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16-year-old boy suffers burns over 60% of his body
in suspected anti-Christian attack in India
By Anugrah Kumar,
Christian Post Contributor|
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Christians pray as others take confession during Good Friday prayer services on April 10, 2009, in the village of Raikia,
south of Bhubaneswar, India. | Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images
A 16-year-old Christian boy suffered burns over 60% of his body after an acid attack in eastern India’s Bihar state. The family says they suspect Hindu nationalists are behind it because the boy is a leader in a local church and the area they live in has anti-Christian sentiments.
The victim, identified as Nitish Kumar, was attacked with acid last week soon after he left his house in a village to go to the market early in the morning, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported Saturday.
Almost immediately after leaving the house, the boy was carried back by people as he screamed due to burns all over his body, the victim’s sister, Raja Davabi, was quoted as saying.
“It was a horrifying scene of my brother,” she said, “I started yelling and crying looking at my brother. He was in terrible pain at that point and all that I could do is to share the pain by wrapping him in my hands.”
The boy was taken to a nearby clinic for first aid treatment and then transported to a specialized burn unit in the state capital of Patna.
The attacker has not been identified but the victim’s family and the local Christian community suspect it is the work of anti-Christian activists in the village.
The family, which regularly holds Christian gatherings in their home, converted to Christianity two years ago after being delivered from an evil spirit, and the victim and his brother are active in the church and conduct daily prayer gatherings.
“I don’t understand why this happened to my son and who might have done it, we didn’t do any harm to anybody in our village or anywhere else. My heart pains when I see my son,” the victim’s father, Bhakil Das, was quoted as saying.
Christians make up about 2.5% of India’s population, while Hindus comprise 79.5%.
India ranks as the 10th worst country globally when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA's 2021 World Watch List. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has urged the U.S. State Department to label India as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in or tolerating severe religious freedom violations.
And it seems India is getting less and less tolerant of Christianity under Prime Minister Modi.
The Evangelical Fellowship of India stated in a report that it documented 145 cases of atrocities against Christians — three murders, 22 attacks on churches and 20 instances of ostracization or social boycott in rural areas — in the first half of 2021.
“The violence, detailed in the report, itself was vicious, widespread and ranged from murder to attacks on churches, false cases, police immunity and connivance, and the now normalized social exclusion or boycott which is becoming viral,” the report says.
Open Doors USA warns that since the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took power in 2014, persecution against Christians and other religious minorities has increased.
The group reports that “Hindu radicals often attack Christians with little to no consequences.”
“Hindu extremists believe that all Indians should be Hindus and that the country should be rid of Christianity and Islam,” an Open Doors fact sheet on India explains. “They use extensive violence to achieve this goal, particularly targeting Christians from a Hindu background. Christians are accused of following a 'foreign faith' and blamed for bad luck in their communities.”
I think 'bad luck' pre-existed any foreign religions by many thousands of years. Being delivered from demonic spirits should certainly bring good luck, not bad. It is not generally the Christians who are guilty of gang-raping and murdering young girls in India.
Hindu mob brutally attacks pastor in police station
over claims of 'false' conversions
By Anugrah Kumar,
Christian Post Contributor|
Sunday, September 12, 2021
due to COVID-19 on May 5, 2020, in Delhi, India. | Getty Images/Yawar Nazir
A Christian pastor summoned to a police station in India’s Chhattisgarh state was brutally beaten by a mob of 50 Hindu nationalists who were waiting for his arrival.
The mob falsely accused Pastor Ankush Bariaya of converting Hindus “illegally” and began beating the pastor with shoes and fists inside the Purani Basti Police Station in the state capital of Raipur, U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern said in a statement on Saturday.
A witness at the scene was quoted as saying that the attack seemed to be "well planned."
"I think the police knew about the attack before it took place. It is sad that Christians are not safe even inside the police station,” the witness, believed to be one of the two pastors who accompanied Bariayar, added.
The pastor who was attacked was quoted as saying: “They told me to my face that they would kill me. I thought I was safe, being with the police in their premises, but I was wrong. In the beginning, the police did not do anything to protect me from the attack. After they hit me with the shoe and punched me in my face, the police then tried to stop them from beating me.”
Police registered a case against only seven of the people who were part of the mob, but then identified and arrested only two of them.
“Don’t we have the right to go to the police station and talk to the police?” Dr. Arun Pannalal, president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, asked when speaking to journalists. “Why didn’t the police stop the attackers and protect Pastor Bariayar?”
He continued: “We have the right to choose any religion and propagate that religion. … The government must take the strictest action against the attackers who brazenly attacked the pastor. This needs to be taken to the highest level of law and order in the state.”
The attack “indicates the impunity enjoyed by many radical Hindu nationalists,” William Stark, ICC’s regional manager for South Asia, said.
“This is a symptom of a larger problem in India," he added. "Religious intolerance and religiously motivated violence have become so normalized that attacks on Christians in the presence of police, outside the station, have come to be expected. The only thing that has shocked Christians here is the location of the attack and not the attack itself.”
Christians make up about 2.5% of India’s population, while Hindus comprise 79.5%.
India ranks as the 10th worst country globally when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA’s 2021 World Watch List. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has urged the U.S. State Department to label India as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in or tolerating severe religious freedom violations.
Open Doors USA warns that since the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took power in 2014, persecution against Christians and other religious minorities has increased.
The group reports that “Hindu radicals often attack Christians with little to no consequences.”
“Hindu extremists believe that all Indians should be Hindus and that the country should be rid of Christianity and Islam,” an Open Doors fact sheet on India explains. “They use extensive violence to achieve this goal, particularly targeting Christians from a Hindu background. Christians are accused of following a ‘foreign faith’ and blamed for bad luck in their communities.”
Several Indian states, including Chhattisgarh, have “anti-conversion” laws, which presume that Christian workers “force” or give financial benefits to Hindus to convert them to Christianity.
While the anti-conversion laws have been in place for decades in some states, no Christian has been convicted of “forcibly” converting anyone to Christianity. These laws, however, allow Hindu nationalist groups to make false charges against Christians and launch attacks on them under the pretext of the alleged forced conversion.
Some of these laws state that no one is allowed to use the “threat” of “divine displeasure,” meaning Christians cannot talk about Heaven or Hell, as that would be seen as “forcing” someone to convert. And if snacks or meals are served to Hindus after an evangelistic meeting, that could be seen as “inducement.”
China: Police raid Christian music school, arrest principal
By Anugrah Kumar,
Christian Post Contributor|
Sunday, September 12, 2021
Communist authorities in China’s Heilongjiang province raided a Christian music school, took away dozens of students and teachers for investigation and arrested the principal, according to a report.
More than 30 officials from the Chinese Communist Party, including SWAT officers, police officers, religious affairs bureau officials and local school district administrators raided Maizi Christian Music High School in Harbin city last Saturday, the U.S.-based rights group China Aid reported.
The officials arrested more than 100 students and most of the staff and released them after an interrogation that lasted for 24 hours. They also confiscated pianos, computers and documents belonging to the school, which caters to students who are younger than 18 and is dedicated to cultivating Christian musicians.
About one-and-a-half hours earlier, police officers stopped the school principal, identified only as Xu, while he took his child to school. Officers transported Xu to their police station and drove his child home to his mother.
Xu’s whereabouts was not known as of Saturday, and some teachers were still subject to follow-up interrogations.
As the school charges $2,631 (17,000 RMB) for tuition from each student, the authorities might charge Xu for providing “illegal” education.
“Principal Xu has had his home raided twice six months ago,” a friend of Xu told The Epoch Times, according to the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern. “His phone has always been tapped. Despite our best efforts to learn about his whereabouts, we have received no news.”
“If a school is not authorized, then the government will arrest the responsible with all its energy,” ICC added.
Open Doors USA, which monitors persecution in over 60 countries, estimates that there are about 97 million Christians in China, a large percentage of whom worship in what China considers to be “illegal” and unregistered underground house churches.
Gina Goh, ICC’s regional manager for Southeast Asia, previously said: “Beijing seeks to intimidate the leaders in hopes that the churches will dissolve due to fear. Their plot will not succeed, thanks to the resiliency of the Chinese house church. They survived the Cultural Revolution, and they will survive Xi’s era as well.”
Under the direction of President Xi, officials from the CCP have been enforcing strict controls on religion, according to a report released in March by China Aid.
Authorities in China are also cracking down on Christianity by removing Bible apps and Christian WeChat public accounts as new highly restrictive administrative measures on religious staff went into effect this year.
China is ranked on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to the persecution of Christians.
The U.S. State Department has also labeled China as a “country of particular concern” for “continuing to engage in particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
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