Police detained Christian families in Upper Egypt and forced them to deny arson attacks on their homes during a spate of anti-Christian violence in February, the families said.

Two Coptic Orthodox families said police detained them for 36 hours when they attempted to report an assault on their homes in Armant, south of Cairo. The fires came five days after Muslim groups set four Christian-owned shops alight on February 9.

The international media reported that rumours of a love affair between a Christian man and Muslim woman sparked the violence, but local papers said hostilities began over accusations that Christians were blackmailing Muslim women to convert.

The authorities detained the Christians when they tried to report the arson attack on their homes. "Police asked them to sign statements that they had attempted to set their own homes on fire to claim that they were being attacked by Muslims and to demand police protection," one source told Compass.

Eritrea: Just days after Eritrean security police arrested one of the founders of the Full Gospel Church, two Protestant pastors and another church leader jailed months ago have been released.

Pastor Habtom Tesfamichel was taken into custody on January 23 in Asmara. The 57-year-old is incarcerated in the capital's Wongel Mermera prison, along with nearly two dozen other Christian pastors and priests known to remain jailed in the notorious investigation centre.

In late January, two Protestant church leaders, Pastor Simon Tsegay and Gebremichel Yohannes, were released. Soon afterwards, Full Gospel Church Pastor Fanuel Mihreteab was released from Sempel Prison in Asmara, two years after his arrest in January 2005 in the town of Dekemhare. Like Tsegay and Yohannes, Mihreteab was forced to surrender property deeds to guarantee his required bail.

Also in Eritrea, a Christian has died in prison, four-and-a-half years after the Eritrean regime jailed him for worshipping in a banned Protestant church.

From the southern port city of Assab, local Christians confirmed the death of Magos Solomon Semere on February 15 at the Adi-Nefase Military Confinement facility just outside Assab. According to one source, Semere, 30, died "due to physical torture and persistent pneumonia, for which he was forbidden proper medical treatment."

Semere's death is the third known killing of a Christian for his faith since last October.

India: About 25 members of the Hindu extremist group Dharam Sena (Religion Army) attacked a pastors' conference in Raipur, Chhattisgarh state, on February 2, injuring at least 10 Christians. The attack took place as organisers were preparing the opening session at the Singh Palace banquet hall in Pandri, a sub-district of Raipur.

"When the Dharam Sena barged into the hall, my female manager tried to stop them, but they manhandled her and then proceeded to attack the participants," Jay Prakash, the Christian owner of Singh Palace, told Compass. The extremists shouted "Jai Shri Ram! [Hail god Rama]" as they beat the Christians with sticks, verbally insulted them and accused them of forcibly converting Hindus.

Sri Lanka: Following a renewed outbreak of civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), churches in the northeast are fast becoming another war casualty. Since hostilities resumed in earnest last year, churches on the Jaffna Peninsula have provided shelter to hundreds of internally displaced people (IDPs), prompting retaliatory raids by the Sri Lankan army.

"One wonders if the attacks on churches are just a coincidence, or an attempt by the government to warn the clergy not to give protection to these defenseless people," one source, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Compass. The same source said those speaking out for IDPs were often silenced by intimidation or "elimination," often in the form of unexplained disappearances.

Uzbekistan: The religious authorities have admitted publicly for the first time that an Uzbek Christian pastor was arrested in January in the eastern city of Andijan and faces criminal charges.

Denying reports that Dmitry Shestakov is an evangelical pastor affiliated with the legally registered Full Gospel Church, the press service of Uzbekistan's Religious Affairs Committee told the Russian Interfax news agency on February 12 that he was not an authorised leader of any officially recognised religious organisation in Uzbekistan. Rather, the government agency said, he was an "imposter" leading an underground group identified as "Charismatic Pentecostals" who were engaged in "missionary and proselytising activities under Shestakov's leadership."

But according to a written statement from Shestakov's lawyer, a church document proves that the pastor has been authorised to conduct official worship services in the Full Gospel Church since October 2004.

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