Celebrating the end of a school term is inevitable for high school students. However, when eighty Christian youth gathered at the Bet Gergish public park in Asmara, Eritrea, security forces swooped in, arresting all those attending. Dr. Berhane Asmelash, Director of Release Eritrea, says that the parents and friends of the fifty boys and thirty girls are shocked and deeply disturbed by the arrests.
In a June 25 press release, Dr. Asmelash outlined his concerns: "This is of particular concern to us on two counts. Firstly these detainees are children and given the record of the Government of Eritrea concerning prisoners and detainees I am troubled. Secondly I am apprehensive about the pattern of disrupting social functions and detaining people indiscriminately. The Government of Eritrea seems to have intensified its purge against Eritrean Evangelicals and members of the closed churches, by removing not only their rights to religious freedom but now their rights to any form of social life."
Pray for the release of these and hundreds of other Christians imprisoned in Eritrea. Pray for peace and strength for the parents and friends of those arrested.
For more information on the persecution facing Eritrea's Christians, click here. Background video news reports on Eritrea are also available on our multimedia website, https://www.vomcanada.com/.
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