The disturbing treatment of Eric Alyai illustrates yet again how conversion to Christianity is so often the occasion for persecution of Christians — both of the converts and of those who brought the converts the word of the Gospel.
Among the Christians of Uganda are around 35,000 Orthodox Christians.
For previous ChristianPersecution.com coverage of Christian persecution in Uganda, see here.
“Muslim Extremists Suspected of Killing Tourists, Beating Christian,” Morning Star News, October 20, 2023:
…In western Uganda’s massive Queen Elizabeth National Park, a Ugandan Christian tour guide, Eric Alyai, and a foreign married couple were shot to death on Tuesday (Oct. 17) by suspected Islamic terrorists of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in Kasese District, sources said.
Alyai, 40, British tourist David Barlow and his South African wife, 51-year-old Celia Barlow, were killed at 6:30 p.m. along the park’s Katwe Road between L. Nyamununka and Kabatooro, according to security agencies.
An area resident who witnessed that attack while fetching firewood told Morning Star News that she heard the sound of bullets and hid. When the Muslim extremists approached the tourists’ vehicle, they shouted, “We know you are the people who are supporting Christians in Uganda and coming in the name of tourists,” according to the resident, whose name is withheld for security reasons.
“Then and there they fired on them and then later burnt the vehicle to ashes,” the source told Morning Star News.
Alyai was known to take tourists to Christian-owned hotels in Kasese, which helped generate income for the local church, and he also took Christian tourists to churches in Kasese, sources said.
Authorities suspected ADF terrorists in the killing, according to security group Crisis24. Originally based in western Uganda, the ADF has operated in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu Province since the late 1990s.
The ADF is considered one of the most lethal of more than 120 armed groups in the eastern DRC. In 2019 the ADF split into two factions, with one merging into the Islamic State Central Africa Province. The U.S. government in 2021 designated the ADF as a foreign terrorist organization with links to the Islamic State….
