Compass Direct: Currently 16 full-time pastors are among nearly 900 Eritrean Christians known to be jailed in local prisons, military confinement camps and shipping containers for daring to meet secretly for prayer and worship outside government-sanctioned churches.
Despite a heavy-handed clampdown by Eritrea's security police, evangelical sources in the tiny northeast African nation have managed to compile a documented list of 883 Christians now being held without trial or charges because of their faith.
Only a handful of prisoners have been released -- after recently being coerced to sign pledges to stop attending religious services of the unregistered, “illegal†denominations.
For the past three years, the Eritrean government has refused to register any of the nation's fast-growing independent Protestant churches, insisting that only three Christian denominations -- the Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran churches -- enjoy government recognition along with Islam.
