Orissa-like terror stalks Christians in Karnataka interiors

All India Christian Council
 Head Office: Hyderabad Camp: Mangalore
 Dr John Dayal
 Secretary General
 (Member, National Integration Council, Government of India)
 Mobile: 09811021072 Email:catholicunion@gmail.com

PRESS RELEASE
 5th October 2008

Orissa-like terror stalks Christians in Karnataka interiors

Police ordering village churches not to hold Sunday worship, submit
`Licences’ to hold prayers; State home minister VS Acharya, senior
Police officers must be sacked

Brinda Karat, Shabana Azmi, Girish Karnad, Medha Patkar to address
massive civil society rally in Bangalore on 6th October 2008

[The following is the text of the Press statement issued to the media
in Mangalore, Karnataka, by Dr John Dayal, Secretary General, All
India Christian Council, and Member, National Integration Council of
the Government of India, after a tour of the rural churches in
Dakshina Kannada District of Karnataka on 4th and 5th October 2008]

A two day tour of rural Christian churches in the forested hill
villages and plantations of Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka
makes it clear that Christians in areas outside the metropolitan areas
of Bangalore and Mangalore have lived a life of fear since 14
September not much different from the terror that stalks the Dalits
and tribals of Kandhamal in distant Orissa. Although the violence was
only on one day, people fear they may be attacked again anytime in the
future.

The devastation of major Catholic and protestant in Mangalore city,
the attack on women and specially the beating up of Nuns, has
correctly shocked the conscience of the majority community in
Karnataka and the rest of India as much as has the rape of the Nun in
Orissa. But this other side remains dark, beyond the glare of
television. The VHP and the police are making full use of the
interlude to ensure that the law cannot take it dues course and the
culprits who came in well orchestra attack will never are aught.

The mocking tone of the State home Minister, V S Acharya, his
pugnacious and continuing oral attacks on the Church and on the
Catholic Archbishop and Bishops, his threats to the New Life Church
and its pastors, his defence of the Hindutva Parivar assailants, and
his encouragement to religious groups to demand bans and meritorious
on conversions clearly show his commitment to the fascist cause and
conspiracy.

The formal position of Home Minister Acharya is untabelable and the
Governor and Chief Minister must sack him. Chief Minister, Mr.
Yeddiurappa, no less pugnacious in defence of the Hindutva Parivar and
in his critique of the Church, would otherwise have shown himself to
be condoning a well thought out and planned conspiracy against
Christianity in Karnataka, which is one of the ancient homelands of
our faith together with Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

I am also surprised that former Deputy prime minister and BJP supremo
Mr. Lal Krishna Advani in his meeting with United States Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, has chosen the occasion to plead that the US
reconsider its ban on a visa to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.
The US has refused him a visa twice after human rights groups across
the globe exposed his complicity in the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat
in 2002. In fact human rights groups have demanded that the US visa of
Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik also be similarly revoked for his
complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Christians in Kandhamal in
violence that has continued now for forty days after it began its
second phase on 24th August 2008.

In Karnataka, the simultaneous attack between 10.30 and 11.30 has left
at least one pastor grievously hurt and scores injured. Pastor Christu
Das of Kayarthada in Belthangandy D-K, escaped being decapitated as he
warded off a sword attack with his arm, which now is in thick plaster.
His wife, who ran to save him, was also attacked. All that the State
did was to give him Rupees One thousand five hundred from the taluk
office. He lives a life of terror in his incomplete Believer’s Church,
and has been told not to hold church services. Visitors going anywhere
near him are stopped by goons, some on motorcycles, at the heeds of
the road and questioned. The police are nowhere to seen. At other
churches, belonging to Believers Church India, Indian Pentecostal and
other Evangelical groups, lone unarmed police or home guards sit,
after having told the pastor not to carry on any religious work.

These rural areas are not visited by national teams and political
leaders on disaster tourism of the region. Even the senior police and
administrative officers have met the wounded only in hospitals and
have not visited the devastated churches.

A most peculiar aspect of the entire episode from the time of the
violence has been the role of the police. They had come to the
churches before violence to warn the pastors to be cautious. They were
missing from the spot then the actual violence took place. They
appeared at the spot often within minutes of the violence as if they
were waiting somewhere close by. At each church, they forced the
pastor and his associates to clean up the damage remove broken glass
and furniture before the press, sometimes accompanying them, was
allowed to take pictures. In one case, attempts were made to wipe out
all evidence of attempted arson. What were the police attempting to
hide, and who where they attempting to protect. At each place, the
assailants came with their faces masked with deadly weapons, and with
fuel. When they did not find fuel, they emptied vehicles of pastors of
fuel and set them afire.

Taking into consideration that the Rule of Law is inoperative on a
widespread level and ANARCHY is prevalent in the affected Districts of
Orissa, and Karnataka, our demands are:

1. To send in, para-drop if necessary, contingents of the Indian army
into the Kandhamal district where the writ of the State no longer
runs. This must be followed by a total change in the police and civil
administration which has proved to be incompetent, partisan, bigoted
and tainted at the highest levels. Many of them must face criminal
prosecution for c0mplicity in heinous crimes, and for dereliction of
duty.

2. To sack the Home Ministers of Karnataka and Orissa, together with
their senior police and civil officers for their complicity and
sympathy with the assailant fascist forces.

4. To proscribe immediately all organizations and individuals carrying
out or inciting communal violence, namely, the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa
Hindu Parishad, that have been identified by no less than the National
Commission for Minorities as causing disaffection among the
communities.

5. To order investigation by Central Bureau of Investigations, not by
State commissions, into the circumstances leading to the murder of
Vishwa Hindu Parishad vice president Lakhmanananda Saraswati and the
organised violence which followed in the wake of the Yatra in which
his body was taken along hundreds of kilometers in the district of
Kandhamal.

6. Order compensation without delay to the families of those killed in
communal violence and the injured.

THE TOLL ANTI-CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE IN INDIA
 24 August – 4 October 2008

[Released to the media by Dr John Dayal]