Kandhamal women’s condition shocks study team

(May 18,2010) Women survivors of the attacks on Christians in India’s eastern Orissa State are still traumatized two years later after the anti-Christian violence , a new study of their plight has found. “What we saw in Kandhamal is terrible. Women there are living under siege and fear,” said members of a study team from Mumbai’s Church managed Social Work College – Nirmala Niketan. They said survivors have become fatalistic and submissive, and the government has done nothing to restore the abused women’s confidence. Team members interviewed nearly 300 women in 55 villages of Kandhamal.
Nothing has been done for women who were forced to hide in forests for days during the seven-week long violence, said Sister Anitha Chettiar, a member of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary congregation that runs Nirmala Niketan and a senior lecturer there.
Many women had refused to report attacks on them because their violators were protected by police, she said. The study aimed to gather better information on the extent of violence on women during the anti-Christian riots that rocked Kandhamal for seven weeks starting Aug. 24, 2008.