(November 8, 2010) Anti-Christian repression continues in Kandhamal district of Orissa
state, eastern India, despite the government’s claims of normalcy, a fact-finding
team has revealed. Although police contingents now guard several villages, Hindu
radical groups’ social and economic boycott of Christians persists, the team reports.
The four-member group that visited Kandhamal district on Friday said lawlessness still
prevails in villages with Christians living in fear and insecurity. The district
was the epicenter of unprecedented anti-Christian violence for seven weeks starting
Aug. 24, 2008. In Bodimunda village a Protestant pastor said he was forced to become
a Hindu to save his ailing mother. Elsewhere another pastor was fined for hiring
a three-wheeler taxi to take a sick Christian to hospital. The taxi driver told the
visiting team that they were fined even after complaining to the police. The team
also met a group of distraught Christians in another house. Among them, a man whose
two daughters are Catholic nuns alleged that the administration and the police collude
with the local members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the umbrella body
of Hindu extremists. The team also met a Hindu, who had to pay a 5,000-rupee fine
for carrying housing materials for a Christian working with the Border Security Force.