No relief from persecution for India's Christians in 2009

Over 150 assaults reported, many in southern part of country

After unprecedented large-scale attacks on Christians in the previous two years, 2009 brought hardly any respite.

An attack on a Mission India Church Planter was among the reports of violence against India's Christians in 2009.

The minority Christian community faced an average of more than three violent attacks a week in 2009. There were at least 152 attacks on Christians, according to the “Partial List of Major Incidents of Anti-Christian Violence in India” released by the Evangelical Fellowship of India.

Anti-conversion laws are in force in the north-central states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Orissa in the east, Gujarat in the west and Himachal Pradesh in the north. Hindu hardliners routinely use these laws to arrest Christians on false accusations of 'forcible conversion.'

Orissa state, which witnessed two extensive periods of attacks on Christians in 2007 and 2008, saw only two recorded violent incidents this year.

The morale of Christians in Orissa, however, remained low as very few attackers in the 2008 rampage were brought to justice.

A disturbing new trend emerged this year as southern India, which had long been considered a safe area for Christians, recorded the highest extent of anti-Christian violence.

Of the total 152 incidents, 86 were reported from southern states, mainly Karnataka with 48, Andhra Pradesh with 29, Tamil Nadu with five and Kerala with four.

“If 2007 and 2008 went down in history as the most blood-soaked ones in the history of modern Christianity in India, 2009 surely rates as the year of frustrating confrontations with the law and tardy governance, and on justice for the victims of communal violence,” said Dr. John Dayal, a Christian and human rights activist and member of the government’s National Integration Council.

Dayal referred to violence that erupted in Orissa’s Kandhamal district during the Christmas week in 2007, when at least four Christians were killed and 730 houses and 95 churches burnt down.

Violence re-erupted in Kandhamal in August 2008 after the assassination of a Hindu extremist leader by a Maoist group, as right wing Hindu groups falsely blamed Christians for the murder. This time the violence killed more than 100 people and resulted in the destruction by fire of 4,640 houses, 252 churches and 13 schools and educational institutions.

There are around 25 million Christians in India, or roughly 2.3 percent of the over 1.1 billion people.

Source: Compass Direct News