INDIA: Christian persecution continues in Orissa state; situation 'still critical,' bishop says
Episcopal News Service. December 9, 2008 [120908-03]
Matthew Davies
The situation in India's Orissa state, where Christian minorities have faced intense persecution since August, is "still critical" with hundreds of people forced to live in relief camps for fear of their lives.
"Many children have been born in the relief camps ... Many people are sick and some are dying," said Bishop Bijay K. Nayak of Phulbani, whose Church of North India diocese is based in the Kandhamal district where most of the violence has taken place. The diocese has provided 100 rupees (US$2.04) to each family in two relief camps. "But 100 rupees is nothing" compared with the needs, Nayak said.
The violence in Orissa broke out when Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, the senior leader of an extreme Hindu nationalist group, was shot and killed on August 23 along with five junior monks. A Maoist leader is reported to have claimed responsibility for the killing but some Hindu groups have called it a Christian conspiracy.
The violence has claimed the lives of 60 Christians, and more than 5,000 Christian houses have been looted or torched in the Kandhamal district, according to Ecumenical News International.
The Rev. Milind Sojwal, rector of All Angel's Church in Manhattan, who recently attended an Overseas Partners Roundtable Conference at CNI on behalf of the Episcopal Church, said that Orissa "continues to be an overheated cauldron on the brink of further carnage."
Sojwal said in a recent email to Episcopal Church Center staff that those living in the relief camps "are herded like cattle. These people have not received anything but the barest of necessities. The temperature has plummeted in Orissa and the people living in these appalling conditions have not been provided with blankets or warm clothes."
Nayak, who has visited several relief camps in the region, said that "people are given only rice and dal, but they need soap, toothpaste, brushes, medicine, clothes [and] children's food."
"Every day hundreds of people coming to diocesan office for money and relief materials," said Nayak, adding that his diocese is fully engaged in relief work.
It is harvesting season in Orissa state but people returning to their villages from the relief camps "for harvesting the paddy ... are being threatened saying 'if you will be Hindu remain, other wise you go back,'" said Nayak, who until recently was living some 70 miles from Phulbani for his own safety.
Some of the militants have reportedly identified Christian-owned fields and are harvesting them.
Fear is still palpable in the Christian community with "little sense of hope in the authorities coming to the rescue," said Sojwal, who briefed Episcopal Church Center staff in November about the religious persecution in India. "Hundreds of people are pouring into Bishop Nayak's compound asking for help. The diocesan office is completely swamped and unable to meet the needs of the people. So far they have received a pittance from the government."
Christians "live in the terror that continues to threaten them," he said. "The carnage is still very much alive as the potential for more violence continues."
The Diocese of New York dedicated the offertory at its recent annual convention in support of the relief efforts in the Diocese of Phulbani, said Sojwal, urging support for Nayak "with the resources he needs to protect his people not only from the possibility of violence but almost certainly from starvation as well."
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wrote to CNI's moderator and general secretary in early November expressing her sorrow for the violence of recent months and offering her prayers that the central government "will be effective in its recent order to state and local governments to bring the violence to an end."
Jefferts Schori applauded the courage of Sister Meena Lalita Barwa, a Roman Catholic nun who went public with her testimony of being raped, beaten and traumatized in August when a mob terrorized her community.
The Presiding Bishop also acknowledged the work of the Episcopal Church's Office of Government Relations (OGR) in bringing the situation in Orissa to the attention of U.S. policymakers. The OGR staff played an active role in the formation of the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom, Jefferts Schori noted. In October, the commission sent a detailed letter to U.S. President George W. Bush and his senior staff "urging the president's intervention to assist in ending religious persecution in India."