More than sixty teenage students have been arrested and severely punished when they were caught with Bibles at a compulsory military training camp in Eritrea. In June, hundreds of grade 11 students were ordered to report to the Sawa military base for the summer. It is believed that, in September, they will be required to continue their schooling at the base rather than returning home. According to an August 21 report from Compass Direct, military commanders searched the conscripts' belongings on August 19 and 20, looking for Bibles. Sixty-two Protestant students were arrested, tortured, and put into metal shipping containers where they were subjected to no light, extreme heat, and limited air and food.
The latest arrests bring the number of known evangelicals in prison for their faith to 213, including seventy-nine soldiers that the Persecution and Prayer Alert reported on earlier this year, arrested for refusing to deny their Protestant beliefs.
While authorities deny any religious persecution in Eritrea, the government officially recognizes only four religions: Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran. For the 20,000 Pentecostal and charismatic Christians, many of whom have come from a renewal movement within the Orthodox Church in Eritrea, arrests, beatings and harassment from government officials has become increasingly common and brutal.
Pray that these students and others in prison for their faith will be released and that the escalating oppression by authorities will stop. Pray that believers will stand firm in their faith, in spite of the pressure to recant. Pray that they would witness to the faithfulness of God through their suffering.
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