Kidane Weldou - Prisoner Profile

  • Kaleo Church
  • Aug 25, 2007
  • Series: World Community Stories
    Kidane Weldou - Prisoner Profile

    PRISONER NAME: Pastor Kidane Weldou
    LOCATION: Eritrea
    ARRESTED: March 2005
    SENTENCE: Held Indefinitely
    SUPPORTED BY:     Serra Mesa Missional Community

        Pastor Kidane Weldou disappeared and is presumably detained by Eritrean security forces. Pastor Weldou, a senior pastor of the Full Gospel Church in Asmara, was stopped and apparently taken into custody by Eritrean security forces at mid morning on Friday, March 18 2005. His vehicle was left abandoned near the Cinema Roma off Sematat Avenue in the heart of the Eritrean capital.  According to Release Eritrea, a London-based partnership advocating for the persecuted Eritrean church, Weldou was driving a church-owned pickup truck at the time of his disappearance.  Weldou's family and church members have been unable to learn any details about the pastor's whereabouts or the charges under which he is being held.  One of the founders of the Full Gospel Church, Weldou began pastoring years before the tiny northeast Africa nation gained its independence from Ethiopia. A biology graduate from Asmara University, he had worked in the Ministry of Education before entering full-time church ministry. In his mid-50s, Weldou is married with four children.  Pastor Weldou is also a member of the executive committee of Gideons International in Eritrea. 

        In an Voice of America interview with Eritrea's ambassador to the United States, Ambassador Girma Asmerom tried to defend his nation's religious freedom record. "He said that these Pentecostal, independent churches are the Christian equivalent of Al-Qaeda, and that they are a threat just like the Islamic terrorist groups,"  The ambassador went on to claim that the Eritrean government should be commended for persecuting these evangelical "terrorists" with foreign funding, just as it would be for cracking down on their Islamist counterparts. 

        In May 2002, the Eritrean government ordered all independent Protestant churches to close down, declaring that only the Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran and Muslim religions were legal. Non-official groups were even forbidden to worship privately in their homes.  The outlawed Protestant groups include Adventist, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God and Methodist-linked churches, as well as indigenous Pentecostal and charismatic congregations, many of them offshoots of various renewal movements within the "official" Christian churches.  Over the past 5 years, hundreds of pastors, soldiers, women, teenagers, children and elderly worshippers have been jailed for weeks or months after being caught praying, reading the Bible and worshipping together. Many have been beaten and subjected to harsh physical torture that has left them scarred for life.  Almost 2000 Christians are being held in prisons and military camps in Eritrea. A few have been released after signing a pledge to stop attending religious services.   According to Compass Direct, the pastors of the banned Protestant churches were reportedly ordered not to inform anyone outside Eritrea of their problems. However, these pastors rejected this advice and reported what was happening to the outside world. Some of those arrested, including a popular Christian music singer Helen Berhane who refused to stop her performances, have been held in metal shipping containers in the open desert.

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