AP

HOUTHI ATTACKS CREATE MORE SUFFERING FOR YEMENI CHRISTIANS
During recent testimony before Congress, former CIA intelligence analyst and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute Dr. Kenneth Pollack said the Houthis share Iran’s goal of destroying Israel and driving the United States and its allies out of the Middle East. “The Houthis have proven themselves to be belligerent, aggressive, and convinced that violence is the best way to get what they want,” Pollack insisted. “They are forces of oppression inside Yemen and forces of aggression beyond it.” Yemen’s small but growing community of Christians is among those targeted by the Houthis.
“The Christians in this area are Muslim background believers that have converted to Christianity. Christians are obviously a despised, minority,” explained Open Doors US CEO Ryan Brown. Once they leave Islam and are baptized, Yemeni Christians are considered apostates by Muslims. So, they keep their new faith secret to avoid severe persecution and possibly death at the hands of their clan or family members. Brown said although many Yemenis are frightened, they are also curious and asking questions about faith. Followers of Jesus respond with the Word of God.
[Source: CBN News]

PEOPLE OF EAST AFRICA DESPERATE FOR WATER, BODY AND SOUL
Horn of Africa (MNN) — In March, April and May, the “long rains” come to the Horn of Africa — or at least they are supposed to. For the past five plus years, drought has been an unwelcome reality in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and other East African countries. Poor rainfalls have devastated the land and displaced millions in the urgent search for food and water. “They have experienced many crop failures because of drought. A lot of animals have died,” says World Concern’s Peter Macharia.
“When we talk about physical drought, we should also be thinking about the spiritual drought. You know, water refreshes our weary bodies; so is the gospel. It refreshes our weary souls,” he says. 

11 CHRISTIANS JAILED IN VIETNAM REPORTEDLY GO MISSING
A group of 11 Vietnamese Christians arrested for their faith are now missing, according to anti-persecution organisation International Christian Concern. The group consists of Protestants and five Catholics, who were sentenced between 2011 and 2016 to a total of 90 years and eight months. The protestants hail from the Degar people, an indigenous group living in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. The advocacy group Campaign to Stop Torture in Vietnam said that government officials “routinely force Montagnard Christians to publicly recant their religion, [and] those who continue to worship in independent house churches face beatings, arrest, and imprisonment.” Three were accused of “undermining national unity policy” due to interacting with Degar Protestantism, a religious movement banned by Vietnam’s communist regime. Two of the group were imprisoned after refusing to deny their faith.
Open Doors reports: “[In Vietnam], it is a mixed story for believers. It seems that authorities at the national level are not sure how to react to increased international scrutiny of their freedom of religion record.” [Source: Premier Christian News]

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM EXISTS… WHEN MINORITIES ‘ARE NOT SAFE’?
The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the US claim that there is no freedom of religion there. The Minister of Defence acknowledged religious minorities “are not safe.” Does Pakistan have a serious freedom of religion problem? Yes, said the US Department of State in its recently released yearly report on religious freedom, which suggested including Pakistan in the black list of the worst religious freedom violators in the world. The report was immediately criticized by Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which claimed that the document “lacks transparency,” ignores the government’s efforts to improve the situation, and “does not aid in promoting human rights.”
A few days later, the Minister of Defense, Khawaja Asif, expressed the opposite opinion. Referring to cases in which Pakistani citizens accused of blasphemy have been lynched, in a speech at the National Assembly Asif said that “Every day, minorities are being killed. They are not safe under the guise of Islam… Pakistan is facing global embarrassment. Even smaller Muslim sects are not safe in Pakistan, which is a disgraceful situation,” the Minister said, probably referring to Shiites rather than to Ahmadis, as the latter are regarded as non-Muslim by Pakistani law. Perhaps the Minister of Defence should explain all this to his colleague at the Foreign Office.
[Source: My Christian Daily]

14 YEAR-OLD PAKISTAN CHRISTIAN GIRL FORCED INTO CONVERSION & MARRIAGE
In a separate incident, Muskan Salman was kidnapped in Sindh Province, Pakistan. Another Christian girl in Pakistan, this one 14 years old, has fallen victim to forced conversion/marriage by a Muslim kidnapper, sources said. Khalid Masih, a 48-year-old Catholic sanitation worker in Islamabad, said that a butcher in his neighborhood, Haider Ali, took his daughter Alina Khalid from their home in the Khanna Pul area of Islamabad on June 24. “Some neighbours told us that they had seen an unidentified girl outside our house on the day Alina went missing,” Masih told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “When we began searching for her, I came to know that Haider Ali, a 27-year-old butcher in our neighborhood, had planned Alina’s abduction.” He filed a complaint with Khanna Police that day, but they took no action, he said. “The FIR [First Information Report] was finally registered late on June 25, giving the accused sufficient time to go into hiding,” Masih said.
The Masih family learned on June 27 that their daughter had been forcibly converted to Islam and married to Ali, he said. “We came to know about Alina’s conversion and marriage after she recorded her statement in court in which she purportedly claimed that she had changed her faith and married Ali by choice,” said Masih. The Nikah Nama (Islamic marriage certificate) states that Alina’s age was 19, but it lacks her required national identity card number, he said.
Typically kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of such Islamic “marriages” and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers, rights advocates say. Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children’s ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their “legal” wives. Police have failed to recover Alina and present the suspect in court. Masih faces a daunting challenge in his struggle to recover her.
Pakistan ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian, as it was the previous year. [Source:  My Christian Daily]

POLAND REJECTS BILL TO LEGALIZE KILLING BABIES IN ABORTIONS
In a huge pro-life victory, the Polish parliament has rejected a measure to legalize killing babies in abortions. That keeps Poland as one of the few nations in Europe that protects the lives of unborn children. The ruling centre-left coalition in Poland lost a parliamentary vote 218-215 that saw decisive votes come from the centrist coalition partner, the Polish People’s Party — whose MPs mostly voted against the pro-abortion measure. Before the vote, Poland’s Catholic bishops allied for a day of prayer to oppose it: I warmly encourage you to make the coming Sunday a day of special prayer in defence of the unborn,” Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda, the chair of the Polish Episcopal Conference, said in a statement. “Life is a gift of God and as such is an inalienable right of every human being; therefore, it must be protected and supported at every stage of its development,” the archbishop said. “Respect for life, which belongs to the most important values, is one of the fundamental duties of every human being.” Thousands of pro-life advocates recently marched in Poland against abortion to protest the legislation. [Source: LifeNews.com]

PLAN TO IMPOSE ABORTIONS UP TO BIRTH ON AMERICA – FAILED AGAIN
A test vote in the Senate on a bill that would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law and nullify state pro-life protections was blocked by Republicans on Wednesday. Senate Democrats characterized the effort as a nonbinding measure meant to express the “sense of Congress” that Roe “should be restored and built upon, moving towards a future where there is reproductive freedom for all – ie it would be lawful to kill babies in the womb, right up to birth.” The bill failed to achieve the 60-vote threshold required for advancement, with 49 Republicans voting against the measure and 42 Democrats and two Republicans voting for it.
The Democrats who are well-known for their extremist views on abortion, noting that their proposed bills such as the Women’s Health Protection Act would force taxpayers to pay for abortions up until the moment of birth and would strike down over 1,300 state pro-life protections.  Some Democrats, like [former] Governor Northam from Virginia, was actually willing to allow a child born alive to just perish without any care.!  It is noted that a pro-life movement is gaining support among Democrats, but has yet to have any influence on the party’s ideology on abortion being permissible until birth. [Information from various sources, including LifeNews.com]

– compiled by Guido Kettniss