Keziah Chollom’s husband and two of her children were killed by Fulani militias during an attack on her home village, Tatu, in Plateau State, Nigeria, on October 15. csi
The government in Abuja has been forced on the defensive after a United States senator accused it of being complicit in a silent genocide of Christians in Nigeria.
“Since 2009, Islamist jihadists have massacred over 50,000 Christians in Nigeria and destroyed more than 20,000 Christian churches, schools and other institutions,” Ted Cruz wrote in a post on X. In an earlier thread, the Republican senator from Texas had accused officials in Nigeria of “ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians.”
A spokesman for Nigerian President Bola Tinubu felt compelled to reject the accusations in a blunt post of his own on X.
“Senator, stop these malicious, contrived lies against my country,” Bayo Onanuga demanded. “Christians are not targeted,” the spokesman averred, asserting that Boko Haram and “bandits” – government-speak for Islamist militants – turn their sights on everyone, Muslim and Christian alike.
25 killed in Nigeria’s Plateau State
Days later, beginning on October 7, a string of attacks on Christian villages in the Riyom and Barkin Ladi areas of Plateau State claimed at least 25 victims, including six children. Local Christian activists spoke of one of the worst weeks they had experienced in recent memory.
In one Barkin Ladi village, Tatu, Fulani militants shot and killed 11 villagers, including five children who were asleep in bed, on the night of October 14.
A team from Christian Solidarity International (CSI) was in Plateau State and visited Tatu a few days later to offer support. They met with traumatized survivors, including 20-year-old Keziah, who had discovered her husband and two older children dead in pools of blood.
“It was heartbreaking,” admitted Hassan John, CSI’s partner for Subsaharan Africa. “Keziah was carrying one of her two surviving children on one arm, and holding tight to me with the other, sobbing bitterly. She kept asking, ‘What do I do now, where do I go, how do I survive?’”
CSI is committed to helping the survivors of these latest anti-Christian attacks as it has helped victims of previous attacks in Plateau and other parts of the Middle Belt.
On October 31, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would add Nigeria to the U.S.’s list of “countries of particular concern” for religious freedom violations.
Armenian government intensifies persecution of the Church
In an escalation of its campaign against the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Armenian government arrested a bishop along with members of the clergy and lay employees on October 15. Security forces carried out raids on the diocese of Aragatsotn, detaining Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan, 12 of his priests and a number of church workers.
All the arrested were released the following day except for Bishop Proshyan, a priest named Garegin Arsenyan, and the diocese’s accountant. These three men were indicted on political charges related to their opposition activity. Masked security agents also detained the lawyer of an archbishop, Bagrat Galstanyan, who was himself arrested in June.
On October 3, another archbishop, Mikayel Ajapahyan, was sentenced to two years in prison after a hasty trial for comments he made to the press.
The arrests add to an expanding list of political prisoners in Armenia that includes Samvel Karapetyan, a prominent Russian-Armenian businessman who defended the church in a television interview.
The government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is at odds with the church over how to respond to the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh. The church publicly supports the right of Karabakh Armenians to return to their ancient homeland. But Pashinyan has declared the Karabakh question “closed” and called talk of return “dangerous” to the peace process currently underway between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The forcible displacement of the Christian population of Nagorno Karabakh two years ago and the people’s continuing strong desire to return were the topic of the Christian Solidarity podcast aired on October 11.
Pakistan: Blasphemy victim freed after 24 years
In good news, Anwar Kenneth, a 72-year-old Christian from Pakistan, was finally freed from prison on October 21 after spending 24 years on death row. Kenneth had been sentenced to death in 2001, on charges of blasphemy, after writing a letter to a Muslim religious scholar expressing his Christian beliefs.
Kenneth’s release had been eagerly anticipated since his death sentence was lifted in June. Last year, a legal team supported by CSI filed an appeal with Pakistan’s Supreme Court to have Kenneth’s conviction overturned. This was ultimately successful: his acquittal finally came on October 8. Two weeks later he walked out of the Faisalabad jail a free man.
