🔥 Quran Burning Ignites New Spat Between Turkey and Sweden
Protests in Stockholm on Saturday against Turkey and Sweden’s bid to join NATO, including the burning of a copy of the Koran, sharply heightened tensions with Turkey.
Rasmus Paludan, a leader of a far right Danish political party who also holds Swedish citizenship, burnt a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm on Saturday. His action took place despite a call by the Turkish foreign minister to withdraw the permit for the protest.
Paludan sparked riots last year, when during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan he announced that he wanted to go on a tour to burn the Quran.
Last week, he burnt the effigy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Stockholm.
🛑 UFO over Turkey? Signs and Wonders of The Most High. Antichrist Turkey & Co Are Under Judgment
😲 Blood-red Cloud Hoveringover an Islamic Shrine, Wow!
💭 Video shows a UFO-shaped RED cloud covering the sky in the early morning hours in Bursa, Turkey, on Jan. 19.
Bursa lies at the base of a mountain range, which makes the phenomenon more likely.
The wave-like pattern is known as a lenticular cloud.
👉 Courtesy: CTV
My Note: From the 16th century until today, Turkey has the blood of millions of Ethiopian, Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Orthodox Christians on its hands.
Since 2020, Turkey, alongside Iran the UAE and China deliver drones and their operators to the fascist and genocidal Oromo regime of Ethiopia. These combat drones attacked Christians of Northern Ethiopia, Monasteries, Churches, Schools, Hospitals, homes and and civilian facilities — resulting in more than 1 million deaths
Well, now ✞The Ark of The Covenant is Transmitting a signal on a path to the EAST and to the WEST. China, Europe, America, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Iran and Arabia, STOP supporting the fascist Oromo regime of evil Abby Ahmed Ali in Ethiopia. This brutal regime has massacred and starved to death over a million Orthodox Christians of Axumite Ethiopia in under two years.
✞ The 129-year-old Assumption Church in Chan Thar in Ye-U township in the northwestern Sagaing region was set ablaze on Jan. 15, along with many villagers’ homes.
Myanmar junta forces have continued their attacks on Christian communities by torching a more than century-old Catholic church in a predominantly Christian village.
The church was completely destroyed in the inferno. However, there were no human casualties as villagers managed to flee before the army arrived.
The place of worship built in 1894 had a ‘priceless’ historical value for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Before setting fire to it, soldiers desecrated it by drinking and smoking inside. Catholics and Buddhists have lived together in harmony in the area for centuries. In the past year, the village has been attacked four times by militia, without any clashes or provocations.
It is a new wound for the religious minority, after two air force fighter jets carried out a raid in Karen State in recent days, destroying a church and killing five people including a child.
The first Catholic presence in the area, which refers to the diocese of Mandalay, dates back about 500 years and the village of Chan Thar itself arose and developed thanks to the work of descendants of Portuguese Catholics who then inhabited it for centuries.
In the village, the population has always been predominantly Catholic, scattered in 800 houses in close contact and harmony with two neighbouring Buddhist centres. Last year, the military set fire to the houses of Chan Thar on 7 May and a second time a month later, on 7 June 2022, destroying 135 buildings.
The third assault took place on 14 December, just before the start of the Christmas celebrations; the last was a few days ago, on 14 January 2023, when the Tatmadaw (Armed Forces) men razed and burnt almost all the houses.
Local sources, on condition of anonymity, report that the soldiers attacked and set fire to the church “for no apparent reason”, because there was no fighting or confrontation going on in the area, and without any provocation.
The soldiers had been stationed in the area in front of the church since the evening of 14 January, and before leaving the area, they carried out an “atrocity” by setting fire to the building and “completely burning” the church, the parish priest’s house and the centuries-old nunnery, which collapsed after being enveloped in flames.
The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption was a source of pride for Catholics in Upper Myanmar not only because of its centuries-old tradition, the baptism of the first bishop and the birth of three other archbishops and over 30 priests and nuns.
The place of worship was in fact a historical and cultural heritage for the entire country, including Buddhists, and proof of this is the climate of fraternal cooperation that was established between the different communities.
The church, bell tower and other buildings were destroyed on the morning of 15 January. Government soldiers, an eyewitness revealed, also “desecrated” the sacredness of the place by “looting, drinking alcohol and smoking” inside.
In response to the attack, a number of Burmese priests on social networks have been raising appeals to pray for the country and for the Christian community itself. On the other hand, there have been no official statements or declarations from the Archdiocese of Yangon and Card. Charles Bo.
“We are deeply sorrowful as our historic church has been destroyed. It was our last hope,” a Catholic villager, who did not want to be identified due to repercussions by the army, said.
Villagers said a Marian grotto and the adoration chapel were spared. But the parish priest’s house and the nuns’ convent were destroyed.
They said the army arrived in the village in the conflict-torn Sagaing region on the evening of Jan. 14 and set many houses on fire and stayed in the church overnight before setting it ablaze early on Jan. 15, when local Catholics were expected to arrive for worship.
More than 500 houses in the village were also destroyed. in what was the fourth raid on the village in eight months.
“We have no more houses and the church where there was an antique painting of St Mary, which can’t be replaced,” another resident who wished to remain anonymous said.
The junta is targeting the Sagaing region to tackle growing resistance to its rule by people’s defense forces who are suspected to be based there.
Christians make up around 8.2 percent of Myanmar’s 55 million population. The junta has repeatedly raided Chan Thar since May, 2022. Nearly 20 houses were destroyed and two Catholics, including a mentally disturbed person, were killed during a raid on May 7, 2022. More than 100 houses were set ablaze a month later on June 7. In a raid on Dec.14, more than 300 houses were torched.
Thousands have fled the village since last May and taken shelter in churches near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, and at relatives’ homes in other parts of the country.
Chaung Yoe, Mon Hla and Chan Thar, which are part of Mandalay archdiocese, are known as Bayingyi villages because their inhabitants claim that they are the descendants of Portuguese adventurers who arrived in the region in the 16th and 17th centuries. These villages have produced many bishops, priests, and nuns for the Church.
✞ São Paulo: The Oldest Orthodox Church in Brazil Was Destroyed by a Fire
💭 The Antiochian Orthodox Church of the Annunciation to the Theotokos, in São Paulo, was destroyed in a fire yesterday and today. It had been founded in 1904 by Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, seven years after the first Divine Liturgy in Brazilian history had been celebrated in a room in the same street. The community had mostly merged with that of the Orthodox Metropolitan Cathedral, but there were still weekly liturgies that kept the memory of the temple alive. Only the altar survived, but some icons could be retrieved from the walls.
The fire started in a nearby store, and it doesn’t seem anyone was hurt.
In 2016, Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church visited The Antiochian Orthodox Church of the Annunciation to the Theotokos, which was founded in 1904
💭 Fr Isaac Achi of Ss Peter and Paul Church in Kafin Koro, in Niger State, was murdered by assailants who set fire to his house in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Fr Collins Omeh, the assistant priest, was shot while trying to escape the building but survived his injuries and is being treated in hospital.
According to Diocese of Minna, the priest is “responding to treatment”.
Fr Amanchukwu Emeka, the chancellor of Minna Diocese, said: “Please pray for healing mercy from God for Collins.”
Some media reports have claimed that the gunmen doused the outside of the building with petrol and set fire to it after failing for more than an hour to break in.
Sources told Aid to the Church in Need, the Catholic charity for persecuted Christians, that they believed the attackers’ initial motive was to kidnap Fr Achi.
One said: “Because of the dimension and the duration of the assault, we can say that it was planned and organised.”
During the attack, Fr Achi managed to contact relatives, who alerted the police, but no-one attempted to rescue him during the attack. He had previously survived a bombing of 2011.
The attack took place the same day that Fr Michael Olofinlade of Ibadan Archdiocese in south Nigeria was kidnapped.
Last year a total of 28 priests were kidnapped in Nigeria and four were murdered. Aid to the Church in Need revealed in “Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their Faith 2020-22” that about 7,600 Christians were killed in the country between January 2021 and June 2022.
Speaking in November at the report launch, Bishop Jude Arogundade of Ondo, Nigeria, told the Houses of Parliament that the persecution of Christians in his country by Islamic militants is tantamount to a genocide.
He said: “I strongly appeal to this important body and all people of goodwill to compel the Nigerian government to stop the genocide.”
He urged UK politicians at the very least to “ask for help from other countries before Nigeria is overrun as is the case of Afghanistan”.
“The entire nation is on the edge, apprehensive of a major offensive that may sweep round the entire country,” he said.
The bishop had earlier emerged into the international limelight last summer when he publicly criticised Irish President Michael D. Higgins for blaming “climate change” for the massacre of 41 Catholics, including many children, by Islamists during a Mass at St Francis’ Church, Owo, a parish in his diocese.
President Higgins had suggested moral parity between the massacre “and any attempt to scapegoat pastoral peoples who are among the foremost victims of the consequences of climate change”.
Bishop Arogundade said, however, that “terror attacks, banditry, and unabated onslaught in Nigeria and in the Sahel Region and climate change have nothing in common”.
Any informed person could see “that alluding to some form of politics of climate change in our present situation is completely inappropriate”, the bishop continued.
“Terrorists are on free loose slaughtering, massacring, injuring, and installing terror in different parts of Nigeria since over eight years not because of any reasonable thing but because they are evil — period.”
The scale and frequency of attacks by jihadists means Nigeria is now rated as the seventh most dangerous country in the world for Christians, according to the Open Doors human rights group.
💭 In the video, armed men burning civilians to death in Western Ethiopia. Some of the men in the crowd are wearing Ethiopian military uniforms as well as uniforms from other regional security forces.
The Karen are a large and dispersed ethnic group of Southeast Asia. They trace their origins to the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, or Tibet. Karen settled in Burma/Myanmar’s southern Irrawaddy Delta area and in the hills along the Salween River in eastern Myanmar and in neighboring Thailand. In the past numerous peoples were considered Karen sub-groups: the Pwo Karen (mostly delta rice-growers), the Sgaw Karen of the mountains; and the Kayahs (also called Karennis), Pa-Os, and Kayans (also called Padaungs), who live in the Karenni and Shan States of Myanmar. Now all of these groups consider themselves distinct ethnic groups.
The total population of Karen in around 6 million (although some it could be as high as 9 million according to some sources) with 4 million to 5 million in Myanmar, over 1 million in Thailand, 215,000 in the United States(2018), more than 11,000 in Australia, 4,500 to 5,000 in Canada and 2,500 in India in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and 2,500 in Sweden,
🔥 ‘A Living Hell’: Churches, Clergy Targeted By Myanmar Military
On Thursday, a Baptist pastor and a Catholic deacon were killed in Lay Wah village, two women wounded, hundreds flee. Karen rebels call the attack a “war crime”, urge the international community to cut off fuel supplies to ruling military junta. Myanmar’s government-in-exile condemns the attacks, extends condolences to victims’ families.
Thursday afternoon two jet fighters attacked Lay Wah, a village located in Mutraw district, Karen State, south-eastern Myanmar.
The area is under the control of the Karen National Union (KNU) whose armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), has been repeatedly engaged in heavy fighting with Myanmar’s regular army.
At least five people were killed as a result of the bombing. Hundreds of residents hastily left their homes and fled, fearing further raids and more violence.
Local sources report that at least two bombs were dropped. Over the past few days, two churches and a school, as well as several other buildings were hit.
The mother and the child died instantly, while a Baptist pastor and a Catholic deacon succumbed later to their injuries. Two other women were wounded albeit not seriously.
The child, Naw Marina, would have turned three next month; she died along with her mother, Naw La Kler Paw; Catholic deacon Naw La Kler Paw; Rev Saw Cha Aye; and the last victim, Saw Blae, a villager who helped out in church.
Four large craters now dot the area, the result of the blasts; some believe the churches were the target. But luckily, the death toll was limited because the school was closed. For some time, its pupils have been attending lessons in a nearby forest.
KNU spokesperson Padoh Saw Taw Nee described the bombing as a “war crime”. For him, “It is very important to stop the supply of fuel for the junta military’s aircraft,” to limit the attacks.
“I ask again that the international community take more effective action against the junta,” he added.
Following the bombing of Lay Wah, Myanmar’s exiled National Unity Government (NUG), which includes former MPs from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy, issued a statement condemning the raid.
“We convey our condolences to all those who have lost their lives,” the press release said. “ We pledge that we will do our utmost to bring justice for all those lives lost, be it national or international,”
Myanmar’s military junta has repeatedly attacked civilian targets in Karen and Kachin states and Sagaing and Magwe regions. So far, the bombing campaign has killed at least 460 civilians, including many children.
👉 Just in:
One person was killed and eight others wounded when rebels opposed to the ruling junta attacked a state celebration in eastern Myanmar today, the military said.
The nation has been in turmoil since Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government was toppled in an army coup almost two years ago.
Long-established ethnic rebel groups, as well as dozens of “People’s Defence Forces” (PDF), have emerged in opposition.
The junta said one man was killed when a rebel group and PDF shelled an event in eastern Kayah’s capital Loikaw early Sunday as people gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the state’s recognition.
“The artillery fell at the celebration area near city hall and at the ward where people were staying,” a junta statement said.
Among those wounded were six students, as well as a man and a woman, the military said, adding that some security services personnel were also hurt.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
More than 2,700 civilians have been killed since the military grabbed power in February 2021, according to a local monitoring group.
The junta blames anti-coup fighters for a civilian death toll it has put at almost 3,900. — AFP