(ETH) – Persecution against believers continues as reports indicate that a Christian pastor and Bible translator has been murdered in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua and was likely tortured by a military officer who then shot him dead, according to the Christian Post.
The news came from Indonesia’s human rights commission (Komnas HAM) that reported that a fact-finding team believed that in late September, the military tortured Yeremia Zanambani, the pastor of the Gospel Tabernacle Church of Indonesia (GKII), hoping to extract information on stolen military weapons, CNN Indonesia reported.
The 67-year-old pastor was found dead by his wife lying face down in a pen for pigs, with gunshot wounds and his left arm nearly severed. The pastor was known for translating the Bible into Papua’s Moni dialect. “The findings are said to be based on the dying man’s account given to at least two witnesses before he died that he saw the soldier at the crime scene along with three or four other soldiers,”
Mohammad Choirul Anam, a Komnas HAM commissioner, said, according to UCA News. “The death of Reverend Yeremia Zanambani was caused by a series of acts which led to an extrajudicial killing,” Anam said, adding that the pastor died from blood loss.
Meanwhile, in China, communist authorities reportedly raided an underground Catholic community in the Hebei province and detained two priests and at least a dozen seminarians and nuns whose whereabouts still remain unknown, according to a report from the Christian Post.
The report details that the detained priests, nuns, and seminarians belong to the diocese of Baoding city, which is one of the largest and has at least 50,000 underground Catholics. The raid reportedly took place on Monday morning, when Fr. Lu Genjun, former vicar general of Baoding, was also detained. Although city authorities have released two seminarians no one knows where the others are being kept.
China, which has more than 60 million Christians, with half of whom worship in what is deemed as unregistered or “illegal” underground churches by the Chinese government has been cracking down on the latter for years. However, state-sanctioned churches have also been under attack as well.
