The senior pastor, who also serves as pastor of the local Presbyterian church, had been visiting a woman and her daughter from the church with his wife around 13:00. As they were returning home on their motorcycle, the road was blocked with logs. The pastor moved the logs and they continued on. A little further down the road at an intersection, their route was cut off by an SUV that knocked them off the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
They were then attacked by a group of 40 men accompanied by 5 Buddhist monks and the Deputy Secretary of Pradeshiya Sabha, a local official. They arrived at the spot in a truck and 3 rickshaws. The group approached the pastor and his wife with stones in their hands while shouting \"attack them\", \"kill them\". The man driving the four-wheeler joined them. He was recognized as a brother-in-law of the president. The pastor was dragged along the ground while being beaten by the men, who shouted at him and asked who had given him permission to live in the area. The pastor replied that he had lived in Deniyaya for many years and did not need anyone's permission to be there. They accused him of spreading Christianity and threatened to kill him if he did not stop his Christian ministry. The pastor's wife was showered with abuse.<\/p>\n
The group then dragged the pastor and his wife to the house they had visited earlier. They shouted at the woman who lived there and asked her and her daughter how much they had been paid to convert. They replied that they had been Christians long before they moved to Deniyaya and that no one had paid them to become Christians; that it was an independent decision based on conviction. Then the group beat up the pastor again. He and his wife then escaped and went home. The SUV followed them all the way.<\/p>\n
The pastor suffered injuries to his legs and body, but did not want to go to the hospital for fear of being attacked again. He reported the attack to the police.<\/p>\n
Later that evening, the SUV was seen driving around the area near the pastor's house. The police were called and they responded with a mobile unit.<\/p>\n
The identification papers of the pastor and his wife, his cell phone, Bible and other documents were stolen during the attack. On August 10, a number of people whose numbers were stored on the pastor's cell phone received fake calls from someone pretending to be the pastor asking them to meet him at various locations. The ID cards were later returned to the police, but the phone and Bible are still missing.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A group of 40 men, accompanied by a local official and 5 Buddhist monks, attacked and beat a pastor on his way home from a visit with his wife.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"gamle_kategorier":[],"land":[83],"class_list":["post-1737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ikke-kategoriseret","land-sri-lanka","infinite-scroll-item","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n