on January 19, 2011 to comment on the situation of Christians in the context of freedom of religion. Since the “Arab Spring,” thousands of Christians have fled the countries of the Middle East except Israel. Christian communities have existed for two thousand years in the Middle East, though they are now declining as a result of low birth rates and emigration caused by discrimination and persecution in most of the Arab and Muslim countries in the area. The case of northern Cyprus is a recent example of that discrimination and intolerance towards a Christian community.

The disruption of the Christian liturgy in the two villages was, as admitted by the World Council of Churches at the time, a flagrant violation of fundamental freedoms and human rights, the freedom of religion and belief, as guaranteed in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other international declarations, including the 1981 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination based on Religion and Belief.

The area of Cyprus had been ruled administratively as a protectorate by Britain from 1878 until August 1960, when it become an independent country. An international treaty guaranteed the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Cyprus. But political crises and violence between the Greek and Turkish communities continued. As a result, the U.N. Security Council set up in March 1964 the U.N. Peacekeeping Force (UNFICYP), originally to prevent further fighting between the two communities. In the absence of a political solution of the Cyprus problem, the force, now consisting of 925 uniformed personnel, and 140 international and local staff, has remained in existence to supervise ceasefire lines, maintain a buffer zone between the two sides, and undertake humanitarian activities.

Despite the presence of UNFICYP in 1974, the Turkish army invaded the island, ostensibly to restore “constitutional order,” after the Greek military had attempted a coup to unite Cyprus with Greece. Though there was a de facto ceasefire in August 1974, the Turkish aggression remained. The Turks never withdrew and occupied about a third of the island. In November 1983, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was established under the leadership of Rauf Denktash, who remained president until 2005. It had a population of 180,000, of whom about 100,000 came as colonialists from Anatolia, the Turkish mainland. The U.N. condemned the Republic as “legally invalid” and called on states not to recognize it. None has done so except Turkey. The town of Nicosia is still divided, with a “Green Line,” into two parts, each being the capital of one of the two regimes. It is the only divided capital in the world.

With the establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the 200,000 Greek Christian Cypriots in the north escaped or were deported to the south. The village of Rizokarpaso, where the Christian Mass was prevented, once had a population of 3,000; now it has few Christians. The Turkish Republic has epitomized qualities of ethnic cleansing, disproportionate use of force, vandalism, religious intolerance, repression, and persecution. The Christian community in the north has dwindled to about 450.

Restrictions have been put on Christian practices, as has access to religious sites and places of worship. In spite of international calls for the Turks to stop desecrating and destroying Christian properties, demolitions of churches have occurred, including in May 2011 the 200-year-old one in the village of Vokolida. In all, at least 530 churches have been damaged, vandalized, or destroyed. Some have been converted to military storage facilities, stables, casinos, or nightclubs; 78 have been transformed into mosques.

The Orthodox Church has been refused permission to restore Christian monuments. One calculation estimates that 60,000 relics, icons, and mosaics from ancient Byzantine have been stolen. Some were found in the Getty Museum in Malibu before a U.S. court ruled that they belonged to the Christian Church. Only since 2003 have the Greek Christians been allowed to cross the border into the north and see the destruction of their heritage.

One wonders if Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan and the leaders of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus by their intolerant persecution of the Greek Christians are pursuing a policy of revenge. After all, it was from the town of Seleucia, on the Tigris, later burned by the Roman military, that Paul sailed to Cyprus on his first journey to convert the population to Christianity (Acts of the Apostles, chapter 13), and it was from Cyprus that the early Christians set out to proselytize the Greeks of Antioch.

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Posted by Theodore Shoebat

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