The Santa Rosa County School District faces a lawsuit from a Christian legal advocacy group for allegedly violating First Amendment rights of teachers, students, and other individuals by muzzling their ability to exercise their religious beliefs in public, reports LifeSiteNews.com. The suit says that students can no longer say “God Bless,” Christian teachers are relegated to the closet as far as any manifestation of their beliefs go, parents cannot communicate frankly with teachers, volunteers cannot answer any questions regarding religion, Christian groups cannot rent school facilities for private religious functions benefiting students, and pastors are dictated how they can and cannot seat their audiences at private, religious baccalaureate services held inside their own houses of worship. (CT-7/5/10)

On Sunday, May 2, 2010, Guangzhou Public Security officials forced Liangren House Church's landlord to terminate the church's rent, sealing and locking the doors with an iron chain. Guards blocked the congregation from entering the facility, forcing them to worship outdoors on Sunday morning. According to members, authorities have serially forced the church to migrate from hotel to hotel in the Haizu District, subsequently banning the church from meeting at each location. Sunday's crackdown marked the more than 10 times this year the church has been forced to migrate due to government pressure since early January." "Liangren House Church first drew the attention of the Guangzhou Public Security office in May, 2008, after launching a youth education and relief program in the earthquake-devastated province of Sichuan," said the ChinaAid spokesperson. "Since then, Liangren Church has been repeatedly disbanded, harassed, and chased while forced to flee from church meetings. "Head Pastor Wang Dao has been repeatedly kidnapped and interrogated in the last two years-the latest incident occurring on March 4, when police officers seized him during his noonday meal at a restaurant. Pastor Wang was later released, but authorities threatened the church not to meet in the future, seeking to intimidate the members by harassing the pastor." (CA/ANS-6/5/10)

Daniel, the young man who was arrested by the order of the local judicial court, on the charges of "illegal internet activities" and leading home based churches, was freed temporarily, reports FCNN. According to reports by Farsi Christian News Network, Daniel Shahri, who lives in the city of Isfahan, was arrested on April 11, 2010 and was released, after posting appropriate bail, on April 24, 2010 from the Dastgerd Prison of Isfahan. This young man, in his first telephone contact from inside the detention center, had indicated that he was arrested on the charges of publishing falsities and insult to Islamic faith. It is noteworthy to mention that Daniel is a 19 years old man from Isfahan who has been born in a Christian family. Thus, his Christian activities have been in the context of a Christian family and can not be used as a basis for prosecuting him. In the recent months, several reports indicate the ever increasing number of arrests and harsh treatment of Christians in the largest city of Iran. Even after two months there are no credible news of the whereabouts and condition of a Christian couple, Hamid and Reyhaneh, along with several other Christians in Isfahan, whose identities are currently protected by FCNN due to respect and security concerns for the detainees and their families. (CT-4/5/10)

Iraq's last official census (1987) counted 1.4 million indigenous Assyrian and Chaldean Christians. As Islamic zeal and Arab nationalism rose in the wake of Gulf War 1 (1991), Christians with means emigrated. By the time of the March 2003 US invasion, the Christian population of Iraq was estimated at between 1.2 million and 800,000. Sectarian conflict and ethnic-religious cleansing, a remnant of some 400,000 Christians remains. The Shi'ite south has been virtually 'cleansed' of Christians and few remain in the Sunni-dominated centre. Christians now live mostly in the north: in the historic Assyrian homeland of the Nineveh Plains, a fault-line region between the Arabs (who invaded up from Arabia in the 7th Century) and the Kurds (who invaded down from Turkey in the 14th Century). Terrorism targeting Mosul's churches and Christians has escalated ever since the US 'surge' forced al-Qaeda elements out of the central provinces of Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala to relocate north. Christian families continue to flee Mosul in large numbers. Those still there report being intimidated and harassed with threatening phone calls and letters. Many Christian women have taken to wearing the hijab to hide their Christian identity. Christians are so endangered in Northern Iraq that Christian students must travel to university in convoys with Iraqi military escorts. On Sunday morning 2 May two bombs ripped through a convoy of buses transporting Christian college students from the mainly Christian town of Hamdaniya, 40km east of Mosul in the Nineveh Plains region of Northern Iraq, to the University of Mosul. (ANS/CT-6/5/10)

Muslims kidnapped and forcibly converted an 18-year-old Christian woman to Islam, severely beat her mother on two occasions to "discourage her from trying to recover her daughter," lawyers have said. The CDN story said that Muhammad Akhter and Muhammad Munir on April 25, 2010, broke into the home of 50-year-old widow Fazeelat Bibi while her sons were at work and beat her "because they were upset at her continuous demands that they return her daughter Saira," Christian Lawyers Foundation (CLF) leaders told Compass. They news service stated that CLF President Khalid Gill said that neighbors' calls to the police emergency number went unheeded as the men beat her in Lahore's predominantly Muslim Bostaan Colony. "On April 18, 2010, Muhammad Akhter and members of his family had beaten her with clubs and ripped her clothes when the widow, having received a tearful phone call from her kidnapped daughter that day, went to their house to argue for her release," said CDN. "In her telephone call, Fazeelat Bibi said, Saira told her that Munir, Akhter and Munir's sister Billo Bibi had kidnapped her, stolen the jewelry of her dowry, forced her to convert to Islam and were pressuring her to marry Munir. "When Saira was kidnapped on March 10, 2010, she was engaged to a young Christian man in Youhanabad, a large Christian slum on the outskirts of Lahore." Kotlakhpat Police Station Inspector Rana Shafiq has flatly refused to help her recover her daughter and has explicitly sided with his fellow Muslims, Gill said, adding that Shafiq "was unavailable for comment." (CDN/ANS-6/5/10)

A Pakistani court has fixed May 26, 2010 as the date of to hear the case of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy. If found guilty she faces the death sentence. Martha Bibi, 45, married with three sons and three daughters, was first accused of the blasphemy charge on January 22, 2007 after she was arrested on that date under a blasphemy case registered on the application of a local Muslim. Bibi, who used to live in the village of Kot Nanak Singh, was accused if derogatory remarks against the Koran and of "defiling the sacred name of the prophet Muhammad." She was charged under Article 295C of the Pakistani Criminal Code - the notorious "blasphemy law" - that stipulates very heavy punishments (up to the death penalty) for those who offend the Prophet or the sacred texts of Islam. "In reality, according to local witnesses, the charges were brought by Muslim contractors who did not want to pay for materials supplied to a construction site by Bibi and her husband, a bricklayer," reported Asia News. (ANS-6/5/10)

Hundreds of thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been left homeless and abused by rebel soldiers. The attacks have been common, leaving women beaten, raped and abused, reports MNN. The Baptist Union of East Congo consists of 90 churches with 12,000 members, and together with the International Mission Board, they developed a strategy to reach the rebel soldiers. The goal? Go into their camps and witness to them. To date, more than 500 rebels have been baptized. Eight of these men gather in a small compound to tell their stories. At first their tales are sketchy, almost rehearsed. "I did bad things," one says. A second echoes the same line. They are quiet, then they begin to open up. (CT-4/5/10)

The arrest of a street preacher has renewed concern over religious freedom for Christians in the UK. Dale McAlpine, 42, was arrested in his home town of Workington, in Cumbria, last month after he mentioned homosexuality as one of a number of sins listed in the Bible, alongside idolatry, blasphemy, fornication, and drunkenness. He said he refrained from speaking about homosexuality in his sermon but when a passerby enquired on the issue, told her it was a sin. He was then approached by a gay community support officer who took him to the police station where he was detained in a cell for seven hours and charged with causing “harassment, alarm or distress”. McAlpine, who denied the charge, was released on bail on the grounds that he cease preaching. (CTUK-5/5/10)

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has released a briefing which highlights the pattern of communal violence against Christians in India, and has urged that a "culture of impunity needs to be reversed to ensure inciters and perpetrators of communal violence expect to be brought to justice". The briefing called, "Communalism, anti-Christian violence and the law," focuses on the aftermath of communal violence in Orissa in 2008, and the "regular, frequent attacks" on Christians concentrated in six other states, typically in the form of well-targeted mob violence. It argues that the government should address systemic problems underlying this violence, and that a proposed law to deal with communal violence should not be passed unless further, meaningful consultation is held with affected communities. The briefing also calls for the repeal of anti-conversion laws in force in five states, saying they are unnecessary, contrary to international law and have a damaging effect on religious minorities. Additionally, the penalisation of Dalits (also known as "Untouchables") who change religion should also be redressed. (CSW/CTUK-7/5/10)

Compass Direct News is reporting that four Christian families in southeastern Bangladesh left their village on Sunday, under mounting pressure by Buddhist extremists to give up their faith in Christ. Sources told Compass that 20 to 25 Buddhists brandishing sticks and bamboo clubs in Jamindhonpara village, 340 kilometers (211 miles) southeast of Dhaka, began patrolling streets last Friday to keep the 11 members of the Lotiban Baptist Church from gathering for their weekly prayer meetings.“On Saturday, the Buddhist extremists captured four men and beat one woman who had gathered in a home, threatening to kill them if they did not become Buddhists within 24 hours,” Compass reported. Compass Direct News said that the Christians captured Saturday night were released after the extremists, who ripped crosses off the walls of their homes, threatened to kill them if they continued praying and worshipping in the area. After the attacks, all Christians in Jamindhonpara fled, taking shelter in another village, source said. Jamindhonpara is located in the Lotiban area, Panchari sub-district of Khagrachari district. (CD/CTUK-5/5/10)