ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Human Rights Watch voices concern on Christian persecution

A leading human rights organisation has accused the Indian government of failing to prevent increasing violence against Christians and urged it to provide adequate protection to the minority community to avoid recurrence of such incidents.

In a 37-page report titled 'Politics by Other Means: Attacks Against Christians in India,' released in London today, the Human Rights Watch said attacks against the community, including killing of priests, raping of nuns and physical destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges and cemetries, have increased significantly during the past one-and-a-half years.

Between January 1998 and February 1999, 116 incidents of attacks against the second largest minority community of the country were reported, it said and added that Gujarat topped the list with 94 such incidents. It also claimed that thousands of Christians were forced to convert to Hinduism during this period.

Stating that the attacks against the Christians were ''part of a concerted campaign of the sangh parivar to promote and exploit communal clashes to increase their political power-base'', the report said the movement is being supported at the local level by militant groups who operate with impunity.

''Without immediate decisive action by the government, communal tensions will continue to be exploited for political and economic ends,'' it added.

Citing specific incidents, like the killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons in Orissa, raping of nuns in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh and a ten-day spate of violence and premeditated attacks on churches and other Christian institutions in the Dangs district of Gujarat between December 25, 1998 and January 3, 1999, the Human Rights Watch urged the government to demonstrate its commitment to protecting the rights of minorities.

State officials having complicity in attacks on minorities should be investigated and prosecuted, the report suggested and added that policemen involved in such cases should be dismissed.

The report of the Wadhwa Commission, which inquired into the killing of Graham Staines and his two sons, should be made public and the persons responsible for the killing should be prosecuted, the Human Rights Watch stressed.

The recommendations made by the UN special rapporteur on religious affairs, who visited India in December 1996, should be immediately implemented, it suggested.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report