The Church and progressive groups in the Philippines are up in arms against a plan to change the country’s 1987 constitution through a people’s initiative.
The people’s initiative pro-vision in the Catholic-majority nation’s constitution states that amendments can be directly proposed by people “through at least 12% of the total number of registered voters.” Every legislative district must have “at least 3% of the registered voters” as signa-tories. “I do not favour the charter change… whether it is a people’s initiative or by the constituent assembly. A charter change is not the answer to inflation, unemployment, housing crisis, and corruption in the country,” said lawyer Aaron Pedrosa, leader of the Sanlakas, a multi-sectoral organization, on Jan. 18.
The Philippines got the current constitution a year after Ferdinand E. Marcos, the father of current president Ferdinand Marcos Jr, was deposed as president.

So that the faithful can experience the important moment of the elections with full attention and with a conscience enlightened by faith and the search for the common good and charity, and on the other hand, to ensure that the baptized experience the beginning of Lent in fullness, without distraction and polarization, in a true spirit of penance, with fasting and prayer, Bishop Siprianus Hormat of Ruteng, a diocese on the island of Flores, the Catholic heart of Indonesia, has decided to postpone the celebration of the imposition of the sacred ashes, which follows liturgical calendar scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2024, to Thursday, February 15, 2024.
Particularly in the churches of the mission stations in more remote areas, the rites can also be carried out on the first Sunday of Lent, February 19. The main reason for this decision is political: the presidential elections will take place on February 14th, which will attract the attention of all Indonesian citizens and could overshadow the important spiritual moment that the Church has planned for the beginning of Lent. In a pastoral letter read to the community, Bishop Hormat reminded the faithful that “the celebration of Ash Wednesday will take place on Thursday, February 15, from morning to evening.

One in every seven Christians in the world faces high levels of persecution for their faith and two out of every five Christians in Asia are persecuted, says a report from US-based Christian rights group, Open Doors.
The attacks on Christians are becoming “dangerously violent” with churches, and Ch-ristian institutions targeted while Christians face digital surveillance and tens of thousands are displaced across the globe, says Open Doors’ World Watch List released on Jan. 17.
The report lists the top 50 nations where Christians face severe forms of persecution. It listed North Korea as the “most dangerous place in the world for Christians.”
“Being discovered as a follower of Jesus is effectively a death sentence” in North Korea, Open Doors said.
North Korea strengthened its border with China making it hard for Christians to flee the nation and for external support to reach them.
The North Korean regime of Kim Jong Un has put maximum pressure “in all spheres of life for Christians,” the report said.
The report pointed out that 4,998 Christians were murdered, 14,766 churches and Christian properties were attacked, and 295,120 Chri-stians were displaced in 2023 across the countries that it analyzed.
The report said Yemen (rank 4), Pakistan (7), Iran (9), Afghanistan (10), India (11), Syria (12), Saudi Arabia (13) and China (19) are among the top Asian countries for Christian persecution.
The report particularly highlighted the plight of Christians in India’s Manipur state that saw ethnic violence and extensive deaths over giving scheduled tribe status to the local Meitei ethnic community.
Violence erupted on May 3, 2023, after the All-Tribal Students Union of Manipur was publicly protesting the decision by the Manipur High Court to consider giving scheduled tribe status to the Hindu-majority Meitei commu-nity. Around 70,000 ethnic Kuki Christians and Meitei Christians have been forcibly displaced, are living in terrible conditions, and are afraid to return home, the report said.

The whereabouts of a Chinese Catholic bishop remain unknown six days after his alleged arrest by the Communist authorities, reports say.
Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou was arrested on Jan. 2, for allegedly opposing the meddling of the state officials in the affairs of the diocese in Zhejiang province of eastern China, the Pillar reported referring to Asia News.
The 61-year-old bishop was ordained in 2011 with the Vatican mandate.
However, he has been arrested several times and detained for months, effectively barring him from performing the role of a bishop as he is not recognized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and state-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), which controls the “official church.”
Despite the 2018 Vatican-China agreement on bishop appointments based on mutual consent, Shao remains unrecognized by the CCP due to his constant refusal to join the CCPA, reports say.
The prelate is routinely arrested during major Christian feasts such as Easter and Christmas, which bar him from celebrating Mass with large congregations.

A recent anti-drug operation called “Yukthiya” (which means “justice”) is leaving hundreds of children without parents due to indiscriminate arrests.
According to Patali Champika Ranawaka, former Energy Minister and leader of the United Republican Front (URF), the police have arrested a large number of drug addicts, sometimes both parents, especially in Colombo and the suburbs. In many cases, children go hungry while their parents are in detention.
According to two Mattakkuliya residents, Kamalini Sinnarasa and Vadivel Pathmarajah, more than 100 children aged between 2 and 10 were fed for days by social service organizations and often very poor neighbours.
In some areas of Colombo, most children whose parents were taken away by the police were unable to get even one meal a day. Some children between the ages of 4 and 10 started begging along the road with their little brothers.
Furthermore, most of those arrested are unable to pay their legal fees. Although the operation has already entered its third week, no key figures involved in drug trafficking have yet been arrested. While the police justify the operation, for several critics it is a farce.
The police are accused of using excessively heavy-handed tactics, including mass arrests, and of showing “little respect for people’s privacy and dignity”. Questions also arose about the low quantity of drugs recovered during the operation.
So far, 26,476 suspects have been arrested and according to the latest data, 54,090 raids have been conducted across Sri Lanka as of January 5 with police hunting for a further 2,453 suspects. About 1,549 people were sent to rehabilitation centers.

South Korea’s parliament on Jnuary 10 passed a bill banning breeding, slaughtering and selling dogs for their meat, a traditional practice that activists have called an embarrassment for the country.
Dog meat has long been a part of South Korean cuisine, and at one point up to a million dogs were killed for the trade every year, according to activists. But consumption has sharply declined recently as Koreans embrace pet ownership in droves.
Eating dog meat is a taboo among younger, urban South Koreans, and pressure on the government to outlaw the practice from animal rights activists has been mounting.

Official support for a ban has grown under President Yoon Suk Yeol, a self-professed animal lover who has adopted several stray dogs and cats with First Lady Kim Keon-hee — who is herself a vocal critic of dog meat consumption.
The bill, which was proposed by both the ruling and main opposition parties, was passed unopposed by a 208-0 vote, with two abstentions.

Iraqi Christians “are fleeing” from their country and many of them belong to the “productive segment” or the “most educated” sectors of the population (also) due to the “divisions” between the Churches, so far unable to implement strong and unitary policies and initiatives to give them a future.
The j’accuse was launched by the Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldeans, Card. Louis Raphael Sako, in a long message to the faithful in Iraq and around the world published on the patriarchate website and sent to AsiaNews for information.
From the temporary seat of Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the cardinal has withdrawn until the controversy linked to the presidential decree which is a source of conflict and further division is resolved, he renews the appeal for a common commitment and evokes the creation of a “crisis unit”.
In Iraq, observes the Chaldean primate, “there is no strategy, security or economic stability”, there is a lack of “sovereignty” and there is a “double” application of the concepts of democracy, freedom, constitution, law and citizenship by those who should be at the service of the country and its inhabitants.
In this way the institutions have been “weakened” and there has been a “decline” in morals and values, services, healthcare and education have worsened, as well as “widespread corruption” and “growing unemployment” combined to a returning illiteracy.
In this context, the Christian component, already on the margins, has become even more fragile and has been the subject of kidnappings, killings that began in 2003 with the US invasion and culminated in the years of domination of the Islamic State (ISIS), with the great escape from Mosul and the Nineveh Plain.

Ethnic Tibetans have expressed alarm over door-to-door inspection by China’s communist authorities to ensure children are not taking private classes and participating in religious activities during their winter break.
The authorities are conducting random inspections in “residential areas and commercial establishments” in Tibet and other Tibetan-populated regions, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Jan. 9 citing unnamed sources.
“In addition to random door-to-door investigations, local authorities are also carrying out surveys of the Tibetan children,” a source in China’s south-western Qinghai province told RFA. The surveys were aimed “to find out what subjects are being taught to them in their out-of-school courses and where,” the source added.
In a notice issued on Nov. 30, 2023, the Lhasa city Education Department, while announcing the winter break from Dec. 30, 2023, until Feb. 27-29, 2024, had outlined the kind of education parents could give their children.
The notice also highlighted the work that teachers would need to do during the holiday period.
Parents were urged to not engage in the religious education of school children, and they were to “make sure the children are completely free from the influence of religion,” the notice said.
Tibetan children could participate in supplementary classes and workshops taught only by government-authorized individuals and organizations and on subjects approved by the authorities, the notice added.
The notice also emphasized the continued ban on Tibetan children’s participation in religious activities.
Earlier this month, the Chinese Education Department issued a notice reiterating a 2021 ban prohibiting Tibetan children from taking informal Tibetan language classes or workshops during their winter holidays.
The notice also ordered local authorities to intensify their supervision and investigation of supplementary lessons for Tibetan children and to carry out strict disciplinary action against those violating the rule, prompting inspections.

In Iran, Christmas for some Christians is a dark cell, in one of the country’s most notorious prisons, held without charges, aware that they were locked away only for their faith with no prospect for indictment that would enable them to defend themselves, deprived of rights even more than their liberty.
This is the case of an Armenian man, one of a hundred Christians arrested last summer and held in Evin prison, north of Tehran, who, after four months, is still unaware of his fate, with the only certainty of spending the holiday away from his family.
The story of 35-year-old Hakop Gochumyan is relayed by Article18, an advocacy group seeking to protect and promote religious freedom in Iran and on behalf of its persecuted Christians.
The Armenian national was visiting Iran with his wife Elissa, who has dual Armenian-Iranian citizenship, and their two children. On 15 August, the two adults were arrested in Pardis, on the outskirts of Tehran.
According to some witnesses, the couple, with their children aged seven and 10, were at a friend’s house for lunch when a dozen plainclothes agents from the Ministry of Intelligence burst in and took them away.

Christians in Nepal have been advised to be on high alert during the Christmas period following a number of incidents of anti-Christian violence that have occurred in the country in recent months at the hands of Hindu extremist groups.
“There is a sense of fear and insecurity rippling through the Christian community amid Christmas celebrations. We feel exposed to hostility for being Christian,” said Father Lalit Tudu, parish priest at Assumption Cathedral in the capital Kathmandu, the country’s largest church. “The right to practise our faith peacefully is threatened to some extent,” he lamented.
The 12 parishes that come under the Apostolic Vicariate of Nepal have been asked to take additional security measures over Christmas. “Local administrations and security agencies are supportive of providing extra security” for Christmas services, the clergyman explained.
According to the 2023 national census, Christians number 513,000 or less than 2 % of the country’s population.