By Hannah Chowdhry

Few people know the origins of Mothers Day, however it originally began in the UK as Mothering Sunday and was a day for celebrating your ‘Mother Church’ – the church of your baptism where you became a child of God.

The festival was held on the 4th Sunday of lent starting sometime in the medieval period, and many people would visit the church were they began their life with God.

In the early 1900’s a woman named Anna Jarvis, organized the first Mother’s Day service of worship and celebration at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia.  This was followed by Constance Adelaide Smith of the UK, in 1913, who revived the modern observance of Mothering Sunday to honour Mother Church, ‘mothers of earthly homes’, the Virgin Mary (mother of Jesus), and Mother Nature.

Badil Masih was sodomised and murdered by his employer Mr Mohammed Ikram and a cohort, in July 2019, for daring to seek full payment for work he had carried out at a scrapyard.

British Asian Christian Association stepped in to pay for legal costs, and support the family financially as they challenged for justice.  Despite clear evidence of a crime courts offered pre-arrest bail to the murderers who began to threaten the Christian family and key witnesses.

Though Badil’s mother  Shareefa remained stoic throughout the court process.  The witnesses were nobbled by the murderers and their cohorts.  They refused to testify and threatened to alter their statement if Shareefa continued to pursue justice.  It is not known whether they succumbed to bribes, threats or both.

In tandem with the ignominy of losing witnesses Shareefa suffered intensified threats of the murder of her remaining son. Unbeknown to British Asian Christian Association or our solicitor, Shareefa met in private with the opponent solicitor  and agreed compensation terms for the murder of her son.

The pain of her betrayal led to Shareefa dying from grief.  Her remaining son Soojal (10 yrs) has been shunted between homes of maternal and paternal uncles and BACA attempted to place him in a boarding school.  

For over two years British Asian Christian Association have been providing free meals for homeless people, the economically deprived and refugees and asylum-seekers.

We can serve up to 40 people a day and with the help of partner groups such as Westminster Drug Project we are even able to provide free counselling.  The NHS also occasionally undertake Hepatology tests at our centre.

This month we have begun to see a rise in  the number of visitors to our centre, which now includes members of  new migrants from the Afghan and Ukrainian refugees communities.

The war in Ukraine shocked people across the globe when it began despite attempts at diplomacy.  The first major war on European soil since the Bosnian War in the 1990’s. 

The war has now been raging for almost a month and shows no signs of letting up, despite severe international sanctions being placed on Russia and their wealth oligarchs by most of the rest of the world. 

Diplomatic meetings between Russia and Ukraine have yielded little hope for an early end to the war. 

The Christian Church has not stayed silent on the attacks which have been condemned by all churches, including some of the Russian Orthodox leaders.

Pope Francis has labelled the Ukraine war as a “senseless massacre” he has demanded that wold leaders bring and end to the carnage. Prayers have been regularly said in Catholic Churches across the globe and the Pope has called for people to pray for an end to war.  Read more (here)

The Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop of York labelled the war as ‘an act of great evil,’ Anglican churches have been dedicating prayers to Ukraine since the outset of war too.  Read more (here).

We reported on the prayers being said across churches around the globe after President Putin of Russia began a war in Ukraine, in an earlier post.  In the same post we also shared the sacrifice being made by an Irish missionary couple, who chose to remain in Ukraine despite the threat to their safety.  Read more (here).

That said, we later also shared a very disturbing account of how black and Asian students and citizens of Ukraine were receiving prejudicial treatment, during their attempts to flee the war. Evidence of the ‘different treatment’ was highlighted globally when United Nations’ high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, spoke out about it.   Read more and watch videos (here). 

Having spoken directly with foreign students we have discovered that at many border locations, white Ukrainians were being asked to join a priority queue, Asians a second priority queue and blacks a third priority queue.  Though we condemn this process, it has not in anyway reduced our desire to support Ukrainians who suffer many violent atrocities in an unprovoked war.  We however pray for peace in Ukraine and an end to racism across the globe.

A senior Pastor was brutally shot dead and then had his neck sliced open by six Hindu extremist assassins, whilst at home.

The attack in the village of Anganpalliguda, Bhopalpatnam/Taluk, in Bijapur District, Chhattisgarh State was witnessed by his terrified daughter-in-law.

After the murderers had left the property one returned some 30 seconds later to stab the Pastor in the heart just to make sure he was dead.  A macabre act that illustrates the extent of hatred that can manifest towards Christians in India.

 Muslim antagonist of Christian community calls friends to help him flee with friend injured from attempted church vandalism.

A Muslim fanatic climbed onto a church roof and chanted Islamic verses as he tried to terrorise a local community while vandalising a large cross.

In his attempt to wrench the large cross from the church he fell off the building and was nursed by the Christians who gave him water and placed him on a charpai (rope bed), to help him recover while police arrived.

You can watch his attempts to destroy the church while uttering Islamic chants here. 

After we had a surge of donations last month we were able to put the money to good use serving an additional 10 Pak-Christin  asylum-seeker families in Thailand.

Last month we initially shared food with 20 families then made a decision to provide 1000 baht to each of the families that we serve, as the costs for delivering  food parcels became too expensive.

We share details at the end of this post of the 20 families that have benefitted from our recent distribution.  The money will help towards rent and food and we would like to support more families desperate for some help in an increasingly difficult economy, where through no fault of their own they have been deemed illegal immigrants.

We reported on the stabbing incident of Pastor Narendra Besra (46 yrs) that occurred on February 4, 2022. He took several stab and slash wounds to his shoulder chest, hand, and head in a possible murder/assassination attempt.

The attack occurred while staying over night in a village called Baghima-Pahantoli , where he had been visiting church members (click here).

After three years in prison and many failed appeals while under the care of other Christian charities, Nabeel chose to seek help from British Asian Christian Association.

BACA were able secure bail for Nabeel within a year allowing him freedom from his 4 year incarceration.

Since then BACA have been fighting for his acquittal and were shocked when the courts refused his absence from proceedings despite the risk to his life.  In tandem we are seeking help from western nations with the hope of providing asylum for Nabeel in a country that is safe. 

In our last report we explained that the judge was being extremely lenient to the counsel for the accuser and permitted a postponement based on papers having been left at his office. 

There has also been a third judge change which we believe has arisen because of the religious sensitivity of the previous judge. We bring you up to date since our last report:

Read full article (here)