08021
January 9, 2008

Indian churches say they can't get access to Orissa violence victims

by Anto Akkara
Ecumenical News International

BHUBANESWAR, India — National church bodies in India have demanded access to the troubled Kandhamal region of Orissa state to distribute relief and visit the families affected by a recent outbreak of violence said to be aimed at Christians.

“We are established and credible national bodies and have every right to distribute relief to the victims of violence,” Church of North India (CNI) Bishop Dinesh Kumar Sahu, general secretary of  the National Council of Churches in India, told journalists in Bhubaneswar, the Orissa capital. The CNI is a partner church of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The press conference, at the city sometimes called the Temple city of India, on Jan. 7 was jointly convened by the NCCI, a grouping of  29 Orthodox and Protestant churches in India, along with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.

The church leaders said the authorities were preventing their relief bodies from distributing aid in the area affected by the violence, that began on Christmas eve at Bamunigam in the Kandhamal forests more that 200 kilometers from the capital.

“Why is the government not allowing NGOs to carry out relief work when hundreds of people suffering?” asked Bishop Sahu. He said that churches are ready to distribute relief to affected people irrespective of creed, in the presence of government officials.

“We never discriminate when we distribute relief to affected people,” said the Rev. Babu Joseph, spokesperson for the Roman Catholic bishops at the press conference. He noted that more than 90 percent of the 14,000 houses that the Catholic church had built for victims of the massive tsunami in 2004 were given to Hindus.

A report distributed at the conference said that more than 50 churches had been damaged or destroyed, and several hundred Christian families displaced in anti-Christian violence.

Following clashes between Christians and Hindus over the construction of a traditional Christmas arcade in a market, more than 80 Hindu homes and 31 Christian homes were set on fire in the jungle village, the report stated.

This was followed by a wave of anti-Christian violence that Christian leaders said resulted in churches other institutions and houses being destroyed and looted by Hindu extremists.

Police did nothing to stop the violence that continued for four days, Catholic spokesperson Joseph  said. “This is diabolic violence,” said Joseph, who had visited major Christian centres affected by the violence. “It was systematically planned and clinically executed,” he asserted. Joseph told Ecumenical News International that police did nothing to stop the violence that went on for four days.

“We cannot understand why the government wants to deny permission for us to distribute relief to the victims,” said CNI Bishop Samson Das of Cuttack. “We have every right to meet the people to express our solidarity with them.”

The chief minister of Orissa state, Navin Patnaik, had pleaded with a delegation of members of the national parliament and senior politicians not to visit the troubled area in a fact-finding mission.

“This shows the inefficiency and failure of the government to protect the threatened people,” Sitaram Yechury, secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist told Ecumenical News International. “The government is trying to hide its gross failures.”