ICC Note: 

The minority groups of Malian Christians as well as Christian foreign expats and missionaries face extreme persecution and social marginalization in Mali. Christians in Mali  compose approximately five percent of Mali’s population and suffer from social exclusion. Recently, two Malian Christians were arrested without complete investigations after being falsely accused of forced conversions, detained in inhumane conditions, and face sentencing without fair hearings.  One of the prisoners is a government official who works in a Mayor’s office.   Christian officials face persecution in their work to serve their communities. They face imprisonment, and in this case, death.  We pray for the Mayor’s wife and children as they mourn their loss  and live in persecution. 

11/16/2016 Mali (World Watch Monitor) –  The motive behind the murder of a Fulani Christian politician in Mali last month remains unknown, but locals suspect an Islamist agenda.

Moussa Issah Bary, the 47-year-old deputy mayor of Kerana (near the Burkina Faso border), was shot dead by six unidentified men on motorbikes on 16 November. He is survived by a wife and eight children.

Bary’s murder came just days before municipal elections. He was a rare example of a Christian member of the Fulani tribe, some of whose militant extremists have become infamous in Nigeria for committing atrocities which have seen them named as one of the top five deadliest militias in the world.

“This tragedy has sent sadness, fears and concerns among the Fulani Christians in several countries, most of whom knew Moussa or just heard of this brutal death,” a local source told World Watch Monitor. “Until now, there has been no official claim from the actors of this disaster.

“We do not know whether it is because of his faith that he was brutally attacked or because of his political position.”

Mali has suffered from a wave of Islamic extremism in recent years, since militants and foreign fighters made common cause with Tuareg rebels to take over a large portion of the country in 2012. For most of that year, until the French military were forced to intervene, armed Islamist groups ruled the region, banning the practice of other religions and desecrating and looting churches and other places of worship.

Since then, Mali has been blighted by regular Islamist attacks, including the recent |bombing of two airports{/link} in the north of the country and, earlier in the year, the kidnapping of a Swiss missionary, whose whereabouts is still unknown.

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