| Chinese
Christian released from Shanghai jail
A
Chinese Christian who posted articles online supporting China’s
unofficial Christian church has been released from a Shanghai prison
after serving a one-year jail term, according to the Associated
Press. Computer technician Zhang Shengqi was detained in November
2003 and sentenced to one year in prison last summer after being
convicted of leaking state secrets. Zhang and two fellow activists
were accused of helping spread information on the Internet about
a 2003 crackdown in the eastern city of Hangzhou on independent
churches whose followers worship outside the Communist Party-controlled
official Protestant church.
Sunni
Muslim extremists aim violent attacks at violators of Islam
Sunni
Muslim extremists are carrying out violence against an unlikely
contingency in Baghdad: barbers. In the city’s Dora neighborhood,
residents say Sunnis have hunted and killed at least a handful of
barbers, accusing them of violating a strict reading of Islamic
teachings that say men should keep their beards long. Some extremists
also consider Western-style haircuts an offensive symbol of the
hated, secularized culture of Europe and the United States, according
to the Associated Press. To them, sporting a clipped beard or a
modern haircut is an infraction worthy of death. In one month alone,
five barbers were shot dead, residents said. Iraqi Christians have
also been targeted by insurgents, who consider them close to American
and other foreign occupiers because they share the same religion.
Four churches have been attacked in Dora in deadly car bombings. — E.P. News
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