Thursday, February 22, 2007
Magos Solomon Semere, Dead At 30
The following comes from Compass Direct News.
An Eritrean Christian died in prison last week, four and a half years after the Eritrean regime jailed him for worshipping in a banned Protestant church.
From the southern port city of Assab, local Christians confirmed the death of Magos Solomon Semere on Thursday (February 15) at the Adi-Nefase Military Confinement facility just outside Assab.
A member of the Rema Church, Semere had first been jailed in the fall of 2001, when he was arrested for evangelizing and starting meetings for worship with six other Christians.“The government gave hard-labor work punishment to believers for preaching the gospel and starting fellowships,” a Christian once jailed in Assab with Semere told Compass. “If they persisted, they would be kept imprisoned for ‘violating’ the government law.”
According to one source, Semere, 30, died “due to physical torture and persistent pneumonia, for which he was forbidden proper medical treatment.” He had reportedly endured a long period of severe illness in the months prior to his death.
Assab, near the facility where Semere died, was targeted for one of the first major crackdowns against Protestant Christians by Eritrean security forces five years ago.
Three months later, in May 2002, the government categorically outlawed all churches not under the umbrella of the Orthodox, Catholic or Evangelical Lutheran denominations.
Read full story HERE.
Semere was to have been married before all of this. Let us pray for his family and his fiancee. As well as all the other Christians and their churches that are being persecuted.
Here is some information about Eritrea from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Eritrea is a country in northern East Africa bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea.
Eritrea was consolidated into a colony by the Italian government on January 1, 1890.[3] The modern state of Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia following a thirty-year war which lasted from 1961 to 1991. Eritrea's constitution adopted in 1997 stipulates that the state is a presidential republic with a unicameral parliamentary democracy. But the constitution was never ratified and since the outbreak of new hostilities with Ethiopia in May of 1998, the country is under a de-facto (undeclared) state of emergency ruled by presidential decree.
Eritrea is a multilingual and multicultural country with two dominant religions (Sunni Islam and Oriental Orthodox Christianity) and nine ethnic groups. The country has no official language, but it has three working languages: Tigrinya, Arabic, and English.[4]
19: If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
20: But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
21: For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
22: For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive
Labels: Christian, Christian persecution, Church, Compass Direct News, Corinthians, death, ERITREA
 |
