Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives

AFRICA: More than 3,000 children die every day from malaria, the World Health Organization and UNICEF report. The disease remains a grave threat to pregnant women and their babies. The two groups call for greater availability of anti-malarial drugs and insecticide-treated nets, which can reduce its transmission by 60 percent. Both agree that the number of malaria cases could be halved by 2010. One in five people in the world stands at risk of getting the mosquito-borne disease.

BRAZIL: Although the country’s new government has promised to wipe out slavery, some 25,000 Brazilians, including women and children, work as slave laborers in rural areas. The slavery system, in the form of debt bondage, preys on workers by offering them verbal contracts based on false pledges of high-wage work. Then workers are brought to remote jungle areas, where they accrue debt for high-priced transportation, rent, food, alcohol and work tools that are sold in company stores.

BURUNDI: Two rival ethnic groups are facing each other as Pierre Buyoya of the Tutsi minority group, which has traditionally held power in Burundi, has handed over the government to Domitien Ndayizaye, of the nation’s majority Hutus. This transfer of power is part of a peace deal intended to end a decade-long civil war in Burundi.

HAITI: More than 90 percent of Haitians practice voodoo, but only in April did the nation’s president make it an official religion. That means that the government now recognizes marriages performed by voodoo priests and priestesses, and voodoo practitioners may set up schools and hospitals. Most adherents to voodoo also take part in Roman Catholicism. Voodoo is rooted in West African tribal religious beliefs with elements of Catholicism added by Caribbean slaves.

HONG KONG: Missionaries and church leaders are still reeling from the SARS epidemic, reports Christianity Today. WEC International’s Hong Kong director contracted the pneumonia-like condition in early April and remains seriously ill. The Norwegian Lutheran Mission recalled its eight workers. Many pastors wear masks when they speak and worship leaders use a sterile wipe to clean the microphone after each use. Amidst widespread fears, some Christians are using the epidemic to witness. In early April, 50 Christians gathered in a park, displaying a banner reading, “Don’t be afraid, just believe.”

IRAN: The country’s constitutional oversight body, the Guardian Council, again has rejected a reformist parliamentary bill calling for equal blood-price for non-Muslim Iranians. This means that the worth of a Christian or other non-Muslim’s life remains a twelfth of a Muslim’s. The council, comprised of six hard-line clerics appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and six lawyers chosen by parliament, rejected the bill because it contradicted Islamic law.

IRAQ: Iraqi Christians want the country’s next constitution to guarantee them full rights to worship, build churches and cultural centers, and educate their children according to Christian principals. They also seek to take part in government and not suffer discrimination. While Saddam’s government largely tolerated the Christian minority of around one million and allowed them freedoms unheard of in other Muslim countries, Christians often suffered job discrimination, the government nationalized Christian schools, and a Christian had to convert to Islam to marry a Muslim.

MALI: Islam has been the dominant religion of this northwestern African nation for 700 years, but after a 1991 military coup, the junta that drafted Mali’s new constitution restored democracy and religious freedom. Today Christian groups including Gospel Missionary Union, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and the Assemblies of God not only are allowed to minister openly, they’re also welcomed. Mali’s people are receptive, even though Islamic fundamentalists often persecute converts to Christianity.

NORTH KOREA: Families are committing mass suicide with rat poison rather than die slowly from starvation. The usual food distribution honoring President Kim Il-Sung’s April 15 birthday didn’t happen this year. The famine is said to be much worse than the severe 1996-98 famine.

PAKISTAN: A Christian who earns his living by hawking goods on buses has been sentenced to life in prison for allegedly damaging a Muslim signboard of faith during a bishop’s funeral procession in 1998. Ranjha Masih, 55, denied the charges but was still convicted under Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which carries a mandatory death sentence. The judge did not explain why he gave Masih a life sentence. Masih plans to appeal. He is one of eight Pakistani Christians now jailed on blasphemy charges.

SOUTH AFRICA: Christians began gathering for days of prayer in rugby stadiums in 2000, uniting tens of thousands of believers. On May 1, Christians filled 75 stadiums across the country for a day of prayer and repentance, as Christians in 61 stadiums in 27 other African countries did the same. Television and radio stations broadcast the concerts of prayer across the globe.

TAIWAN: The nation’s department of education has opened 3,000 public-school teaching positions for Americans to improve students’ English—positions Taiwanese Christians want to see filled by American believers. The Taiwan Church Network’s missions coordinator touts the offer as missions positions paid by Taiwan’s government—jobs that will have long-term effects on the island’s youth. Fifty Christian teachers are needed to start mid-June. For details, see www.ITPSusa.org.

UNITED KINGDOM: Cultures clash in the UK when South Asians immigrate and their children grow up in European society, embracing different values. In Britain, at least 1,000 women are forced into marriage each year. The Community Liaison Unit of the nation’s Foreign Office deals with around 200 forced-marriage cases a year. Family members may threaten or kill women who resist marriage arrangements. Lack of funding and organization hamper efforts to rescue women in forced marriage, and government moves to thwart the practice risk charges of cultural bullying.

May 30, 2003