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An update from Azerbaijan:

by VOM Staff

by Desiree, VOM Intern, Summer 2007

Delores’s aging body was weary from running, and she wept, “God, please have mercy on us, your children!” Delores was fleeing for her life, along with other believers, as attackers showered artillery on her village. Using her crude walking stick, she climbed, step by step, over a steep mountain range until she reached a safe location. She settled in a makeshift refugee camp among hundreds of others who had been displaced by the violence.

As I posted in the previous entry, Rami Ayaad (pictured) was murdered yesterday. As a result of this murder, Christians in the Gaza area are now more worried than ever concerning their safety.

Late yesterday the sad news broke that Rami Ayyad was murdered after he had been kidnapped. What is significant about this murder is that Rami was the manager of the only Christian bookstore located in Gaza City.

LOS ANGELES, October 4 (Compass Direct News) – China’s crackdown on religious freedom advocates ahead of the Beijing Olympics extended to two Christian human rights attorneys the past two weekends. Attorney Li Heping released a statement saying a group of men ordered him to stop practicing law, beat him and struck him with electric batons for nearly five hours on Saturday night (September 29). The previous Saturday (September 22), Christian human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng and his family were reportedly arrested a day after he sent an open letter to the U.S. Congress listing human rights abuses. Gao has been under house arrest since his December 2006 conviction for “inciting subversion,” serving a sentence of three years with five years probation for his human rights defense work. Attorney Li said the men covered his head with a cloth bag and took him to a basement in a Beijing suburb. “There, several people took turns to beat me brutally, slap my face, hit me on the head with water bottles, and kick me,” he said. “The most unbearable form of their torture was hitting me with high-voltage electric batons.”

LOS ANGELES, October 5 (Compass Direct News) – Turkish Protestants have reported increasing attacks and threats in recent months despite claims by President Abdullah Gul this week that Christians in Turkey are not targeted. The threats have increased since two Turkish Christian converts and a German Christian were tortured and killed at Zirve Publishing House in Malatya on April 18. Soner Tufan, director of Radio Shema, a Christian station in Ankara, said that since the Malatya murders, at least three times a month men have come to the station’s door and threatened workers. In Antalya, Antalya Bible Church pastor Ramazan Arkan said that he is pursuing four court cases against a construction worker who began threatening church members in May, and one member of his flock was assaulted after a church service in August. In spite of the murder of Catholic Priest Andrea Santoro in February 2006, the ritual slayings in Malatya, and other incidents, Turkish President Abdullah Gul told a Council of Europe gathering in Strasbourg, France this week, “There are no attacks targeting Christians in Turkey.”