Bhubaneswar, India, 16 September (ENI)--Motilal Pradhan and two of his younger brothers look fit enough to take on any challengers. Still, the three men, two of whom are soldiers in the Indian army, say they were able to do little to save their 35-year-old disabled youngest brother, whom, they assert, a Hindu mob burnt alive while they could only watch helplessly from a distance. When the 1000-strong crowd, armed with swords and other weapons, descended on the brothers' village of Gadragam on 24 August, in the troubled Kandhamal district of Orissa state, in eastern India, Christians in the village began running for their lives, Pradhan said.

He added that his younger brother, paralysed due to a stroke eight years ago, could not flee and the mob caught hold of him. "In cinema style, they challenged us to come forward and save him if we were bold enough. We had to watch him being burnt alive. We could not even go near to get his body," Pradhan, a Baptist church member, told Ecumenical News International on 10 September. Pradhan has now taken shelter at a makeshift relief camp opened for Christian refugees fleeing assault, and run by the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) at its premises in Bhubaneswar.

Christians in Orissa, especially in Kandhamal, 250 kilometres (150 miles) from Bhubaneswar, say they have been facing what they describe as orchestrated attacks by Hindu mobs, since the killing of Hindu leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati in August. A Maoist leader is reported to have claimed responsibility for the killing but some Hindu groups say it was a Christian conspiracy, as the 85-year-old slain monk had been campaigning against conversion to Christianity in Kandhamal, where he was based. More than half the 100 000 Christians in Kandhamal are reported to have been made homeless as a result of Hindu extremists roaming villages, and trying forcibly to convert Christians to Hinduism, and looting and torching Christian houses.

"This is the sad plight of our people," Sudhanshu Nayak, general secretary of the YMCA in Bhubaneswar, told ENI. Nayak pointed out that the YMCA had opened the relief camp on 28 August at its office premises after Christians fleeing Kandhamal began reaching Bhubaneswar. "Now the government is asking us to close the camp and send the people to [refugee] camps in Kandhamal. We are helpless," said Nayak.

"This is the price our people have to pay for being Christians," added Nayak, whose mother, two brothers and one sister with two children have also been made homeless, and have taken shelter in a refuge camp in Raikia town in Kandhamal. The government has posted security personnel at the 13 refugee camps in Kandhamal, but many Christians do not feel safe in them, and have fled to live in the surrounding jungles.

Still, Ranjit Nayak, a Christian social worker, who opened a refugee camp at his home in Cuttack, 35 kilometres (21 miles) from Orissa's capital, Bhubaneswar, said he had received generous support from local Hindus to feed the 130 Christians taking shelter in his camp. "Though our people are being hunted out in Kandhamal, there are many good Hindus," said Nayak. [540 words]

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Bangalore, India, 15 September (ENI)--Churches in India have deplored a series of attacks on Christian places of worship in the southern state of Karnataka, and have called for measures to protect minorities in the world's second most populous nation. "We demand an immediate stop of the eruption of violence in different parts of the nation in the name of objecting [to] 'conversion'," the National Council of Churches in India said on 15 September after alleged Hindu militants attacked Roman Catholic, Protestant and evangelical churches and prayer halls during Sunday services the previous day.

Police said gangs of youths, 20 to 25 in number, had barged into the church centres and destroyed sacred articles and costly electronic equipment and furniture, and had attacked those who confronted them. Seven people, including two pastors and a Catholic nun, were injured, and the assailants also set ablaze two vehicles. The attackers were reported to belong to the Bajrang Dal movement, a radical Hindu group that has denounced what it says is the illegal conversion of Hindus to Christianity.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of India expressed "shock and distress at the unprovoked attacks on Christian places of worship" in Karnataka. Media reported that, after the attacks, hundreds of Christians in Mangalore, one of the affected cites, demonstrated in front of the churches and prayer halls, and demanded the arrest of the attackers. Police used batons and teargas to disperse protesters, and banned the assembly of five or more people in Mangalore city for three days.

"These are well-planned attacks," John S. Sadananda, principal of Karnataka Theological College in Mangalore, told Ecumenical News International. Sadananda said there had been a steady increase in attacks on Christian targets in different parts of the state since the Bharatiya Janata Party, whose opponents say it has an extremist pro-Hindu agenda, formed a coalition government in Karnataka two years ago. "The government had done little to investigate properly or arrest the culprits in these cases. Now, they feel emboldened," said Sadananda, who is also the chairperson of the Ecumenical Christian Centre in Bangalore. [371 words]

[COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE]

Bangalore, 11 September (ENI)--Church charities in India are rushing aid and relief supplies to people affected by devastating floods in eastern Bihar state. The floods are reported to have displaced more than 3 million people from their homes, and by 10 September the official death toll had risen to 104, the Reuters news agency reported from Patna, the state capital of Bihar. Still, it is widely believed that the final death toll will be much higher. Churches Auxiliary for Social Action, a church relief group, said it had for the first time made public appeals in the Indian media for donations for relief work to assist those hit by the floods, the worst in the region for decades.

CASA spokesperson Alok Michyari said that as a gesture of solidarity with the flood victims, all the 600 staff of CASA would contribute one day's pay to the Bihar flood relief fund. Numerous towns and villages that were once considered flood-safe areas have been submerged since the Kosi river, which gathers water from some of the highest mountains in neighbouring Nepal, and enters India in north Bihar, changed its course on 18 August.

In the process, the river has rendered useless more than 300 kilometres of embankments that had been built to control its waters, and picked up a channel it had abandoned over 200 years ago. "The situation is very bad given the enormity of the devastation," Sushanto Aggarwal, CASA's executive director, told Ecumenical News International.

CASA, which works on behalf of Protestant and Orthodox churches in India, has appealed for international support for its programme to provide food and other emergency household items to 10 000 families. Joy Christina, media coordinator for World Vision India, told ENI that her Chennai-based church agency had distributed "ready-to-eat" food to 10 000 people over three days, and planned to assist 125 000 further flood victims in the coming weeks.

"We are raising our targets steadily, as our staff on the field say the people are really struggling," said Christina. The Rev. Verghese Mattamana, executive director of the Roman Catholic organization Caritas India, said the agency was getting food items, medicine and shelter to 54 000 families.

Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar state, has appealed for public support because, he said, the state government alone cannot deal with the unprecedented scale of devastation caused by the floods. [410 words]

[COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE]

Geneva, 4 September (ENI)--Churches around the world are being asked to join in prayers on 7 September for Christians in India facing continuing sectarian violence in the country's eastern state of Orissa. "We have heard that people are being killed, houses burnt, thousands are living in relief camps, and churches and church properties are being destroyed," the Rev. Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches said in a letter released on 4 September to the group's member churches in India.

In a separate letter to India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Kobia and the general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, the Rev. Ishmael Noko, urged the leader of the world's second most populous nation to intervene and "ensure an immediate cessation of violence, the restoration of law and justice, and sanctuary for the displaced" in Orissa. Citing information received from the LWF and WCC member churches in India, the general secretaries said that indiscriminate killings, burning of church buildings and destruction of institutions continue in the Gajapati and Khandamal districts and other parts of Orissa.

The LWF quoted the Rev. A. G. Augustine Jeyakumar, executive secretary of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India, as saying that "fundamentalist groups [are] going from village to village destroying churches, burning houses, attacking and killing Christians". In his letter to the WCC's member churches in India, Kobia said, "Religious fanaticism has once again broken the lives of the poor." He noted that India's National United Christian Forum had called for 7 September to be observed as a day of prayer and fasting for peace and goodwill.

"We are urging all our member churches and partners worldwide to join in this initiative by praying for the families of those who have lost their dear ones, for those who are displaced, for all others who suffer the consequences of this violence and for all those who are striving to restore trust and goodwill among people and communities," said Kobia. The WCC, citing a report by the Christian forum, said that about 20 people had been killed, 50 000 displaced and 4 000 homes destroyed in recent days. It said 13 000 people who have fled their villages are living in nine relief camps run by the government. Some 200 villages have been affected, with hundreds of churches burnt down. [398 words]

[COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE]

Bangalore, India, 3 September (ENI)--Christian groups have expressed dismay at attempts by the government of India's southern Karnataka state to take action against hundreds of church educational institutions after they closed for a day to protest at ongoing violence against Christians in eastern Orissa state. The Global Council of Indian Christians in an appeal to India's National Human Rights Commission on 2 September urged it "to take steps to see that the Christian institutions [in Karnataka] are not penalised for this action of solidarity and peaceful prayer for the victims of violence in Orissa [state]".

More than 30 000 Christian schools and colleges across the country had remained shut on 29 August to protest at what they said was orchestrated violence against Christians in Orissa that has claimed more than 20 lives and left more than 50 000 Christians refugees fleeing their homes to escape attacks by Hindu extremists. The same evening, Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri, the education minister of Karnataka government, which is led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, a party accused of having a Hindu nationalist agenda, convened a news conference declaring that the government would take disciplinary action against Christian educational institutions that closed for the protest.

Sajan K. George, president of GCIC, which is based in Bangalore, told Ecumenical News International that hundreds of schools under Hindu management often shut down when Hindu groups call on schools, as well as businesses, to close in protests relating to political issues. "But no such punitive action [by the government] is ever taken," said George, pointing that Karnataka is the only state among five BJP-ruled states to initiate such an action.

Hmar Tlomte Sangliana, a Presbyterian member of the Indian parliament who was recently expelled from the BJP, told a press conference the government action aimed at punishing Christian institutions "smacks of communal hatred" and shows the BJP government's "lack of awareness of social issues". "The whole world knows why we closed out institutions on the day," Bishop Vasant Kumar, who heads the Church of South India's Karnataka central diocese, told ENI. "We will defend our institutions."

More than one thousand Christian educational institutions in Karnataka had joined the national protest against anti-Christian violence in Orissa. "When our Christians are being hounded our in Orissa, we have every right to show our concern," said Roman Catholic Archbishop Bernard Moras of Bangalore and chairperson of the regional Catholic bishops' council of southern Karnataka. Moras said he had received two notices from the educational department "to show cause why action should not be taken against you for using religion as an excuse, and announcing a holiday". He asserted, "We have done nothing illegal." He noted that as private institutions the schools were legally allowed to declare a certain number of holiday to compensate people working extra days. [479 words]

[COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE]