Chinese Sex Slaves Suffer From 'Traffic of Tears' (VOA)
Leta Hong Fincher

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China faces a growing problem of cross-border trafficking of women and children. The United Nations says that as many as 10,000 Chinese women every year are abducted and sold into sexual slavery in southeast Asia. VOA’s Beijing correspondent Leta Hong Fincher recently traveled to Yunnan in Southern China, and shows us how the slave trade in women has affected two families there in this traffic of tears.

9:55:38 AM    

TURKMENISTAN: FROM BAD TO WORSE (ANS)

Turkmenistan is a former Soviet, Central Asian state, north of Iran and Afghanistan and south of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea. More than 91% of the population is Muslim (only 2.6% are Christian, mostly Orthodox). The nation is ruled with Soviet style oppression by President Saparmurat Niyazov, a totalitarian nationalist dictator who has created a personality cult around himself. Turkmenistan has a population of 5 million, and they have little chance to hear the gospel. Those who share the gospel, do so at great risk to their life and liberty.

9:23:36 AM    

RFE/RL Central Asia Report Vol. 3, No. 42, 12 December 2003
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HEADLINES:
* UZBEK GOVERNMENT BANS CONFERENCE ON DEATH PENALTY
* IMPRISONED JOURNALIST WINS PRESS FREEDOM AWARD
* KARIMOV SLAMS INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS
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9:19:15 AM    

CHRISTIAN DIES IN POLICE CUSTODY

(Compass) -- Reliable sources have confirmed the death of a house church Christian in police custody on October 30. Mrs. Zhang Hongmei, 33, was arrested by local police in Dongmiaodong village on October 29. Police summoned Zhang’s family and asked them to pay a bribe of 3,000 RMB (about $400). They were unable to raise the money, a sum that is well over a year’s wages for them. Later as Zhang’s family pleaded with police officers, they saw Hongmei bound with heavy chains, visibly injured and unable to speak to them. On the following day, police told the family that she had died at noon. In another incident, Zhang Yi-nan, a Christian, was badly beaten on November 11 by fellow inmates at the request of prison guards upon his arrival at a labor camp just outside Ping Ding Shan city. According to a veteran China watcher, the two incidents prove China’s lack of commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

(www.compassdirect.org)

9:14:57 AM    

URBAN MIGRATION CAUSES HOUSE CHURCH CRISIS

(Compass) -- China’s rural house churches are reeling from the impact of rapid urbanization. The flow of young peasants to the cities in search of employment has become a tidal-wave. When the communists came to power in China in 1949, only 10 percent of the population was living in cities. However, about 20 million peasants migrate to the cities every year, many of them Christians. By 2015, the Chinese government estimates that fully half of the total population of 1.3 billion will be urbanized. House church evangelists admit that almost all of the Christian young people in rural congregations have left to find jobs in the cities, leaving many house churches to face the danger of imploding through lack of trained young pastors. However, positive opportunities do exist. Properly trained Christian migrants could become a potent force for urban evangelism.

(www.compassdirect.org)

9:11:03 AM