The crackdown comes ahead of the East African country’s Independence Day on Friday.
 
Release International, which supports persecuted Christians around the world, said it has been told by its contacts that streets are filled with police and secret police that are trying to prevent protests.

In 2002, Eritrea outlawed many Christian denominations and shut down Evangelical and Pentecostal churches.

Christians who worship in unregistered churches can face punishment and any believers in the armed services caught practising can be imprisoned.
 
Dawit, an Eritrean refugee, described how he was tortured to the Christian charity: ‘I was arrested because of my Christian faith.
 
“Each night I had to sleep on the floor with my arms and feet tied together tightly, they called it the ‘Number 8’.”
 
Estimates vary to how many Christian prisoners are being held in Eritrea, as the authorities do not release records.
 
Most are believed to be Pentecostal or Evangelical and many have been held for more than a decade.
 
The recently arrested Christians, which includes 14 children, are believed to be in Adi Abeito prison, close to where they were arrested.
 
Release partner Dr Berhane Asmelash was tortured in Eritrea but said Christians inside the country are growing bolder as the Eritrean diaspora becomes more vocal in calling for greater religious freedom.
 
“People used to live in…

Rev Zakariah Ido and members of the Evangelical Church Winning All in Kaduna, including the pastor’s daughter, were abducted in the early hours of Sunday.

A witness told local reporters that between 20 and 30 armed Fulani Muslim extremists were responsible for the attack.

The kidnapping took place as the church was hosting a choir service.

The Nigerian press has reported no contact has been established with the kidnappers.

According to a report by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), approximately 1,930 deaths were attributed to Fulani militants in 2018 alone, nearly six times the death toll caused by terrorist group Boko Haram.

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The Department for Education recently launched a consultation called ‘Children not in school‘ which seeks to gain public opinion on how to keep track of children who aren’t attending mainstream school during normal school hours.

The government wants to start a register, maintained by local authorities, of children not in school and also of ‘proprietors of certain education settings’.

It is proposing that there should be a duty on local authorities to check where local children are, and on parents in providing this information. The same could also apply to those who provide other ‘education settings’, which some Christians fear could include churches.

The EA, which represents thousands of Christians across the country, says it’s not clear who ‘proprietors’ are and that what counts as an ‘educational setting’ is vague. It fears it could include places like youth clubs, prayer meetings and Bible studies.

The Department of Education (DfE) told Premier it will not include Sunday schools as they would count as ‘supplementary education outside normal school hours’.

Simon McCrossan, head of public policy at the Evangelical Alliance, told Premier’s News Hour: “Whilst churches take registers of things like trips, the idea of a state register of religious attendance is unprecedented in the Western world and time and again we see that registration begets regulation.

“Why else…

Members of the Kirk’s General Assembly unanimously backed a motion calling for all documents relating to the Chinook helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre on 2nd June 1994 to be “kept in a safe place and not deleted”.

A total of 29 people died after the aircraft, which was on its way from RAF Aldergrove near Belfast to Inverness, crashed in a ball of flames.

The Church previously called on the department to “revisit” the incident in 2003.

The Very Rev Dr Alan McDonald, who lives in Cromarty in the Highlands, told the General Assembly the response from the church on Mull of Kintyre and nationally was “much, much appreciated” by the families.

He said: “The MoD is reviewing the records of the accident on the Mull of Kintyre, whether they should be retained or deleted.

“The families are once more feeling very vulnerable and their voices are being ignored again.

“Because of everything that has happened to them over the years, the families simply do not want these records to be deleted.

“Their preference is that the records are kept in a safe place where they can be easily assessed from now on.”

Dr McDonald told the General Assembly the MoD had confirmed records, closed in 1995 and 1996, “will be reviewed for release or alternative disposal this year”.

The pilots, flight lieutenants Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook, were accused of gross negligence over the crash.

In…

Pastor Bryan Carter of Concord Church in Dallas wants couples to not only agree to ten weeks of counseling but to also decide upon completion if they want to get married.

“If you’re living together and you want to get married but financially it’s not a good season, we’ll take care of the tuxedo, dress and reception, Carter told a local NBC affiliate.

“We’ll help you get there.”

At the end of the pre-marital counseling, couples will have the option of walking down the aisle and saying vows in a group wedding.

While the pastor acknowledged the idea is “radical”, he said he wanted to provide couples with the tools to “follow after Christ”.

If couples decide marriage isn’t for them, the church has offered to help pay for one month’s rent if someone in the relationship will agree to move out.

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