The following information is exclusively from The Voice of the Marytrs media room.
• Since U.S. and U.N. peacekeeping troops left in 1995, Islamic mobs have murdered more than 500 members of the persecuted church in Somalia. Militia groups were incited to kill Christians and Jews to gain the shortest route to heaven. Christians Liban Gala, John Warsame and Mudde Ali were shot in front of a cheering crowd before verses from the Koran were read over their bodies, which were later dumped and half-eaten by wild dogs. Martyrs’ bodies, including those of Michael Guleed and Afgoye Somalia, were even dragged behind trucks.
• Somali Christian refugee, Diriye Barre of Minneapolis, recounted how Muslim militants left him for dead after shooting out his right eye and piercing his neck with a second bullet. He is fortunate, as Christians are now the only group having no place to flee in Somalia, and cannot register as refugees to resettle in other countries. Because refugee camps are controlled by Muslims, most believers have fled to the remote areas of Ethiopia and Kenya along the border.
• Somalia’s persecuted church was started by British protestant missionaries in the north and Italian Catholic missionaries in the south decades ago, and it remains a small minority. Islamic organizations consider all Somali nationals as Muslims by birth, calling for Shariah law’s death sentence on Christian converts. Foreign relief workers have been killed in front of their children in their own homes, which were then burned. This happened to World Vision’s Mr. Shikhdoon and Swedish Relief Organization’s Mr. Salmon. The Muslim mob later forced themselves upon the martyrs’ wives after threatening them to reconvert.