CHRISTIANS sheltering in a refugee camp in Kandhamal, Orissa, India, after their homes were destroyed in interreligious violence at Christmas, said last week that they were living in an open prison. “We are getting food. But we cannot go to work. Our children do not go to school,” a camp-dweller and member of the Pentecostal church, Chabil Digal, told the Ecumenical News International last week. The camp is home to about 1500 refugees who escaped the violence that began on Christmas Eve and continued for several days (News 4 January). Property, including 71 churches, hostels, and medical centres, was destroyed. ENI reported that some refugees claim that, although the government was providing assistance for them to rebuild their homes, extremists were trying to stop them. Christians now make up 20 per cent of the population. A report by a fact-finding group that visited the area after the riots said that the violence was the premeditated work of a well-disciplined group that had acted with the collusion of local police. The report was compiled by Dr John Dayal, a member of the Indian government’s National Integration Council, with a lawyer, Nicholas Barla, and a human-rights activist, Hemant Nayak. It found there had been “an utter collapse of the law and order machinery” between 24 December and 27 December. “There is more tragedy waiting to happen”, it said. It linked the violence to the arrival of 25 to 30 bus-loads of yoga students who attended a course at Bhubaneswar, followed by secret political meetings between the heads of Hindu nationalist parties. In one town, Bamunigam, the weekly market was in full swing and Christians were doing their last-minute shopping for Christmas Day when political leaders from Hindu nationalist parties appeared, threatened the shoppers with guns, swords, and iron rods, and ordered the stalls to close. The Christians, who were preparing for a night service, fled to the forest. In another village, Dasingbadi, a struggle broke out when the Hindu nationalist Swami Lokhanananda Saraswati, who has called Christians “an enemy not to be tolerated”, told his men to stop the carols and destroy the Christmas decorations. In Balliguda, “more than 400 miscreants, kumkum on their foreheads, most likely the Bajrang Dal and RSS [Hindu political parties] members with guns, swords, axes, pharsa, and other lethal weapons in their hands, broke open the main gate of the church, abusing the few Christian youths who were busy decorating and giving last touches for the worship on the birthday of their Lord Jesus.” The armed men were shouting “Kill the Christians”, and “Destroy the churches”, said the report, and the youths, together with a priest, nuns, and seminarians, fled to the jungle for safety. The attacks on churches continued for a day and a night, the report said. Finally, on 27 December at about noon, police opened fire on the crowd. Two people were killed and the crowd dispersed. The report rejected the state’s claim that the agitation was related either to Maoist activity or to Christian-Dalit or Christian-tribal relations. Those, it said, were good. It concluded that there should be a judicial enquiry by a supreme-court judge. It said the victims of the violence had lost confidence in the official peace committees, and claimed that the local police were biased. |
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