Weekly Bulletin on the Persecution
of Christians Worldwide
21 July 2026
The Universal Christian Church of New Jerusalem publishes a weekly report on news from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, highlighting the nature of the persecution of Christians worldwide, so that none of these lives remains unheard.
China
On Saturday, 11 July, police in Yueyang, Hunan Province, conducted a coordinated crackdown targeting multiple evangelical house churches across the city, raiding several meeting places simultaneously. Evangelical pastor Huang Lei, the elder Yang Jianjun, the catechist Yuan Shiying, and numerous members and collaborators of the same evangelical community were arrested, including children and teenagers. The raid followed six months of covert surveillance. The authorities confiscated all the Bibles and Christian books found at the pastor’s residence. The catechist, whose husband is a public employee and whose daughter is a university teacher, was put under intense pressure and threatened with the loss of her family’s professional livelihoods. Ultimately, her husband was forced to sign a written pledge undertaking to confine his wife to their home and prevent her from participating in the life of her evangelical community.
India
On Sunday, 5 July, in Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh), militants belonging to Hindu extremist organisations raided the home of the Protestant Pastor Briton Phillips while Sunday worship was underway. The pastor, who had undergone a leg amputation just two months prior, was arrested under the state’s anti-conversion law and detained for three days. His health severely deteriorated during this time.
On the same day, police disrupted a Sunday service in the village of Pipardeurwa in the Maharajganj district of Uttar Pradesh and arrested Protestant pastor Saroj Kumar, his wife Saroj Devi and Priyanka, a resident of the neighbouring Kushinagar district. The three were booked under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act and produced before a local court.
On Wednesday, 8 July, the Government of Maharashtra ordered a three-month statewide audit of all land owned by Christian churches, including those of the Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical denominations, as well as missionary organisations. Announced in the State Legislative Assembly by Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule, the measure’s stated objective is to identify building violations, disputed land titles, and irregular transfers dating back to the British colonial era. The audit exclusively targets Christian institutions, including their affiliated schools and hospitals. In the Dhule and Nandurbar districts, authorities have already targeted several church buildings for demolition.
On Tuesday 14 July, in Jabalpur again, a mob of Bajrang Dal militants stormed the campus of St Aloysius Senior Secondary School in the Rimjha area while students were in class. The attackers shouted anti-Christian slogans, pelted buildings with stones, shattering numerous windowpanes, and attempted to tear down a life-sized statue of St Aloysius. Only swift police intervention prevented more serious damage.
The attack followed accusations made by a former contract employee whose appointment had not been renewed because of repeated concerns about his performance and conduct. He claimed that the school administration had tried to convert him to Christianity. According to diocesan sources, he threatened to invoke the anti-conversion law as soon as he found out that his contract would not be renewed. Father Thankachan Jose, the Catholic priest of the Diocese of Jabalpur who heads the institution, dismissed the allegation as unfounded. Bishop Emeritus Gerald Almeida, who has himself been charged alongside a Catholic nun with allegedly attempting to convert underprivileged children, observed that, whenever a young person is denied a job, retaliation invariably takes the form of an accusation of proselytism.
Iran
St Peter’s Evangelical Church in Tehran has been evicted. As reported in the 7 July bulletin, this historic church on Qavam Street had been the subject of a confiscation order and a two-week ultimatum. When the deadline expired, between 11 and 12 July, the twenty Armenian and Assyrian Christian families living in the complex – twenty-seven people in total, many of whom had lived there for decades – were forced to leave their homes. The community now fears that the expropriation will be followed by the demolition of the entire complex, comprising the evangelical church, school, and residential buildings.
On Tuesday 14 July, Ghazal Marzban was beaten by prison officers at Evin Prison in Tehran after protesting against the deteriorating conditions in the women’s wing, which had just been filled with an additional fifty female prisoners. The prison doctor diagnosed a fractured bone in her left hand and recommended that she be transferred to hospital, but this was not arranged and she remained in her cell in severe pain. Having converted to Catholicism in 2017 and graduated in Islamic law, she was prevented from taking the bar exam after her baptism and advised to leave the country. Her husband, who has also converted, is being denied the medication he needs for Parkinson’s disease. She was arrested for the first time in November 2024 for reporting the harassment she suffered because of her faith. She was arrested again in January when her Bible and all her other Christian reading material were confiscated. She was sentenced to over nine years’ imprisonment for “propaganda against the State” and “conspiracy and collusion against national security”.
Mexico
On Sunday afternoon, 12 July, four municipal police officers in Villa de la Paz, San Luis Potosí State, assaulted three Catholic priests from the Diocese of Matehuala. According to an official statement released by the diocese that evening, Fathers Carlos Eduardo Rodríguez and Ciro De La Rosa Ruiz were pulled over while driving. When the officers ordered Father Ciro to step out of the vehicle for inspection, Father Israel Salinas Torres, the local parish priest, intervened by standing in front of the car door to protect him. The officers forced Father Israel to the ground, repeatedly kicking him while he was on the ground and deploying tear gas during the assault.
Nigeria
Between 30 June and 1 July, approximately one-hundred-armed Fulani militants launched coordinated attacks on predominantly Catholic villages in the Sai community of Mbajir Ward in Katsina-Ala County, which lies along the border between the states of Benue and Taraba. Fifteen people were killed and ten others were wounded in the attacks.
The following day, in Anyiase in the Moon Ward of Kwande County (a region along the Nigeria–Cameroon border and a region inhabited almost entirely by Catholics), Fulani terrorists ambushed Christian farmers working in their fields, killing Asongo Nagwebe and Tarzan Agbahegh and injuring more than ten people. The following day, the same gunmen blockaded the Anyiase–Ikyogen road and opened fire on a vehicle carrying fleeing civilians, killing a further passenger.
On Tuesday 14 July, Fulani militants raided the Ondo community near Akpachi in the Ugboju district of Otukpo County (Benue State), killing one Christian at the scene and another who later died in hospital from injuries sustained in the attack. A third person was wounded. Despite residents alerting the military outpost in Ogobia, soldiers didn’t intervene. In protest, hundreds of young Christians blocked the Otukpo–Agatu Federal Highway at the Ogobia junction. They were condemning the double standards of the justice system in their country, which acts swiftly and resolutely when Fulani leaders are implicated in crimes but remains completely stagnant when Christian villages are attacked.
During this season of Marian ascent, the Church entrusts the names and tears of these brothers and sisters to the Heart of the Universal Mother, in honour of their unwavering fidelity to the Gospel of Christ.
“Through him, then, let us offer God a continual sacrifice of praise,
that is, the fruit of lips which acknowledge his name”
(Heb 13:15)
