A joint statement released by Mr. Ho and his family said the dispute had been “fully resolved” and an agreement reached.
Christians ‘fed up’ with Bible seizures
KUALA LUMPUR | The main Christian group in Muslim-majority Malaysia said Thursday it was “fed up” with the government’s refusal to allow the distribution of tens of thousands of Bibles, saying this is an affront to religious freedoms.
The rare rebuke by the Christian Federation of Malaysia signals growing impatience among the religious minority in a years-old dispute over the government’s ban on the use of the word “Allah” as a translation for God in Malay-language Bibles and religious texts.
The federation’s chairman, Bishop Ng Moon Hing, said authorities are currently holding 30,000 Malay-language Bibles at a port on Borneo island.
This was one of the latest attempts by Christians to import such Bibles, mainly from Indonesia, but none has been successful since March 2009. There are no similar problems with English-language texts.
Christians were “greatly disillusioned, fed up and angered by the repeated detention of Bibles,” the federation said in a statement. “It would appear as if the authorities are waging a continuous, surreptitious and systematic program against Christians in Malaysia to deny them access to the Bible” in the Malay language.
PHILIPPINES
3 killed, 9 hurt in bomb blast
JOLO | Suspected Abu Sayyaf militants detonated a powerful bomb near a school on a southern Philippine island Thursday, killing at least three people and wounding nine others, officials said.
The homemade bomb went off shortly after a van of police special forces passed by, hitting instead pedestrians and motorists during rush hour on Jolo island in the predominantly Muslim province of Sulu.
Police had increased security two days ago after receiving intelligence of a possible Abu Sayyaf attack, Jolo town Mayor Hussin Amin said.
The explosion killed three men and wounded at least nine others, including two who were undergoing surgery in a hospital. The blast dug a crater on the concrete road and damaged the metal roof of a nearby school, Mr. Amin said.
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