Barnabas weekly newsletter 14 January 2011

“We have been receiving frantic requests from our churches in the affected areas to support them with funds to provide relief for thousands of affected people.” (Barnabas Aid partner in Sri Lanka)

Barnabas Aid has today sent emergency funds to Christian partners in Sri Lanka who are providing immediate aid to thousands of Christian families affected by the torrential flooding.

More help is urgently required, with around one million people already affected by the disaster and further rainfall forecast.

Barnabas Aid supports a Girls’ Rescue Centre based in a remote rural region of Kenya where Christian girls and women are subject to abuse from traditional religious beliefs and practices.

Polygamy, female genital mutilation (female circumcision) and forced marriage at a very young age – often to men decades older than themselves – are common.

“The authorities came to our homes. They arrested us and many other believers. I want to ask you to pray for us. We are sure God will never leave us or forsake us... Sorry for giving you bad news, but I believe God will do something for us.” (Iranian Christian arrested in night-time raids)

More than 70 Christians have been arrested in a crackdown on Iran’s house church movement by the authorities.

Christian families were slaughtered when men armed with rifles and machetes attacked their village in the latest outbreak of anti-Christian violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.

Three homes in Kuru Station, Plateau State, were attacked with 13 people, including women and children, killed and at least three others injured.

The referendum on independence for South Sudan look sets to herald a new dawn of peace and freedom for the region’s long-suffering Christian majority population.

But if, as is widely anticipated, the South opts for secession, Christians in the strongly Muslim North face an uncertain and dangerous future.

A group of Laotian Christians, including two young children, were arrested at gunpoint while they were eating a meal at a pastor’s home.

Eleven Christians were detained and charged with holding a “secret meeting” – an act punishable as a political offence in communist Laos – in the raid by 20 police officers.