During a recent visit to the headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Father Ajay Kumar Singh of the Odisha Forum for Social Action advocated for the suppressed Christians of his eastern Indian state. “After 10 years there is hardly any justice for these communities,” said Father Singh. The Catholic priest declared that the attacks of 2008 were the worst the country has seen in 300 years. According to Father Singh’s research, physical attacks and harassment against Christians and other minorities are at historically high levels in the country. The number of unreported cases is undocumented.
Data collected in the Religious Freedom Report 2016 published by Aid to the Church in Need has indicated that of the 22 countries placed in the ‘Persecution’ category, India is one of six that shows evidence of widespread and serious problems caused by authoritarian states. This is the reality of the Christians of India. A spouse is vulnerable to divorce proceedings and the revoking of parental rights solely on the grounds of conversion after conversion to Christianity. Catholics are not preferred tenants when seeking housing. The list of discriminations is long. As reported by acninternational.org, Fr. Ajay remarked that “Freedom of religion needs to be taken care of. These anti-conversion laws are against human rights and human dignity. India was a signatory to the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It is also a part of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, so it accepts human rights. These cannot be scrapped.”
Fr. Ajay Singh concluded his remarks by noting that “We wish that those who are martyrs, for those who have been affected by these issues, who have been attacked; there should be international public hearing, so that this issue could be highlighted and a lesson learned from this. I do fear the next violence: it could be horrible. There should be no second Kandhamal repeated in India.”
Source: acninternational.org
