Source: World Watch Monitor, September 10,\u00a0 2020<\/p>\n
The Eritrean government has released on bail more than 20 prisoners who\u2019d been in detention for years because of their faith, the BBC reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n A regional spokesperson for charity Open Doors International said that, for some time, it had heard discussion that prisoners might be freed on bail due to the coronavirus pandemic (as has happened in several other countries) but could not independently confirm the reports: \u201cIf true, this could be quite significant.\u201d<\/p>\n In May 2019, a monitoring group for the UN said \u201cthousands\u201d of Christians are facing detention as \u201creligious freedom continue[s] to be denied in Eritrea\u201d and questioned why the UN was not monitoring the situation more closely.<\/p>\n In June 2019, Reuters reported that more than 500,000 refugees worldwide have left Eritrea, up from 486,200 a year earlier.<\/p>\n \u00bb Read full story<\/a> includes details on additional incidents related to religious liberty and persecution.<\/p>\n \u00bb See also 27 Christians Released from Prison in Eritrea<\/a> (Christian Today), which includes an estimate that the number of incarcerated Christians is a little over 300, including 39 children. The BBC report cites a US State Department estimate that there are 1,200 to 3,000 prisoners of faith in Eritrea. Not sure why the numbers vary so widely.<\/p>\n \u00bb The recent peace deal in neighboring Sudan included an agreement by the transitional government to remove Islam as the state religion and abolish the death penalty for leaving Islam<\/a> (Open Doors).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: World Watch Monitor, September 10,\u00a0 2020 The Eritrean government has released on bail more than 20 prisoners who\u2019d been in detention for years because of their faith, the BBC reports. A regional spokesperson for charity Open Doors International said that, for some time, it had heard discussion that prisoners might be freed on bail … Continue reading ERITREA: Evangelical Christians Freed on Bail<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9552,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9551\/revisions\/9552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}