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COMPASS DIRECT NEWS
News from the Frontlines of Persecution
August 2007
(Released August 31, 2007)
Compass Direct is distributed to raise awareness of Christians worldwide who are persecuted for their faith. Articles may be reprinted or edited by active subscribers for use in other media, provided Compass Direct News is acknowledged as the source of the material.
Copyright 2007 Compass Direct News
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IN THIS ISSUE
AFGHANISTAN
Korean Killed Dedicated Life to Serving Others
Afghan convert to Christianity thanks the Korean Church for its sacrifice.
BANGLADESH
Muslims Force Converts Back to Islam
Villagers and foreigners haul newly baptized Christians to mosque and threaten them.
Islamic Militant Convicted of Another Murder ***
Crackdown begun under previous government leads to death sentences for extremists.
EGYPT
Muslim Sues for the Right to Convert to Christianity ***
Christian’s attorney facing death threats from Egyptian security police.
Convert in Hiding after Lawyer Backs Out ***
Attorney for former Muslim seeking Christian ID leaves amid threats, national uproar.
Christian Rights Advocates Detained ***
Group leader helped Christian convert, who has new lawyer for conversion case.
Government Extends Jail Time for Christian Rights Workers ***
Muslim scholars demand convert’s death.
ERITREA
Pastor Disappears, 10 Protestants Arrested
Catholic Church ordered to relinquish its network of humanitarian institutions.
INDIA
Christian Worker Beaten to Death in Assam
Hindu extremists suspected, but police have yet to identify culprits.
State Hurdles Past Veto of ‘Anti-Conversion’ Law
Gujarat governor refuses to sign bill, but government to implement older version.
Briefs 8/18/07: Recent Incidents of Persecution
Hindu Extremists Target Christian Dalits
Attack on hospital in Uttar Pradesh state reflects RSS’s top priority.
Pastor Kidnapped Twice, Nearly Killed
Hindu extremists in Karnataka state intended to crush his head with large stone.
Briefs 8/29/07: Recent Incidents of Persecution
Governor Objects to ‘Anti-Conversion’ Bill
Chhattisgarh chief questions religious double standard, excessive state control.
Hindu Extremists Allegedly Kill Pastor’s Brother
Authorities ignore attacks on Christian family, arrest of victims.
LAOS
Hmong Christians Killed, Imprisoned in Crackdown
Vietnamese, Lao forces searching rice paddies and mountains and shooting on sight.
MALAYSIA
Uproar over Claim of Country as ‘Islamic State’ Is Silenced
Government gags media discussion of minister’s claim.
PAKISTAN
Jail Officials Beat Christian, Halt Bible Classes ***
Prison superintendent denies banning pastor from visiting jail.
Religious Minorities Told to Convert or Die
Christians remain fearful after deadline passes for converting to Islam.
Missing Christian Girls Married Off to Muslims ***
Police stall efforts to recover children.
VIETNAM
School Denies Entry to Christian Boy
District announces new rule barring “students who follow a religion.”
*** Indicates an article-related photo is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.
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Korean Killed in Afghanistan Dedicated Life to Serving Others
Afghan convert to Christianity thanks the Korean Church for its sacrifice.
by Peter Lamprecht
ISTANBUL, August 2 (Compass Direct News) – A Korean Christian aid worker murdered by his Taliban captors on Monday (July 30) had sacrificed his time and job to help those less fortunate than himself, eventually losing his life while serving the needy in Afghanistan.
For Shim Sung Min, 29, traveling to Afghanistan with an aid group of 23 members of his home congregation in Korea reflected an active desire to live out his faith.
The former IT worker, a graduate of South Korea’s Gyeongsang National University, had volunteered his time to teach Sunday school classes to handicapped church-goers on a weekly basis at the Sammul Presbyterian church, a member of the church said.
Prompted by the needs of poor Korean farmers negatively affected by globalization, Shim had decided to quit his job and pursue a graduate degree in agriculture, the church member told Compass.
“He always wanted to help,” the church member said. “He was moved to go to Afghanistan in order to help people.”
Korean Internet news website Dong-A Ilbo reported that Shim’s family planned to carry out Shim’s request that his body be donated to Seoul National University Hospital.
Shim’s corpse was expected to arrive in South Korean today as negotiations for the release of 21 remaining Korean hostages from his church continue. The group’s leader, pastor Bae Hyung Kyu, was shot on July 25, his birthday.
Taliban spokesmen threatened to kill more hostages yesterday by 12 p.m. (local time) if the Afghan government continued to refuse to release Taliban prisoners. Taliban leaders later confirmed that no one had been hurt.
Relatives of five remaining male hostages are particularly concerned after the Taliban threatened to kill off first the group’s males (it was previously misreported that there were only five males in the original group of 23 aid workers).
“If the negotiations do not go well, [the militants] will kill the male hostages, and then it will be the female hostages’ turn,” purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told Yonhap News Agency on Tuesday (July 31).
The 23 Koreans from Bandung’s Sammul Presbyterian church were on a 10-day service trip to Afghanistan when they were captured on July 19 while traveling by bus from Kabul through Afghanistan’s Ghazni province to Kandahar.
The kidnapping has aroused a storm of anti-Christian sentiment among Koreans online, who not only labeled the group’s trip to Afghanistan as naïve but also condemned the Christians for supposedly carrying out evangelistic work.
Both the Korean government and church leadership, as well as a member of the congregation speaking to Compass, confirmed that the group was carrying out service work in orphanages and hospitals.
But several Korean Internet users posted a video clip on with pictures and writings from the homepages of the victims, suggesting that the Korean hostages were conducting evangelistic activities in mosques, Korean daily Chosun reported.
“Several netizens [internet users] said they sent the pictures to the Taliban’s e-mail address and called for the Islamist militants to kill the hostages,” Chosun said. The daily reported that official websites of the Sammul Church and the Korea Foundation for World Aid have been closed due to a large number of attacks from hackers.
Despite such condemnations, there appears to be no evidence that the Taliban targeted the Koreans for being Christians.
One Taliban commander, who was released by the Afghan government earlier this year in exchange for an Italian journalist, told British TV that he had commanded all his fighters to kidnap foreigners to use as bargaining chips, the BBC reported on Friday (July 27).
An Afghan convert to Christianity told Compass that local Afghans were not able to differentiate between missionaries and non-governmental organization workers, automatically assuming that all foreigners were Christians.
“For an ordinary Afghan, anyone who is from Europe or America is a Christian,” the convert said. He said that before this incident most Afghans were not aware to which religion Koreans “belonged” but now would assume that all Koreans are Christians.
Responding to accusations that the group decided to travel to Afghanistan without heeding travel warnings, the convert said that the aid workers could have been more careful. The Koreans had decided to travel by bus along a dangerous stretch of road to Kandahar when no flights to the city were available.
But the convert said he supported the group’s decision to visit Afghanistan and that he hoped the Christian presence in the country would continue.
“During the Taliban regime, the main expatriate group in Afghanistan was Christians,” the Christian said. “They were here to help Afghanistan… no one else had the guts to come and help this war-torn country.”
He said that Christians were called to serve, at times at a very high cost.
“Thank you for coming to Afghanistan to serve my people,” the Afghan said, addressing the hostages and other Korean Christians who had served in Afghanistan. “Thank you for letting the world know, ‘Don’t forget Afghanistan.’ Your Afghan brothers in faith are praying for you daily.”
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Muslims Force Converts in Bangladesh Back to Islam
Villagers and foreigners haul newly baptized Christians to mosque and threaten them.
by Aenon Shalom
DHAKA, Bangladesh, August 21 (Compass Direct News) – Local Muslims in Nilphamari district and Islamist missionaries from abroad are hauling recently converted Christians to mosques and forcing them to return to Islam, area sources said.
Evangelist and pastor Sanjoy Roy said the Muslims have forced 27 recently baptized Christians to return to Islam. Another 14 recently converts are still facing incessant pressure to return to Islam from villagers and from Muslim missionaries called Tabligh Jamat.
“The Muslims are still threatening us and saying that they will change our faith," Roy told Compass. "We wanted secrutiy and police protection, but the district commissioner did not accept our application."
Police provided eight officers to protect area Christians on July 28 but left on August 5. Muslims in Durbachari village then began capturing and hauling all male converts to a mosque to return to Islam, forcing them to sign or provide fingerprint signatures on written or blank papers. As nearly all the converts cannot read, area sources said, they did not understand they were signing or giving fingerprint signatures to return to Islam.
Earlier, on July 26, a local source said, local Muslims and Tabligh Jamat missionaries gathered in a schoolyard near the homes of some of the Christians who had been baptized in a river on June 12. Using a microphone, the Muslims threatened violence if the converts did not come out.
Fearing for their lives, the Christians emerged and gathered. The source said the Muslims asked them why they had become Christians and, furious, told them that Bangladesh was a Muslim country “where you cannot change your faith by your own will.”
“They said, ‘How dare you become Christian in a Muslim country?’” the area source said. “After that incident, some believers went to the local police station seeking protection, but police did not respond.”
Most of the Christians are laborers who rely on new opportunities each day to feed their families, and the Muslim villagers are withholding work from them, Christian sources said. Local Muslims are also vandalizing their homes and taking their daily essentials.
“Some of them in fear of life left the village,” said one Christian source. “They cannot catch fish in the river and buy or sell anything in the markets under the pressure of neighbors.”
Threat of Laceration
Abul Hossen, 38, a fruit seller, told Compass that Muslims in the mosque threatened to hang him in a tree upside down and lacerate his body with a blade.
“Then he will understand what are the consequences of being a Christian,” the Muslims told him, Hossen said, adding that they always use “filthy language whenever they see the Christians.”
Hossen said the Muslims “do not allow us to net fish in the river” and offered him 5,000 taka (US$75) and a mobile phone handset if he returned to Islam.
“But I did not give up my faith, because I found Christ in my heart,” Hossen told Compass. “They threatened me with severe consequences if I do not go back to Islam. I said I am ready to offer up my life to Christ, but I won’t renounce my faith in Him.”
Hossen said that, at night, he and his wife take turns keeping vigil while the other sleeps. “We are always worried that something dangerous may happen anytime,” he said.
Day laborer Mohammad Ali, 55, told Compass that around 20 people came to his house and took him to the mosque.
“After [taking] me inside the mosque, they pressured me to recant my faith,” Ali said. “But I did not give up my faith.”
Ali said the local Muslims and Jamat missionaries continue to come to his house four or five times a day to pressure him to give up his faith. “They always tell me to meet their emir [chief cleric] whenever they see me,” he said.
Another day laborer identified only as 37-year-old Sultan said that when local Muslims took him to the mosque a few days ago, he won approval to go outside to perform ablutions [ritual washing] before prayer. Once he had washed his hands and legs, he said, he snuck away.
“Some 50 to 60 people surrounded my house, and some of them came to me with knife drawn,” he said. “When they dragged me to the mosque, they tore my shirt. They tried to change my faith, offering lots of financial incentives.”
Sultan said the Muslims have declined to hire him for any work, taken his cooking utensils, vandalized his house and threatened to burn it down.
“How will I live?” he said. “I am out of my mind with worry. Leaders in our locality threatened to cut my tendon. They say, ‘This is an Islamic country, why have you become Christian?’”
A laborer identified only as Motaleb, 38, said village Muslims came to his house with cooked rice and meat.
“They gave me sweetmeat,” he said. “They said, ‘What has Christ given you? We will give you many things, if you come back to Islam.’”
Motaleb said the Muslims pressured him into returning to Islam after they forcibly took him to the mosque. “They do not allow me to go to the local market to buy or sell anything,” he added. “I do not get any work. Whenever our little kids go to other peoples’ houses, neighbors beat them.”
On June 26, two weeks after the converts in Durbachari village were baptized, Muslim villagers attacked and severely beat them. On June 27, they gave the Christians a 24-hour deadline to leave the village or face further beatings and the destruction of their homes. Last-minute intervention from local officials provided temporary relief; officials also agreed to station a special police force in the village for three months, but the officers left after only a week.
Offering Money
Bangladeshi Christian leader Edward Ayub said he was gravely concerned about the tactics of the village Muslims and Tabligh Jamat missionaries, terming the actions “social and religious tyranny.”
“Some Christians changed their faith under social pressure, not from the bottom of their heart,” he told Compass. “Changing faith forcefully is not the way of preaching any religion. It is a flagrant abuse of religious rights and violation of the Bangladeshi constitution, where it is written that every citizen has the freedom to practice or change his or her religion.”
Another local Christian leader, Albert Adhikari Hirak, said a Muslim cleric has repeatedly questioned and threatened Barek Ali, a 35-year-old rickshaw driver, “asking how much money he received for his conversion and demanding that he abandon his Christian faith. Ali denied receiving monetary incentives.”
Barek Ali said he still has faith in Christ. “Local people are putting lots of pressure on me and threatening me to become Muslim,” he said. “Secretly I try to meet with the believers, but local Muslims are staking out my every movement. I am leading a fugitive life in faith.”
Hatem Ali, a 23-year-old itinerant fruit seller, said he was forcibly taken to the mosque on August 8 as he returned home from his small business and was only released on August 13. The imam of the mosque and the Tabligh Jamat fed him something that made him senseless, he said, and they prohibited him from coming home.
His uncle, Motaleb Hossen, went to the mosque but was not allowed to see him. Peeping through the window the night of August 8, however, Motaleb Hossen saw that Ali was sleeping on the floor with Jamat missionaries surrounding him. Mosque keepers also prohibited his mother from seeing him that night and the next day, Adhikari said.
“Jamat people used abusive language against her and also threatened to attack her physically if she goes again,” Adhikari said. “They forced him to accept Islam and he ‘became Muslim.’”
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Islamic Militant in Bangladesh Convicted of Another Murder
Crackdown begun under previous government leads to death sentences for extremists.
by Aenon Shalom
DHAKA, Bangladesh, August 28 (Compass Direct News) – A crackdown on Muslim militants begun after internal and foreign pressures came to bear on the previous, Islamic-allied government of Bangladesh has resulted in death sentences for two extremists who killed Christian converts.
With a military-backed, interim government in place since January, a Bangladesh court in Dhaka district on August 20 sentenced an Islamic militant to death for the murder four years ago of a Christian convert from Islam.
Mohammad Salauddin, a leading figure in the banned Islamic militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), was convicted of killing Hridoy Roy by slitting his throat in the northern town of Sharishbari on April 23, 2003.
“Salauddin pleaded guilty to the murder charges,” prosecutor Shahin Ahmed Khan said. “He confessed to a magistrate that he slaughtered Roy. It was a pre-planned murder.”
In his written statement, Salauddin said he killed Roy “because he was engaged in converting Muslims into Christians by showing films on Jesus,” the prosecutor said, adding that the murder was carried out on orders of former JMB chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman.
JMP is blamed for a string of deadly bombings in 2005, and Rahman has since been executed for separate killings.
“Killing is permitted by Quran for those who convert Muslims into Christianity,” Salauddin reportedly said after hearing his sentence. “Hridoy was killed upon Allah’s order.”
The death sentence is the second that Salauddin has received. He and JMB leader Hafez Mahmud were sentenced to death on November 9, 2006 for the murder of a Christian convert from Islam in the northern town of Jamalpur.
Salauddin and Mahmud were found guilty of killing 48-year-old Abdul Gani Gomes, who converted to Christianity from Islam more than 15 years ago.
Judge Nur Hossain of the Speedy Trial Tribunal in Dhaka, one of nine fast-track courts created to combat crime, handed down the verdict in a crowded courtroom, police inspector Shankar Ray said.
“The judge said the two slaughtered the Christian convert in a pre-planned manner,” Ray said. “They confessed to a magistrate, saying they murdered him because Gani Gomes had converted to Christianity from Islam.”
Gomes, a chemist, was returning home from work when four militants, including the two convicted, killed him under a tree in September 2004. The other two attackers are still being sought.
Bangladesh, with a population estimated at 85 percent Muslim, has seen sporadic violence against religious minorities recently. Islamic extremists have attacked or murdered other Christians since Gomes’ death in 2004.
On March 8, 2005, a group of armed men attacked Dulal Sarkar, 35, a lay pastor and evangelist, beheading him in front of his wife and five children. Sarkar worked with a branch of the Bangladesh Free Baptist Church in Jabalpur village, in the southwest division of Khulna.
The assailants were later identified as 10 Muslim extremists with links to Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamic political party known simply as Jamaat.
Sarkar’s wife immediately filed a police report, and officers arrested three of the accused. The remaining seven allegedly used their political connections to bribe their way out of jail; the extremists also issued death threats against Sarkar’s wife.
On the night of July 27, 2005, suspected Muslim extremists murdered Tapan Kumar Roy, 27, and Liplal Mardi, 21, who worked with Christian Life Bangladesh (CLB) in Faridpur district. An official at a local Islamic school had threatened Roy and Mardi before the attack, ordering them to cease public showings of the “Jesus Film.”
Police and local officials agree that Islamic militants were likely responsible for the murders, but no arrests have been made.
Leaders Executed
More than two years after the murder of Roy, Salauddin was captured in late 2005 from a rural hideout after Bangladeshi authorities launched a nationwide crackdown on Islamic militants.
Salauddin and Mahmud are members of the Majlish-e-Shura, the JMB’s top decision-making body. JMB was blamed for a series of nationwide blasts on August 17, 2005, when at least 434 bombs exploded almost simultaneously across the country.
Authorities say JMB carried out the bombings and string of subsequent attacks as part of a campaign to impose Islamic law in the Muslim-majority, officially secular country. At least 28 people, including four suicide bombers, died in the blasts.
After the August 17, 2005 attacks, the government said it had failed to recognize the threat posed by Islamic extremists and vowed to root them out. Salauddin and Mahmud were captured from their hideouts following the crackdown on Muslim extremists.
Six JMB leaders were executed in March this year, while dozens more are awaiting execution.
Incubation of Militancy
The Islamic militants grew during the Islamic-allied, previous government of Bangladesh led by Begum Khaleda Zia.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Prime Minister Zia, won the 2001 elections with the help of two small Islamic parties – Jamaat and the Islamic Oikya Jote (IOJ). Jamaat and IOJ seek an Islamic state governed by sharia (Islamic law).
The BNP stepped down in September 2006, making way for a caretaker government that was supposed to oversee new elections in January. The elections were postponed.
Before the departure of the Zia government, however, one JMB mastermind known as Bangla Bhai orchestrated killing missions in the northern part of the country. Jamaat-e-Islami leader Matiur Rahman Nizami claimed that Bangla Bhai did not exist – saying he was “a creation of the media” – prompting then-state Minister of Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar to remark, “We will arrest Bangla Bhai or English Bhais, but how could we if they don’t exist? Give us their addresses, and we will arrest them.”
Bangla Bhai turned out to be Islamic militant Siddiqul Islam. He was reportedly arrested in March 2006 and hanged to death on March 30, 2007 following his conviction, along with others, for killing two judges in Jhalakathi in November 2005.
Some ministers and lawmakers in the previous government aided Islamic militants. Former Telecommunication Minister Aminul Huq was convicted and sentenced on July 26 to 31 years for aiding Islamic extremists, said court police inspector Khondoker Golam Mortuza.
An independent U.S. panel on religious freedom has expressed concern over growing Islamic militancy in Bangladesh and violence against individuals and groups perceived as “un-Islamic.”
Bangladesh could be a model for other emerging democracies with majority Muslim populations, but “that model is in jeopardy,” warned Felice Gaer of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The commission provides policy recommendations to the U.S. Secretary of State, Congress, and president.
Gaer warned of “growing Islamist militancy and the failure to prosecute those responsible for violent acts carried out against Bangladeshi individuals, organizations and businesses perceived as ‘un-Islamic.’”
In May, the commission kept Bangladesh on its “Watch List” amid concerns that constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion were threatened by growing religious extremism. Bangladesh was first put on the Watch List in 2005.
*** A photo of Hridoy Roy and his family is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.
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Muslim Sues Egypt for the Right to Convert to Christianity
Christian’s attorney facing death threats from Egyptian security police.
by Peter Lamprecht
ISTANBUL, August 6 (Compass Direct News) – A Muslim convert to Christianity filed suit against Egypt last week for refusing to legally recognize his change of religion, sparking a reactionary lawsuit by Muslim clerics and death threats against his lawyer.
Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy, 24, brought a case against Egypt’s interior ministry on Thursday (August 2) for rejecting his application to replace Islam with Christianity on his personal identification papers.
“I think it is my natural right, to embrace the religion I believe and not to have to have a double personality for me as well as for my wife and my expected baby,” said Hegazy, who converted to Christianity when he was 16.
Though Egyptian law does not forbid conversion from Islam to Christianity, it provides no legal means to make the change. Converts to Christianity usually hide their identity to avoid torture and forced recantation at the hands of family members and security police.
Hegazy, whose wife Zeinab is four months pregnant, said that he wants his child to be born with Christian papers. The couple, who were forced to hold an Islamic wedding ceremony because of their legal status as Muslims, know that a Christian ID card will allow their child to take Christian religion classes in school, marry in a church and even openly attend services without fear of harassment.
Mamdouh Nakhla of the Kalema Center for Human Rights has taken Hegazy’s case, telling Compass from Cairo today that the lawsuit has caused him “big problems.”
Several Muslim clerics and lawyers headed up by Sheikh Youssef el-Badry have opened a case against the lawyer on charges of causing sectarian strife and baptizing Muslims.
A source close to Nakhla told Compass that Egypt’s security police, the State Security Investigation (SSI), called the lawyer to tell him to withdraw the case or he may be killed.
“This is the first such case in the history of Egyptian justice,” Nakhla told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Thursday (August 2).
Legal conversion from Christianity to Islam occurs regularly in Egypt – 7,000 Christians joined Islam between 2000 and 2006, according to a statement last year by Egypt’s top Muslim cleric, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Muhammad Sayed Tantawi.
But conversion from Islam to another religion is impossible under Egyptian law.
“As long as Article 2 of the constitution remains unchanged, Christians, Jews and Bahai, anyone who is not Muslim, will be at a disadvantage,” Helmy Guirguis of the UK Copts Association told Compass from London today.
Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution designates sharia, or Islamic law, as the basis for Egyptian law.
Under most mainstream interpretations of sharia in Egypt, apostasy is a punishable offense.
Last month Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, a leading Egyptian cleric, backed down from earlier statements that Muslims should be free to choose a religion other than Islam.
Gomaa had written in a Washington Post-Newsweek online forum that leaving Islam was a sin punishable by God, but that the act warranted no worldly punishment, AFP reported. The news agency later published a clarification from Gomaa’s office stating that apostasy was subversion and therefore merited punishment.
In recent years, however, dozens of Copts who converted to Islam and later wished to return to their original faith have filed successful cases to have their legal status changed. Nakhla is one of several lawyers currently defending a group of Copts whose case is to be heard by Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court on September 1.
Unprecedented Challenge
Hegazy, a native of Port Said, is the first Muslim-by-birth to openly challenge the government’s restriction of conversion away from Islam.
“I believe there are thousands of converts,” said Hegazy, indicating that he had attended large meetings and conferences of converts from Islam to Christianity.
Addressing this group, he said, “Get out of your ghetto and establish organizations to speak for yourselves and defend your rights. The answer is not to escape or to leave the country, but to fight and struggle for our rights here in our own country.”
In an interview, Hegazy called on the government to recognize the existence of converts and completely cancel the religion clause from national identification cards.
Jailed and tortured in 2002 when police discovered his conversion, Hegazy said that he was not optimistic about winning the case.
“Martyrdom would be much better than being jailed under such a radical and fundamentalist authority,” he said.
The convert has published a small book of 31 poems called Sherine’s Laugh. In one poem, he recalled mistreatment at the hands of Ashraf Ma’alouf, an SSI officer who reportedly tortured him for his conversion to Christianity.
Last month, Egyptian police in Alexandria brutally tortured Shaymaa Muhammad al-Sayed, a Muslim woman who had converted to Christianity. They then handed her over to her Islamist family, who beat her behind the police station and are now keeping her in their home.
In April, security officials released another convert to Christianity, Bahaa el-Akkad, who had been jailed without charges for two years.
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*** A photograph of Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy is available electronically. Please contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.
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Egyptian Convert in Hiding after Lawyer Backs Out
Attorney for former Muslim seeking Christian ID leaves amid threats, national uproar.
by Peter Lamprecht
ISTANBUL, August 8 (Compass Direct News) – An Egyptian convert to Christianity who filed suit for his conversion to be officially recognized is in hiding after his attorney announced he would withdraw from the case yesterday.
Though the lawyer has received death threats from Egypt’s security police, he claimed he had made his decision in the interest of “national unity.”
Mamdouh Nakhla, director of the Al Kalema Center for Human Rights, said yesterday that he would no longer represent convert Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy because he did not want to offend Muslims or “provoke public opinion.”
At a press conference at his downtown office, Nakhla rested some of the responsibility for his decision with his client. He said that Hegazy had failed to provide important documents showing that authorities had refused to issue him an identification card.
As the lawyer was giving his statement, however, a member of Nakhla’s organization shouted, “He is being threatened, he is doing this under pressure.”
A source close to Nakhla confirmed that Egypt’s security police had telephoned the lawyer to say he would be killed if he continued the case.
Several Muslim clerics and lawyers headed by Sheikh Youssef el-Badry have opened a case against the lawyer on charges of causing sectarian strife.
Nakhla requested that Muslims and Christians refrain from talking about the sensitive issue, referring to the uproar the case has created in national media.
Several newspapers have attacked Hegazy’s motives in front page coverage.
Arabic daily Al-Masry al-Youm reported today that Hegazy had been in contact with a “Christianization network” that promised young Muslims money and Greek nationality if they converted.
The article inaccurately reported that the lawyer said at yesterday’s press conference that he was dropping the case because Hegazy was “seeking publicity and fame.”
Additionally, the newspaper reported that Hegazy’s father said yesterday that his son was being blackmailed by Christian missionaries to open the case.
In an interview on Dream satellite channel talk show al-Ashira Masaa’an on Sunday evening (August 5), Hegazy said that no Christians had pressured him to convert.
“They just told me to go read the Bible well and make up my mind,” said Hegazy.
Forced into Hiding
Ongoing threats and attacks in the national media have forced Hegazy underground while he continues the search for a new lawyer.
The conversion issue highlights the inequality between religions in Egypt. A Christian is free to convert to Islam, but Muslims have no legal means to change their identification papers to reflect a conversion to Christianity.
The disparity hinges on sharia (Islamic law), which many mainstream Muslim scholars believe prescribes death as the punishment for abandoning Islam.
Last month one of Egypt’s top religious advisors said that “apostasy,” though a grave sin, merited no “worldly punishment.”
Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa later clarified his controversial statement by saying that only “apostates” who “actively engaged in the subversion of society” should be punished, Agence France-Presse reported on July 26.
But with sharia enshrined as the basis of Egypt’s legal code in Article 2 of the constitution, many Muslims see no distinction between “apostasy” and subversion.
“Is religion deemed any less than the state order?” Dr. Mohamed Mukhtar al-Mahdi wrote in the leftist daily al-Badeel last week.
Since 2004, dozens of Coptic converts to Islam have won the right to return to their original faith, but Hegazy is the first Muslim-by-birth to attempt the legal change.
Though conversion is not specifically outlawed in Egypt, Muslim converts to Christianity are often forced to live double lives, hiding their faith to avoid torture at the hands of family members and police.
END
*** Photographs of Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy and Mamdouh Nakhla are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.
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Egypt Detains Christian Rights Advocates
Group leader helped Christian convert, who has new lawyer for conversion case.
by Peter Lamprecht
ISTANBUL, August 9 (Compass Direct News) – Egyptian police detained the head of a Christian rights group yesterday after he held a high-publicity, online chat session with a controversial Muslim convert to Christianity, the group’s international leader said.
The convert, Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy, has filed suit to legally change his identification card from Muslim to Christian. Hegazy’s lawyer withdrew from the case this week amid death threats and public outrage in Egypt, but a new lawyer has stepped in to represent him.
The Egyptian head of the Christian rights group who chatted online with the convert, Dr. Adel Fawzy Faltas, 61, was arrested from his Cairo home yesterday afternoon at 2:40 p.m., said Nader Fawzy, head of the Canada-based Middle East Christian Association (MECA).
Nader Fawzy said he began receiving phone calls from various leaders of MECA’s Egyptian branch on Tuesday night (August 7) reporting that police were following
them.
Officials stormed Faltas’ home in Cairo’s Zamalek neighborhood the following day, confiscating two laptops and a desktop computer. Fawzy said that little was known about the separate arrest of another group member, Peter Ezzat.
“They cut up the mattresses, tore everything up and took all the books as well,” said Fawzy, referring to Faltas’ home. He said that the doctor had been blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back.
Police called in one priest involved with the organization to answer questions at 9 p.m. last night, but released him soon afterward, according to Fawzy. He said the rest of the group’s leaders were still in hiding.
State Security Investigation (SSI) officials, Egypt’s security police, held Faltas and Ezzat in New Cairo’s fifth district today, but transferred them to SSI headquarters in Lazoghly tonight. They will be held their over the Muslim weekend tomorrow until their investigation can continue on Saturday.
“I am now the advocate for these men,” lawyer Ramses Raouf el-Nagar told Compass from New Cairo today. The lawyer was waiting to see clients at the public prosecutor’s office.
After speaking with El-Nagar, Fawzy said that the prosecutor was considering five charges against Faltas, including converting Muslims to Christianity, destroying the reputation of Egypt and insulting Islam. Faltas could also be accused of having contact with a foreign organization, Fawzy said. No charges will be made until the prosecutor’s office completes its investigation.
Though conversion away from Islam is not specifically outlawed, it goes against Islamic principles, which are enshrined as the basis of Egyptian law in Article 2 of the constitution. Egyptian converts usually hide their identity to avoid harassment from police and family members.
“That he converted Muslims is a complete lie,” Fawzey said.
El-Nagar confirmed to Compass that he has decided to represent Hegazy, the convert from Islam to Christianity who hopes to have the change officially recognized.
Hegazy’s initial lawyer, Mamdouh Nakhla, quit the case Tuesday (August 7) after being threatened by Egypt’s security police. At a press conference he told reporters he was backing out in order to avoid offending Muslims and to protect Egypt’s “national unity.”
The case has drawn intense criticism in Egyptian media, with many papers giving it front page coverage.
Faltas, president of MECA in Egypt, had hosted Hegazy in his home this past weekend, Fawzy said. Last Saturday and Sunday (August 4 -5), the two held online question-and- answer sessions in MECA’s chat room, publicizing the details of Hegazy’s case.
But Fawzy said it was not only MECA’s work with Hegazy that had angered police.
El-Kosheh Revived
Last month MECA lawyers filed suit against the government on behalf of Christians whose village was destroyed in a three -day rampage in January 2000. At least 21 Copts were killed, 18 injured and several hundred homes destroyed when Muslims attacked Christians in the upper Egyptian town of el-Kosheh.
On July 26, MECA demanded that the government compensate el-Kosheh villagers for the losses.
The North Cairo preliminary court postponed ruling on the case until September 6.
MECA members were also involved in helping the Muslim family of a man who fell from his balcony during a police raid on Tuesday (August 7). The man’s family has accused police of murdering him.
‘They just happened to be neighbors to one of our members, so we helped them go to the police and file a case,’ Fawzy said.
MECA is still waiting to receive recognition as a registered non-governmental organization after submitting its application in June.
END
*** A photograph of Nader Fawzy is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.
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Egypt Extends Jail Time for Christian Rights Workers
Muslim scholars demand convert’s death.
by Peter Lamprecht
ISTANBUL, August 22 (Compass Direct News) – Egypt yesterday renewed the detention of two Christian rights workers, held without charge since their arrest on August 8.
Police detained Adel Fawzy Faltas and Peter Ezzat after their organization was involved in several controversial human rights cases, including that of Mohammed Hegazy, who made an unprecedented bid to have his conversion to Christianity legally recognized.
Top Egyptian religious scholars called for the convert’s death yesterday in London-based, Arabic-language daily Al-Quds al-Arabi.
Faltas, 61, had conducted a high profile Internet interview with Hegazy only days before his arrest, sparking claims in Egyptian media that he had led the Muslim to Christianity.
Yesterday, a state prosecutor at New Cairo’s State Security Investigation (SSI) renewed Faltas and Ezzat’s detention. Muhammad al-Faisal refused to give a reason for his decision to hold the two Christians until September 4.
“It’s not right for Peter to remain in custody,” said Peter Ramses al-Nagar, a lawyer for the two Middle East Christian Association (MECA) members. He said that Ezzat, a volunteer with MECA, should be freed because police had already finished investigating him.
Police initially arrested Faltas and Ezzat on suspicion of insulting Islam, degrading Egypt’s reputation and converting Muslims to Christianity, according to MECA president Nader Fawzy.
But during the investigation, state prosecutor Al-Faisal has also considered charging the Christians with causing public agitation and possessing a gun with an expired license, according to the defense lawyers.
“He is under pressure from higher officials and the SSI to keep them,” Al-Nagar commented.
Accused of Converting
A Canadian non-governmental organization that applied for legal recognition with the Egyptian government in June, MECA has been involved in several controversial human rights cases in recent months.
On August 7, the day before Faltas and Ezzat’s arrest, MECA members helped register a police complaint on behalf of a Muslim family whose father fell from his balcony and died during a police raid. The man’s family accused the police of murdering him.
In July, a MECA lawyer brought a case demanding compensation for Christian families from the village of al-Kosheh who were attacked in a three-day rampage in January 2000. At least 21 Copts were killed, 18 injured and several hundred homes destroyed while police waited outside the town.
The North Cairo preliminary court has postponed ruling on the al-Kosheh case until September 6.
But according to lawyer Al-Nagar, the main reason for Faltas and Ezzat’s detention is their work with Christian convert Hegazy. The weekend before his arrest, Faltas conducted an online interview with the convert about his bid to have the change to Christianity legally recognized.
“The media have been saying that they arrested Adel and Peter because they are the main reason Hegazy became a Christian,” Al-Nagar said.
During a telephone interview with an Egyptian talk show today, Fawzy of MECA said that Islamic scholars had accused his organization of converting Hegazy to Christianity.
“The first question they asked was whether we converted Hegazy,” Fawzy told Compass. “I told them, ‘We don’t convert anyone, we are a human rights organization. But even if we had, there is no law against that.’”
The interview on Dream satellite TV program, “al-Hakikah” (“The Truth”), is scheduled to air at 5 p.m. on Saturday (August 25).
New Lawyer
Hegazy went into hiding earlier this month after his case sparked death threats and his lawyer withdrew. He told Compass last week that he had found a new lawyer but declined to reveal the name for security reasons.
Al-Nagar said from Cairo today that his father, prominent Coptic lawyer Ramses Raouf al-Nagar, would not take Hegazy’s case as had been previously announced. He said that Hegazy had not given them the necessary church documents that could be used in court as evidence of his conversion to Christianity.
It is rare for Muslims to openly convert to another religion in Egypt. Though leaving Islam is not illegal, doing so can prompt harassment and torture at the hands of family members and police.
Most converts lead double lives, unable to openly attend church, marry a Christian or withdraw their children from Islamic education classes.
“The Egyptian government should find Hegazy and apply sharia [Islamic law], giving him three days to reconvert and then killing him if he refuses,” Sheikh Gad al-Ibrahim told Al-Quds al-Arabi yesterday.
Sheikh Youssef al-Badri and Souad Saleh, a professor at Egypt’s al-Azhar university where Egypt’s top Islamic scholars work, agreed with Al-Ibrahim, openly challenging statements by Egypt’s second highest religious authority last month that apostasy should not be punished in this world.
Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa later clarified his controversial statement by saying that only “apostates” who “actively engaged in the subversion of society” should be punished, Agence France-Presse reported on July 26.
But with sharia enshrined as the basis of Egypt’s legal code in Article 2 of the constitution, many Muslims see no distinction between “apostasy” and subversion.
Though no conclusive figures are available, Egypt’s indigenous Coptic Christians constitute between 8 and 15 percent of the country’s population. The number of Muslim converts to Christianity remains unknown.
END
*** Photographs of Adel Fawzy Faltas and Mohammed Hegazy are available electronically. Please contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.
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Eritrean Pastor Disappears, 10 Protestants Arrested
Catholic Church ordered to relinquish its network of humanitarian institutions.
Special to Compass Direct
LOS ANGELES, August 23 (Compass Direct News) – Christians in Eritrea confirmed yesterday that a Protestant pastor in Asmara who disappeared 11 days ago remains missing.
Pastor Leule Gebreab of Asmara’s Apostolic Church failed to return home to his family on Sunday, August 12. Since his disappearance, no one among his relatives or congregation has been able to learn anything about his whereabouts, despite inquiries to the local authorities.
“His wife is greatly distressed about his disappearance,” a local source told Compass.
Gebreab, 35, is married with two children, an 8-year-old son and an infant daughter.
Just a week after Gebreab vanished, police arrested 10 members of the Full Gospel Church who had gathered in a home in the Kahawata suburb of Asmara last Sunday morning (August 19). The four women and six men accused of worshipping together were put into detention at Police Station No. 2 in Asmara.
The Eritrean government criminalized all independent Protestant churches in May 2002, closing their buildings and banning them from even meeting together in private homes.
More than 2,000 Eritrean Christians — including dozens of pastors and priests — remain locked up and subjected to severe torture for their religious beliefs in the nation’s jails, police stations and military camps. All have been denied legal counsel or trial, with no written charges filed against them.
During the past year, at least three Christians have died from physical mistreatment while under arrest.
Catholic Institutions Confiscated
In a separate development last week, Eritrean authorities issued an ultimatum to Catholic church leaders on August 16, ordering that all the church’s schools, clinics, orphanages and women’s vocational training centers be turned over to the government’s Ministry of Social Welfare and Labor.
According to an August 21 report issued by Open Doors International, four Catholic bishops promptly sent a letter of protest to the government on August 17. To date the authorities have not responded to their inquiry.
The Faith of Christ Church has confirmed it received similar orders to relinquish control and possession of all its social aid institutions.
The new demands were reportedly based on a 1995 government decree requiring non-governmental welfare initiatives to obtain specific permission from the regime.
Despite the Eritrean government’s controversial banning of all independent Protestant churches, the Catholic Church has official recognition as one of the nation’s four historic religions.
But ongoing resistance from the local Catholic hierarchy against unilateral government demands has brought them under apparent disfavor with the regime.
Since the end of 2003, the Catholic bishops have refused to submit comprehensive reports on their clergy and pastoral activities to the Department of Religious Affairs, insisting that they report only to the Vatican.
They also have vigorously opposed a 2005 government demand that all of their priests and seminarians under the age of 40 must perform military duty. The church has also defied a subsequent government order to either reduce the number of Catholic priests or send them to military service.
According to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, the Eritrean authorities have never responded to letters signed by Eritrea’s Catholic bishops, who explained that it was “not in accordance with the clergy’s role” for priests to bear arms.
All Eritrean citizens are required to perform active national service for 18 months, although in practice conscripts enter open-ended terms that may continue arbitrarily for years, without any option for returning to civilian life.
Pope Benedict XVI himself commented on the conscription standoff in December 2005, in his welcome speech to Eritrean Ambassador to the Vatican Petros Tseggai Asghedom.
“In particular I would ask that [the native clergy’s] right to exemption from military service be respected,” the pontiff said. “Eritrea will be better served if they are free to pursue their Christian calling and respective vocations.”
The other three government-sanctioned faiths – the Orthodox and Evangelical Lutheran churches and Islam – have reportedly acquiesced to the regime’s demands to send their clergy to military duty.
Jailed Congregations
According to local sources, the Kale Hiwot Church pastor and 20 members of his congregation arrested in the town of Dekemhare in late May and early June have yet to be released from custody.
In an early Sunday morning raid conducted by security forces on May 27, 20 members of the church in Dekemhare, located 24 miles south of Asmara, were arrested along with their young children.
The detained Christians were incarcerated at two locations, Police Station No. 5 in Asmara and the Adi Abeyto military camp.
Pastor Michael Abraha, who was not present at the time, was later apprehended at his home on June 1, apparently after videotapes confiscated in the earlier raid showed him conducting a wedding ceremony.
Although initially sent to the Alla military confinement camp, Abraha was then transferred with his adult congregation members to Adi Abeyto for further investigation.
“Pastor Michael suffers from diabetes,” a local Christian said, “so he is now experiencing a very hard time from the lack of proper treatment he needs for his day-to-day medical care.”
A long-time pastor and leader in Eritrea’s Kale Hiwot Church, Abraha had been arrested several times previously by the Eritrean security forces, following the government-ordered closure of his church along with all other independent Protestant denominations five years ago.
Begun in the late 1940s, the Kale Hiwot (Word of Life) Church was pioneered by former Sudan Interior Mission personnel.
Separately, the Rev. Zecharias Abraham and 80 worshippers at the Mehrete Yesus Evangelical Presbyterian Church, who had been arrested during Sunday services in Asmara on April 29, were all reported released during the fourth week of May.
A handful of expatriates detained in the raid had been set free previously, just four days after the arrest.
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Christian Worker Beaten to Death in Assam, India
Hindu extremists suspected, but police have yet to identify culprits.
by Vishal Arora
NEW DELHI, August 3 (Compass Direct News) – A Christian advocacy group has asked the chief minister of the northeastern state of Assam to provide protection to believers after unidentified assailants suspected to be Hindu extremists beat a Christian worker to death in Guwahati.
Hemanta Das, a 29-year-old Christian worker whom Hindu extremists had warned to stop his ministry, succumbed to his injuries in a hospital on July 1, two days after he was beaten in Chand Mari area of Guwahati.
Das worked with a local Christian organization, Resource Centre Under Elohim (RESCUE). A convert to Christianity from Hinduism a few years ago, Das had been a supporter of the Hindu extremist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The All India Christian Council (AICC) on July 25 wrote to Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi requesting that he ensure that those who killed Das were arrested and the Christian minority community protected from such attacks.
“On several occasions, he was cautioned by radical groups of the dire consequences that would follow if he tried to convert people to Christianity,” the AICC quoted the executive director of RESCUE, Amzad DeCruz, as saying.
In a statement, the Rev. Dr. Ngul Khan Pau, general secretary of the Council of Baptist Churches in North East India, declared Das, a member of a Baptist church, as the “first Christian martyr in Assam.”
Pau also said that a murder case had been filed with police, but that the culprits had not been found.
The Rev. Madhu Chandra, an AICC leader from northeast India, told Compass the presence of Hindu extremist groups in the state was very high.
“When I was working with a Christian organization in the state till a few years ago, many of our workers would be attacked by extremists,” Rev. Chandra said.
Assam has 986,589 Christians out of the total population of 26.6 million.
On February 6, Hindu villagers beat and vandalized the thatched house of a Christian convert, Rahbindra Narzaree, for refusing to “reconvert” to Hinduism in Bashbari village, under the Beshmuri police sub-station in Kokrajhar district in Assam. (See Compass Direct News, “India Briefs,” February 9, 2007.)
To save their lives, Narzaree and his wife took refuge in the police sub-station and then moved to Narzaree’s brother’s house.
SIDEBAR
India Briefs: Recent Incidents of Persecution
by Nirmala Carvalho and Vishal Arora
Madhya Pradesh, August 3 (Compass Direct News) – Hindu extremists dragged independent Pastor Shoba Ram, 25, out of a worship service on July 29 in Madhya Pradesh state’s Rajpur town, Barwani district. A relative of Pastor Ram, Ralu Singh, led the attack. “A small assembly of 22 believers were gathered for Sunday Christian Worship at Maranatha Worship Church when, during worship, around 12 Hindu extremists stormed the prayer hall, shouting slogans against Jesus Christ and cursing the Christians,” said Dr. Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians. The extremists slapped Pastor Ram and snatched Bibles and hymn books from congregants’ hands and vandalized music and audio equipment and furniture. Later they sprinkled red kumkum (used by Hindus to mark their foreheads and those of Hindu icons) on the believers’ heads, threatening to kill or drive out Christians from Madhya Pradesh. The extremists dragged Pastor Ram to the local Rajpura station, punching him en route. “Ralu Singh, a relative of Shoba Ram, strongly objected to their conversion to Christianity four years ago,” George said. Rajpura police officials told Compass Pastor Ram was charged for trespassing and “obscene acts and songs.” After an hour in custody, he was released on a bail of 2,000 rupees (US$50). – NC
Karnataka – Hindu extremists allegedly belonging to the Bajrang Dal, youth wing of the Hindu extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council), on July 29 disrupted the Sunday worship service of a church and beat the pastor and church members in Sagar Taluka, Shimoga district in Karnataka state. The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) reported that 15 Bajrang Dal members armed with wooden clubs, cricket bats and knives barged into the Believers Church. “The extremists abused and slapped Pastor Thankan and began assaulting the believers,” said the GCIC’s Dr. Sajan K. George. “They also vandalized the church property, destroying the pulpit, chairs, musical instruments, furniture, and window panes and did not spare even the walls of the church.” Francis D’Souza, 36, was stabbed in his left shoulder, 21-year-old Sanju Kumar was stabbed on his right arm and Manjula Joseph, 50, bled profusely after being beaten on the head and ears. An assistant pastor identified only as Dennis was hit with cricket bats, and an 18-year-old congregant was stabbed with a knife, requiring 10 stitches on his head. The injured believers were admitted to the Sagar Government hospital. Deputy Superintendent of Police Bhatta Kurki told Compass, “Five of the attackers have been arrested and charged under Indian Penal Code Section 295A for hurting religious sentiments, and under Section 149 for forming an unlawful assembly and rioting.” – NC
Orissa – Two Catholic nuns in Baghamara village, Mayurbhanj district in Orissa state, were arrested on July 28 for allegedly forcing two non-Christian girls to sing Christian prayer hymns. Sister Mary Sebastine and Sister Prema Thomas were accused of attempting to forcibly convert the girls studying at Vijaya Sadan Tribal Girls Hostel, a Catholic residential school in Baghamara. Parents of the two students accused the nuns of “physically and mentally torturing” the girls, ages 14 and 11, when they refused to sing the hymns, according to The Times of India. Mayurbhanj Superintendent of Police Sanjay Kumar Singh said the nuns were booked for “causing simple hurt” and “criminal intimidation,” as well as “forcibly attempting conversion” under the state anti-conversion law. While the superintendent was quoted as saying the complaint “was prima facie true,” Lucas Kerketta, bishop of Sambalpur, told Compass, “There is absolutely no truth in these allegations. The nuns have never, ever indulged in conversion activities. Their only intention is to selflessly serve the people. Regarding the allegations of physical torture, all residential students were made to work in the garden and clean the premises as part of their education.” The nuns were released on bail on July 30. – NC
Chhattisgarh – Police arrested an independent pastor on charges of fraudulently converting a Hindu family by offering money on July 24 in Bhilai district, Chhattisgarh state. According to the Christian Legal Association (CLA), 47-year-old pastor Samuel Simon was arrested for violating the state anti-conversion law and for “hurting religious feelings.” The court refused to grant bail to the pastor, who denies all charges, and sent him to judicial custody till August 6. Local Hindu resident Rahul Jangte, the complainant, accused Pastor Simon of offering money to him and his family to convert to Christianity. But the complainant’s wife, Preeti Jangte, stated before the court that she was Buddhist and had not converted to Christianity. She also said that her husband and his family were torturing her for dowry. “Pastor Simon only wanted to settle our family problem, which is why he used to visit us,” she told the CLA. “During one of his visits, my husband demanded money from the pastor also.” She has filed a police complaint against her husband, but officers have yet to take action. – VA
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State in India Hurdles Past Veto of ‘Anti-Conversion’ Law
Gujarat governor refuses to sign bill, but government to implement older version.
by Vishal Arora
NEW DELHI, August 6 (Compass Direct News) – The state government of Gujarat has decided to implement the dormant “anti-conversion” law, passed by the state assembly in 2003, after the governor’s refusal to approve the anti-conversion amendment bill of 2006.
The state government ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on August 1 officially declared that it would reactivate the 2003 anti-conversion law that could not be implemented at the time due to legal complications, reported The Indian Express.
The daily quoted the BJP government as saying in a statement, “The state has been specifically targeted by some foreign powers for religious conversions, as they convert the innocent and the poor using inducements and threats. Strong nationalistic political will is needed to counter such forces, but unfortunately the Opposition Congress (party) does not believe in preserving national identity.”
The statement also claimed that the decision was “in keeping with the national and societal interest.”
Violation of Religious Freedom
The BJP’s declaration came a day after Gov. Nawal Kishore Sharma returned the Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Bill, 2006, saying the proposed measure “violated the right to religious freedom.”
The bill sought to exclude from the definition of “conversion” the renouncing of one denomination to adopt another. It also stipulated that people from the Jain and Buddhist faiths would be construed as denominations of Hindu religion – a provision that was opposed by leaders from the Jain and Buddhist communities, as even the government census distinguishes between Hinduism and the two faiths.
The Gujarat Freedom of Religion Bill was initially passed by the state assembly on March 26, 2003. The government, however, was not able to frame implementing rules, reportedly because of objections by the state legal department over some of its provisions. To clear the hurdles, the government last September 19 introduced the Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Bill 2006.
Dr. John Dayal, member of Indian government’s National Integration Council and secretary general of the All India Christian Council (AICC), told Compass the various anti-conversion bills and laws encourage “bigotry and hate campaigns.”
“They also lead to police brutalities and miscarriage of justice, especially in rural areas,” he said, adding that data collected by the AICC, the Christian Legal Association and Dalit and tribal groups clearly showed “how emboldened fundamentalist groups have become in the states where they are being backed by the local police and political elements through anti-conversion laws.”
Prior Permission for Conversions
If implemented, Gujarat will become the fourth state with an anti-conversion law in force. The other three states are Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh ad Orissa. The states of Arunachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh too have anti-conversion legislation, but they have not been implemented.
The 2003 bill seeks to ban “conversion from one religion to another by force, allurement, or fraudulent means.” It provides for a punishment of up to three-year imprisonment and/or a fine up to 50,000 rupees (US$1,240). If the convert is underage, a woman, Dalit or tribal, the imprisonment is up to four years, and the fine 100,000 rupees (US$2,480).
The bill also makes it mandatory for priests to seek prior permission from the administrative head of the district (district magistrate) for carrying out or even taking part in any religious conversion “ceremony.” Prospective converts are also required to inform the administration about their intent to convert.
Failure to inform authorities in both cases can lead to imprisonment of up to one year and/or a fine of 1,000 rupees (US$25).
The BJP government in Rajasthan state passed an anti-conversion bill in the assembly on April 7, 2006, but it is still awaiting governor’s assent. In Himachal Pradesh, the Congress Party government introduced a similar bill on December 30, 2006. On February 20, Gov. Vishnu Sadashiv Kokje gave his assent to bill, but the law is yet to be notified.
Two other states also sought to make their anti-conversion laws stricter in 2006. While Madhya Pradesh passed an amendment bill on July 25, Chhattisgarh passed a similar bill on August 3. These bills, however, have not been signed by the respective governors.
According to the 2001 census, of the 50.6 million people in Gujarat, only about 284,000 are Christian.
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India Briefs: Recent Incidents of Persecution
by Nirmala Carvalho and Vishal Arora
Karnataka, August 17 (Compass Direct News) – Hindu extremists allegedly belonging to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) on India’s Independence Day (August 15) barged into a church in Karnataka, disrupting worship and forcibly taking believers to police. Dr. Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) said about 20 extremists shouted insults and accusations at the 70 congregants of the Full Gospel Church, Taluka Mysore district, before marching four of them to the Nanjengode police station. Calling Christianity a foreign faith as they entered the church, the Hindu extremists walked up to the dais and slapped pastor Vinod Chacko, 32, and then punched him on the head and back, said George. They then dragged Chacko and an assistant pastor, C.T. Joseph, along with two other congregants, to the local police station and made a verbal complaint against them. Police Inspector Lakshimkant Talwar told Compass “We held a brief enquiry about the details of the complaint and have called Pastor Chacko to the police station on Saturday, August 18, to conduct an investigation and ascertain whether the charges made against the pastor are true or false.” – NC
Karnataka – Hindu extremists allegedly belonging to the Ram Sena (Army of Lord Ram) on August 9 beat independent pastor Victor Paul and filed a complaint of forced conversion against him in Bijapur district, Karnataka. Dr. Sajan George of the Global Council of Indian Christians said Pastor Paul, 46, of Rehoboth House of Worship, and his wife Glory Shanti were distributing gospel tracts at houses in the Jala Nagar area of Bijapur district. Ashok Halleppagol, owner of a grocery store, invited the couple inside his home, he said. Pastor Paul told Compass, “As we were speaking about the tracts, a group of Ram Sena activists entered Halleppagol’s house and angrily questioned our presence there. The activists snatched the tracts from my hand, abused me and began punching and slapping me on my face and head.” They then dragged the pastor and his wife out of Halleppagol’s house and shoved them into a motorized rickshaw, took them to the local police station, and filed false charges of forcible conversion against the pastor and his wife, he said. Sub-inspector of Police Deve Singh told Compass that Pastor Paul and Shanti have been arrested and charged with hurting religious sentiments under the Indian Penal Code. The couple was released on bail on August 10. – NC
Chhattisgarh – About 50 Hindu extremists disrupted the Sunday worship service of a church and attacked the pastor and an elder on August 5 in Chhattisgarh state. The Christian Legal Association (CLA) reported that in Baba Deep Singh Nagar in Bhilai city, Durg district, a mob led by Rajesh Thabre and Sudeep Banerjee, allegedly from the Bajrang Dal, youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, beat with sticks pastor Babula Chandra Paik of the Mid-India Christian Services ministry and church elder Adi Narayan. The crowd also shouted slogans against Christianity, accusing the pastor of forcible conversions, tearing up Bibles and vandalizing the house where the church meets. The Supela police station registered a complaint against Thabre, Banerjee and others, but no one was arrested. CLA attorneys W.P. Massey and Kanti Kumar are helping the victims. – VA
Rajasthan – About 200 masked men on August 4 demolished a parish house under construction at Chavand, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Udaipur in Sarada town, Rajasthan, according to the daily newspaper The Hindu. At around 2 a.m. Hindu extremists entered the mission compound and bashed down the priest’s residence, which was nearing completion with only the roof yet to be built. Joseph Pathalil, bishop of Udaipur, told Compass he suspected the attackers belonged to the Hindu extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP). Father Paul Ninama was away and was unharmed, but the extremists hit and injured the two watchmen on duty, Pathalil said. “The VHP had earlier attacked Fr. Ninama and threatened him against going ahead with the construction of the building,” Pathalil said. “I suspect this to be the handiwork of the same Hindu extremist group. The extremists in this area have been opposing our social welfare work among the tribal people and also make false allegations of forced conversion.” Church authorities have filed a complaint, but at press time no arrests had been made. – NC
Rajasthan – Five armed people beat up a worker of Emmanuel Mission International (EMI) and threatened to kill EMI founder Archbishop M.A. Thomas and his son, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Thomas, EMI president, on July 25 in Deen Ganj Mandi area in Rajasthan state’s Kota district. The attackers, two of whom were identified as Nafees and Kalu, entered the EMI head office and beat an EMI assistant identified as Jetha when he tried to stop them, EMI attorney Mohammad Akram told Compass. Before fleeing, the five, who were carrying pistols and swords, threatened that they would kill Archbishop Thomas and his son. Kalu is allegedly associated with nearby Rajendra Hotel, and Akram said the owner apparently holds a grudge against the archbishop and his son. “The attack was launched to take advantage of the ongoing opposition to the EMI by Hindu extremists, but I don’t think it was arranged by extremist forces,” Akram said. Police allegedly refused to register a complaint against the attackers. In early 2006 police arrested the younger Thomas and other EMI workers for allegedly distributing the book Haqeekat (The Truth), which supposedly denigrated the Hindu faith. This was followed by cancellation of registration of all EMI institutions and several attacks by extremists. The courts, however, temporarily restored the registration of the institutions and granted bail to the EMI leaders. – VA
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Hindu Extremists in India Target Christian Dalits
Attack on hospital in Uttar Pradesh state reflects RSS’s top priority.
by Vishal Arora
NEW DELHI, August 27 (Compass Direct News) – An attack on a Christian hospital during its program for Dalits in Uttar Pradesh state highlights Hindu extremists’ main objection to Christian work: conversion of people who were once called “untouchables.”
The mob of about 100 people led by Hindu extremists on August 17 barged into the compound of the Kachhwa Christian Hospital (KCH) in the Kachhwa Bazaar area of Mirzapur district and beat and stoned those leading the program for the Dalit students and their parents, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India.
Dr. Raju Abraham, chief surgeon at KCH, and pastor T.V. Joy were among four Christians injured in the attack. Dr. Abraham, a Christian leader, and Pastor Joy received head injuries as mob leader Anshu Singh allegedly struck them with stones. The mob was said to be led by extremists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bajrang Dal, youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council).
There were about 400 Dalits, including women and children, attending the program to celebrate the 60th anniversary of India’s Independence (on August 15). The attackers also vandalized the hospital and beat Christians and Dalit participants, besides tearing the Indian flag.
On August 16, about 20 extremists had intruded into the hospital compound and warned Dr. Abraham that he would be killed if he continued with the program for Dalits. Dr. Abraham filed a complaint with the Kachhwa Bazaar police station two days later, naming six people who were leading the mob.
Police arrested four of the accused and were investigating the case at press time.
Uttar Pradesh has more than 35 million Dalits out of the total population of 166 million. Christians number only 212,578.
Obstructing Hindu Consolidation
Because conversion of Dalits in most instances happens en masse, Hindu nationalists’ are deeply concerned that Christian work could bring a change in religious demographics.
In 2003, supporters of the RSS promoted a book, Religious Demography of India, warning that more than 50 percent of India would be Muslims and Christians in the following 50 years due to a decline in Hindu population. The book, written by A.P. Joshi, M.D. Srinivas and J.K. Bajaj, was published by Centre for Policy Studies and released by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani. The BJP is the political wing of the RSS.
According to a 1997 study by the Indian Missions Association, more than 65 percent of Christians in India are from Dalit background. India’s 2001 Census showed there are about 24 million Christians, or 2.3 percent of the total population.
Dalits make up about 16 percent of the population, or close to 166 million.
With “Hindu consolidation” as one of its top objectives, the RSS has endeavored to halt mass conversions taking place among Dalits.
“RSS is against mass conversions, which are carried on by various churches by means both fair and foul,” the RSS says on its website (). “To allow a tolerant person to embrace an exclusionist belief is to turn him into an intolerant person. For this reason RSS is against the proselytizing activities of Christians.” The website includes a special section devoted to “social equality” and “Hindu consolidation.”
While mass conversions to Islam took place decades ago – the latest being in Meenakshipuram, Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu state in the 1980s – Dalits continue to convert en masse to Buddhism and Christianity to protest discrimination and atrocities meted out to them by “higher” caste Hindus.
Most recently, hundreds of Dalits converted to Buddhism and Christianity on October 14, 2006 in Nagpur in Maharashtra state as a part of a rally against the caste-system and anti-conversion laws in some states, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.
As India legally defines a Hindu negatively as someone who is not a Jew, Christian, Muslim or Parsi – as shown in the Hindu Marriage Act – Hindu nationalists oppose conversions to Christianity more than they opposed conversions to Buddhism or other religions unnamed in the act.
The RSS’s objection to conversions is also rooted in Hindutva, a Hindu nationalistic ideology that proposes a nation ruled by those whose ancestors were born in India and who belong to religions that originated here, namely Hinduism and its offshoots. According to Hindutva, the Indian sub-continent is the homeland of Hindus, while Christians and Muslims being “outsiders” are its enemies.
Dalits were formerly called “untouchables” because they were traditionally considered to be outside the confines of caste by so-called high-caste Hindus Brahmins, the priestly class. Their supposed impurity derived from their traditional, humble occupations.
India’s former national leader, Mahatma Gandhi, applied the term Harijans, meaning “children of God,” to Dalits in the 1930s. In 1949, the Indian government outlawed the term “untouchables,” and reclassified them as the “Scheduled Castes,” granting them special educational and political privileges. But Dalits continue to remain on the margins of society and still face discrimination.
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Pastor in India Kidnapped Twice, Nearly Killed
Hindu extremists in Karnataka state intended to crush his head with large stone.
by Nirmala Carvalho
MUMBAI, India, August 28 (Compass Direct News) – Pastor Mark Jaikumar is recovering in a private care facility in Bangalore, Karnataka state after being kidnapped, blindfolded and hearing Hindu extremists’ plans to kill him – his second abduction in one week.
Pastor of the Divine Gospel Church in Chelekere village, Bangalore, the 43-year-old Jaikumar was abducted from the church compound at 8:30 p.m. as he began home on Saturday (August 25). He had just survived a prior attempt to kidnap and kill him on Wednesday (August 22).
In Saturday’s kidnapping, four men sitting in a car with the engine running were stationed near the church gate when Jaikumar saw one get out. Assuming they needed assistance, Jaikumar walked toward the man.
“The man then forced me into the rear seat of the car, got in after me and drove off,” Jaikumar told Compass. “The assailants blindfolded me and took away my mobile phone. They kept cursing and mocking the Christian faith in filthy language and told each other that all my conversion activities would end once they killed me.”
After he was driven around for about five hours, the car stopped near a bus station, Jaikumar said, at Peenya, an industrial township about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Bangalore. The kidnappers removed his blindfold and forced and him onto a bus, with one of the men accompanying him. Jaikumar said they were heading towards Dharmastala, about five hours by car from Bangalore.
“The road is a long, winding road with hairpin bends,” he said. “By God’s grace, the bus developed a problem and was stalled at the side of the road somewhere near Sakleshpur, approximately 150 kilometers [93 miles] from Bangalore.” The bus driver ordered everyone off the bus, and on his way out Jaikumar told him that he was being kidnapped.
“Realizing that I had informed the driver, the accomplice got into the car that was following us and disappeared,” Jaikumar said.
The driver phoned his family, and the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) sent two cars to pick him up.
Jaikumar fared less well in the prior kidnapping. The pastor was on a routine visit to Ray Peace Ministry Orphanage, in Sasulu village near Dodbalapur, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) from Bangalore, for their weekly prayer service with orphans and staff members. Around 10 p.m., as he was leaving, five men armed with knives entered the orphanage and abducted Jaikumar.
One of the men immediately gagged him, while the others carried him off to a lonely stretch of road.
“They ripped my shirt off, and kicked, punched and struck me with fists all over my head and body,” he said. “All the while, they kept cursing the Christian faith and made allegations of converting the orphans, then they tore my shirt and tried to strangle me, while one of the attackers took a big stone to crush my head.”
The headlights of an approaching vehicle beamed onto them, he said, and the assailants ran away. In severe pain, Jaikumar managed to return to the orphanage. Staff members took him to the village dispensary for first aid, and the next morning he registered a complaint at the Doddabalavangala police station.
After the second kidnapping on August 25, Dr. Sajan K. George, national president of the GCIC, told Compass the GCIC co-ordinator went to the Hennur police station to file charges, but officials refused to register a kidnap complaint. Instead, they registered a missing persons complaint.
At the Hennur police station, Inspector Somshekar Chabbi told Compass, “We registered a missing persons complaint as there was no evidence that Jaikumar was taken against his will.”
At press time, no arrests had been made in either of the cases.
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India Briefs: Recent Incidents of Persecution
by Vishal Arora, Nirmala Carvalho and James Varghese
Chhattisgarh, August 29 (Compass Direct News) – Two pastors were arrested on charges of “hurting religious feelings” and fraudulent conversion on August 26 after Hindu extremists and police disrupted a church’s Sunday worship following the baptism of five converts in Chhattisgarh state. Arun Pannalal, general secretary of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, said extremists from the Dharam Sena entered the church shouting anti-Christian slogans and, accompanied by police, made allegations of forcible conversion where 52 people were worshipping in Bhilai sector, Durg district. Independent church pastor Charles Patel had baptized five new converts in a nearby river before the service. Police summoned the church members to the Nevai police station, where they interrogated them and the newly baptized converts, “who insisted that they had willingly accepted Jesus as their Savior and that it was a conscious, personal decision to embrace the Christian Faith,” Pannalal said. Two strangers showed up telling police that co-pastors Samson Patel (brother of Charles) and Neeraj Martin had given them money to convert to Christianity. Charles Patel told Compass, “We have never seen those two men before, they are unknown to anyone.” Police Inspector Anil Bakshi told Compass that Samson Patel and Martin have been charged with “deliberately injuring religious sentiments” and with violating provisions of the state anti-conversion law. – NC
Karnataka – At least 25 Hindu extremists on August 26 launched a violent attack on a house church in Kolar district, Karnataka state, stabbing one member and beating the pastor. In Raji Nagar area, Malur, the attackers beat 38-year-old independent pastor Emmanuel Venkatesh and M.S. Thimmakka and stabbed a church member identified as Venkattarajappa on his hand and hips, said Dr. Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians. The attack took place during Sunday worship at Thimmakka’s house in Malur, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) from Bangalore. The extremists also vandalized Thimmakka’s house. All of the injured were admitted to Malur Hospital. Circle Inspector Shiva Kumar initially tried to defend the perpetrators when George contacted him, but the official later filed a complaint against them. No one had been arrested at press time. – VA
Andhra Pradesh – Hindu extremists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on August 22 allegedly prompted a neighbor of a Christian shopkeeper, identified only as Justin, to beat the store owner after he accidentally broke an idol of a Hindu god outside his business in Nizamabad, Andhra Pradesh. Area shopkeepers intervened, sparing the Christian from further attack, according to the All India Christian Council (AICC). The Christian was cleaning the shop and the surrounding area when he tripped and fell on the idol made of mud, breaking part of it, an AICC official told Compass. The following day, the shopkeeper’s neighbor filed a police complaint charging that the Christian deliberately broke the idol to insult the Hindu god Ganesha. Police from Nizamabad arrested the shopkeeper, who was reportedly released on bail on August 25. – VA
Karnataka – Hindu extremists of the Rashtriya Swayemsevak Sangh (RSS) thrashed students of the Full Gospel Church on August 21 in Davangere, Karnataka. Dr. Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians said that six female and 12 male students were on a picnic when a person approached them and began questioning them. A mob of around 50 RSS extremists arrived on bicycles, motorbikes and cars and began hitting and kicking the students, swearing at and insulting them, and accusing them of forcible conversion, George said. The extremists dragged students identified only as Parasuram, Ramesh, Vani Jyothi, Pushpa, Vijay, Shilpa, Prasan, Nirmala and Chandra, to the Vidyanagara police station and filed a complaint of forcible conversion against them. Police initially told Compass the students were arrested but later said they were held “for keeping peace” and released on August. 27. “The case against the students was officially closed,” a police official told Compass. – NC
Karnataka – About 50 people on August 19 beat some of the 30 people worshipping at Indian Pentecostal Church of God in Jakkur, Bangalore in Karnataka state. Entering the facility where congregants were worshipping at 11:30 a.m. and bolting the doors shut behind them, the attackers beat four church members. When church members managed to escape, the assailants chased them away, following them to a house. The attackers ran them from that place too. “These attackers had warned us not to conduct worship service today,” pastor Thomas Koshy told Compass. “Even a week before, these people had attacked our meeting and nothing extreme took place. But this time they made it severe.” A member of the church filed a police complaint, but the assailants indicated they would seek another opportunity to beat the pastor. The owner of the facility where the church worships has asked the pastor to vacate the hall. – JV
Goa – Unidentified people suspected of being Hindu extremists vandalized a Catholic church compound on August 18 in Salcette area of Goa state. The attackers broke two crosses in the Church of Assolna and damaged glass panes of a school inside the church compound, said Dr. Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians. The vandals also destroyed water and electricity pipes, lamps and a septic tank, he told Compass. The church, however, did not report the incident to the police, according to George. Religious tensions in Goa rose after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost the assembly election in 2005. Since its defeat, local reports indicate the BJP has been trying to create religious divisions in the state. – VA
Uttar Pradesh – About 30 Hindu extremists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on August 15 beat two Christians from the Believers Church identified only as Pastor Santosh and Bible student Babu Lal, in Mohanlalganj area of Lucknow district in Uttar Pradesh. The two Christians, attacked while they were distributing literature, were hospitalized with head, chest and stomach injuries. The Christian Legal Association (CLA) said that initially the Mohanlalganj police station refused to register a complaint against the attackers, and police filed a First Information Report only after the CLA intervened. Police officials told a CLA attorney, “Why can’t these Christians sit at home peacefully on August 15 [India’s Independence Day]? Why are they forcing people to read the tracts?” No arrests had been made at press time. – VA
Karnataka – Hindu extremists threw stones at Kalwari Prayer Centre in Ganeshpur, a suburban area of Belgaum, Karnataka, causing damages to the prayer hall, house and nursery late at night on August 15, according to the Deccan Herald News Service (DHNS). Pastor Sajan Philips told Compass that at 11:30 p.m. about a dozen youths threw stones at the center for about half an hour, “damaging the cement sheets of the roof and breaking all the windows and the portico of the church.” Phillips filed a police complaint, but at press time no one had been arrested. Police suspect the stoning might have taken place as the result of evangelization activities in the area, the DHNS reported. The center was attacked twice in 2005. – NC
Rajasthan – Hindu extremists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh stormed the showing of a film on Jesus Christ, “Daya Sagar” (“Ocean of Mercy”) on August 7 and forced Believers Church workers to stop the screening in Vardha village in Rajasthan state’s Dungarpur district. The extremists called local police and accused the Christians of converting Hindu villagers, the Christian Legal Association said in a statement. Police promptly arrived and detained four Christians – and Akash Kumar, Shantilal Kalasua, pastor Ruplal Nathat and pastor Iswarlal Kasota – and allegedly beat the Christians. They also confiscated film equipment. About 20 villagers were watching the film when the extremists arrived. The four Christians were released the following day. Police relinquished the equipment on August 13 and apologized to the Christians. – VA
Karnataka – Hindu extremists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on August 5 disrupted and stopped a Christian prayer meeting for the dedication of a Seventh Day Adventist Prayer Hall in Sira town, Karnataka. Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) said that subsequently, on August 16, police summoned the president of the Seventh Day Adventist church, Peter Alamane, along with secretary A.J. Devadas, pastor Leonard Anthony, and pastors identified only as P. John and Lazarus, to the local police station. After questioning, the pastors were taken to the magistrate, George said. Pastor Emmanuel Magimaidass told Compass, “One of the extremists had filed a First Information Report against us [Seventh Day Adventists] accusing us of alleged forcible conversions.” The pastors were arrested and charged with “hurting religious sentiments.” The GCIC secured their release on bail on August 18. – NC
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Governor in India Objects to ‘Anti-Conversion’ Bill
Chhattisgarh chief questions religious double standard, excessive state control.
by Vishal Arora
NEW DELHI, August 30 (Compass Direct News) – The governor of Chhattisgarh has objected to excessive government control and a religious double standard in a state “anti-conversion” amendment bill proposed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Chhattisgarh state Gov. Ekkadu Srinivasan Lakshmi Narsimhan raised objections to two provisions in the bill – obtaining permission from the district collector (administrative head) before any conversion, and “allowing people to return to Hinduism and not treating this as conversion,” reported news agency Press Trust of India on August 22.
Gov. Narsimhan has reportedly referred the bill to the state law department for assessment.
Such “anti-conversion” laws are used to levy false accusations of “forcible conversion” at Christians. Similar bills introduced by the BJP are facing obstacles in three other states: Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
According to the proposed amendment, a person failing to obtain prior permission for conversion can be imprisoned for a term up to three years and/or fined up to 20,000 rupees ($487). For those who have acquired permission, the law requires them to send notice to authorities within one month from the date of conversion; if not, they can face imprisonment up to one year and/or a fine up to 10,000 rupees ($243).
The governor also wanted to know what prompted the government to propose an amendment to the existing act, added the agency.
State Home Minister Ramvichar Netam was not available for comment.
The BJP, which leads the federal opposition coalition, National Democratic Alliance, and governments in a few states, had passed the Chhattisgarh Freedom of Religion Amendment Bill in the state assembly House on August 3, 2006.
The various Freedom of Religion Acts are referred to as “anti-conversion laws” by the Indian media as well as by the local populace. These laws are supposed to curb religious conversions made by “force,” “fraud” or “allurement.” But Christians and rights groups say that in reality the laws obstruct conversion generally, as Hindu extremists invoke them to harass Christian workers with spurious arrests and incarcerations.
Bogus ‘Religious Freedom’
Arun Pannalal, general secretary of the Chhattisgarh United Christian Forum, told Compass that his federation has expressed concern over the same two provisions in the amendment bill that the governor faulted.
“Requiring anyone who wants to convert to another religion to seek prior permission from authorities clearly violates the religious freedom promised in the Indian Constitution,” he said. “Similarly, excluding conversion to Hinduism from the ambit of the law is against the constitutional provision for equality before law.”
Pannalal questioned why the state should decide whether people can convert or not. “This is why even the former governor, K.M. Seth, who was a BJP appointee, did not sign the amendment bill but instead sat on it – though he did not reject it.”
According to procedures laid down in the India Constitution, a bill cannot become a law until the state governor signs it. There is no time frame, however, for a governor to sign a bill. After governor’s assent, a state government can frame rules and implement the law.
Hurdles in Other States
On July 31, Gujarat Gov. Nawal Kishore Sharma refused to give his assent to his state’s anti-conversion amendment bill, saying the measure “violated the right to religious freedom.”
Following the governor’s move, the Gujarat government on August 1 officially declared that it would reactivate the dormant 2003 anti-conversion law.
The Gujarat Freedom of Religion Bill was initially passed by the state assembly on March 26, 2003. The government, however, was not able to frame implementing rules, reportedly because of objections by the state legal department over some of its provisions. To clear the hurdles, the government last September 19 introduced the Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Bill 2006.
The amendment bill stipulated that people from the Jain and Buddhist faiths would be construed as denominations of Hindu religion – a provision that was opposed by leaders from the Jain and Buddhist communities, as even the government census distinguishes between Hinduism and the two faiths. It also sought to exclude from the definition of “conversion” the renouncing of one denomination to adopt another.
On June 20, the then-governor of Rajasthan state, Pratibha Patil, referred the state anti-conversion bill to the president of India, saying it was unconstitutional, according to a report in national daily The Hindustan Times. On June 21, Patil resigned as governor to contest the presidential election and became India’s first woman president.
The BJP in Rajasthan had passed the bill on April 7, 2006.
Also in June, Attorney General of India Milon Banerji criticized the Madhya Pradesh state anti-conversion amendment bill passed by the BJP on July 21, 2006.
Madhya Pradesh Gov. Balram Jakhar, who had sought Banerji’s opinion on the controversial amendment, had also asked the state government to submit a detailed report on the number of conversions over the past five years. The BJP, however, could furnish details of conversions only in 20 out of 48 districts – with no proof of forced conversions.
Several poorer districts did not report any conversions, despite state government claims that conversions in poor areas were rampant because Christians were offering inducements to the poor.
The proposed amendment in Madhya Pradesh requires clergy and “prospective converts” to notify authorities of the intent to change religion one month before a “conversion ceremony.” In its current form, the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act of 1968 requires that notice be sent to the district magistrate within seven days of conversion.
Anti-conversion legislation is in force in three states: Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Orissa, while they exist on paper in four other states: Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.
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Hindu Extremists in India Allegedly Kill Pastor’s Brother
Authorities ignore attacks on Christian family, arrest of victims.
by Vishal Arora
NEW DELHI, August 31 (Compass Direct News) – A series of attacks on a Dalit Christian pastor in Tamil Nadu state earlier this year ended in Hindu extremists allegedly murdering his brother last month.
Pastor Paul Chinnaswamy of Krishnagiri district has also seen his house vandalized, and he and his son have been arrested on unfounded charges of “forced conversion.”
After two attacks by Hindu extremists in April and May, the worst came on July 29. Two Hindu extremists who had earlier attacked the 51-year-old Pastor Chinnaswamy arrived by motor-scooter to the house of his older brother, Amos, a Christian convert from Hinduism.
The pastor’s brother had angrily shouted at the two extremists when they and others had attacked the independent church leader earlier this year, said Dr. Sajan K. George, national president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC).
“The two men pulled down a small hut that was put up in front of Amos’ house and hit him with a log on his head and back,” George told Compass. “When he fell down, they crushed his head with large boulders and threatened the shocked wife and mother-in-law that they would be killed if they too did not throw stones at his body.”
Shouting in grief and fear and feeling they had no option, the women complied, George said. The extremists left. They had killed him, George said, to avenge his angry words over the attacks on his brother.
The two women ran to Chinnigiripalli village, under Uddinapalli police station jurisdiction, and locals rushed to the scene.
Police then arrested the two women, accusing the victim’s wife and mother-in-law of the murder, and remanded them to judicial custody, according to Circle Inspector R. Vajram of the Rayakota Circle.
“Amos was 58 years old, and his wife is about 30 – there were tensions between the couple,” Inspector Vajram told Compass. “Besides, Amos used to drink and trouble his wife. This is why the wife and the mother-in-law killed him.”
Charging that the local police had not investigated the attack properly, George wrote to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on August 18 requesting that it ensure justice for Pastor Chinnaswamy and his family.
Lawlessness seems to be the norm for the area, George said. He added that on August 3, in what may or may not have been a related incident, a Communist leader identified as Dhanaraj was found murdered in his banana farm in Thalli area in the same district. He had helped Pastor Chinnaswamy get out of jail and was providing his son with legal help.
Pastor and Son Arrested
On July 18, police had summoned the pastor, who lives in Uddinapalli, to the Uddinapalli police station and asked him to wait in a room – which happened to be a jail cell.
Police then arrested him on false charges of “forced conversion,” George said.
When local Christians learned about the arrest, they contacted Communist Party leaders who were able to secure his release on July 20. In India, communists often find themselves in league with Christians in the fight against Hindu nationalism.
Also on July 18, police picked up the pastor’s son, Luka Perumal, an independent preacher, and put him in a separate cell. Perumal was sent to the Salem jail on July 20.
“The police arrested him as a ‘preventive measure,’ alleging he was involved in some gangs,” George said.
When Pastor Chinnaswamy asked why his son was being held, police replied that he would be released on August 3. He was not released, however, until Monday (August 27).
Earlier Attacks
Two days before police detained Luka Perumal, on July 16, Hindu extremists had damaged his thatched house in Kelamangalam village, Krishnagiri district.
The attacks and police harassment followed the assaults on Pastor Chinnaswamy in April and May. On May 5, eight Hindu extremists broke into Chinnaswamy’s house and assaulted him with a screwdriver, besides threatening to harm his 4-year-old daughter and insulting his wife.
The attackers also took 2,750 rupees (US$67), claiming foreigners had given him that amount to forcibly convert Hindus. Pastor Chinnaswamy had set aside the money to pay his electricity bill.
On April 22, extremists attacked Pastor Chinnaswamy and vandalized his kitchen. “Chinnaswamy did not file a police complaint even once, as he feared that he would be killed if he did so,” George said.
Pastor Chinnaswamy, who has been ministering in the area for 20 years, is also a local civic leader; twice he has been elected as the village head.
In his letter to the NHRC, George appealed for an immediate inquiry “into the targeting of Pastor Paul Chinnaswamy and his family for the only reason that they are Christian believers.”
“It is alarming that, far from dealing with the lawlessness in the region, the police are busy incarcerating peaceful preachers,” George wrote. “They let dangerous criminals roam around unhindered. We appeal for immediate action.”
Regarding increased attacks on Dalits, including Dalit Christians, National Integration Council member John Dayal noted that, “Christ’s message liberates entire caste groups which were in the thrall of the upper castes.”
Pastor Chinnaswamy and all Catholics and Protestants in India, he said, are attacked for the theological position of Christians that Dalits are equals, which “rocks the Hindu boat. This is why even liberal Hindus find fault with conversions.”
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Hmong Christians Killed, Imprisoned in Crackdown in Laos
Vietnamese, Lao forces searching rice paddies and mountains and shooting on sight.
by Jeff M. Sellers
LOS ANGELES, August 7 (Compass Direct News) – Soldiers, police and others have killed at least 13 Christians in Laos in the past month in a swarming crackdown on Hmong villagers falsely accused of stirring rebel dissent, sources told Compass.
In the sweep, encouraged by communist village leaders and others who have falsely accused the Christians of being separatist rebels, authorities have arrested and imprisoned about 200 members of a 1,900-strong Laos Evangelical Church in Ban Sai Jarern village, Bokeo province in northwestern Laos.
The hunted Christians are largely Hmong refugees who had fled persecution in Vietnam. Those killed include Hmong who went into hiding when joint forces of Vietnamese and Lao police began rounding up Christians falsely accused of supporting Gen. Vang Pao in August 2006.
Among those killed last month was Neng Mua, a Christian who slipped back to his native Fay village after hiding in the mountains from the police round-up. On July 7 he went to a local villager’s house to beg for food, but his one-time friend instead shot him dead as a suspected member of the “liberation army,” a Christian source said.
Police have searched intensively for Christians in rice fields and mountains and are shooting them on sight, said the source, who requested anonymity.
“Many Christians were killed and badly injured,” he said. “Women and children were arrested and sent to prison.”
On July 8, police shot Seng Wue to death by a roadside after he and other Christians suffering fatigue and hunger had come out of hiding and surrendered, according to Christian sources. The sources heard report of soldiers shooting two other Christians dead at a checkpoint on the road to Don Sawan village, but their names were still unconfirmed.
On July 13, soldiers reportedly shot to death a person resembling Jong Wue Lao, a committee member of the Ban Sai Jarern church. He had escaped authorities on July 3, though his whereabouts were unknown. Soldiers reportedly killed eight to 10 Christians in the incident, but sources said it was unclear whether those deaths included Lao and his companions.
On July 12, police arrested Jue Por Wang, head of the Ban Fay church, and Wang Lee Wang, head of the Ban Sawan church. A Christian source said police forced members of their churches to declare that the leaders and others on police target lists were funded by Vang Pao to train Christians to fight the government.
In May and June, about 100 soldiers from Vietnam, along with authorities from Laos and Vietnam, arrived in Ban Sai Jarern to look for Hmong Vietnamese. There were 600 to 800 Lao soldiers and 200 Vietnam soldiers deployed in Bokeo province as of July, Christian sources said.
Soldiers have secured Ban Sai Jarern and nearby communities and prohibit people from entering or leaving, sources said. As a result of the restrictions, they said, the Ban Sai Jarern church has not been able to meet for worship.
With the area swarming with soldiers and police, many area men fled on July 4 out of fear of further reprisals or imprisonment, sources said. Those who escaped to the mountains have sent word that there is no food; they have resorted to eating banana leaves to survive.
Lao and Vietnamese officials have imprisoned an estimated 52 families from five villages: Ban Sai Jarern, Huay Klay, Fay, Numsamork and Chai Pathana. That is nearly all of the known Hmong families from Vietnam in the greater area, including 30 Hmong families in Ban Sai Jarern.
Hostile to Christians
Members of the Ban Sai Jarern church, which also serves worshippers from Fay and five other villages, said the congregation has never in anyway cooperated with Vang Pao or anyone seeking a separate state.
“We are law-abiding citizens,” one church member said, “and we want to present our case through legal means, not through armed struggle.”
Vietnamese and Lao communist authorities have long been hostile to the Hmong since previous generations aided U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. Associating Christianity with the United States, authorities assume all Hmong Christians support Vang Pao, who fought alongside U.S. soldiers.
“Christianity is not an American religion, it is a universal religion,” said one source. “We are not a political group seeking independence from the present Lao government – on the contrary, we are actively engaged in building a better nation by faithfully adhering to the teachings of the Bible.”
In June, U.S. authorities arrested Vang Pao and nine associates in California over an alleged plot to topple the communist regime in Laos.
Fast-growing churches in Bokeo province, Christian sources said, have drawn the ire of both Lao and Vietnamese governments for providing aid to Christian Hmong refugees from Vietnam and others fleeing persecution in other parts of Laos. Until this past year, they said, the 4,000 Hmong Christians in Bokeo had not faced persecution.
The crackdown in Ban Sai Jarern stems from an August 2006 capture in Vietnam of two Hmong women who had returned from the village to visit parents-in-law and other relatives, sources said. Vietnamese officials sent them to prison but were unable to force them to divulge the locations of other Vietnamese who had fled to Ban Sai Jarern and other villages in Laos.
On October 5, Lao and Vietnamese officers went into Sai Jarern village, seized five leaders of churches in Vietnam who had fled to Laos and sent them back to Vietnam. One of the church leaders, Saoma Lao, is reportedly dead, but area Christians have not confirmed that information. He was chairman of the Christian Church in Geahkoh village in Vietnam before fleeing to Laos.
Christians sources have confirmed that another one of the five Hmong Christian leaders, Jongneng Yang, is alive. But his condition and whereabouts, like that of the other leaders, are unknown. The others missing are Jue Lao, Thayeng Lei and Lei Yang, a church youth leader.
Chaicheng Lee, a teacher and treasurer of the Ban Sai Jarern church, is also missing. Christian sources said police arrested the 38-year-old church leader on July 4 after raiding his home and taking documents containing names of church leaders, members and activities. Area Christians said police were forcing detained believers to declare that Pastor Lee was training Christians funded by Vang Pao to overthrow the government.
Police took Pastor Lee out of prison on July 16, Christian sources said, adding that no one knows where they took him.
Enemies of the Faith
Accusing the Christians of armed rebellion and disclosing their whereabouts are local village heads, communist committee members and others hostile to Christians. Sources said these local opponents urged police to send the Christians to prison.
For every 10 to 15 Christian families in a given village, they said, a local leader monitors their whereabouts and activities, especially when they leave the area. Besides accusing the Christians of joining forces with Vang Pao and being part of an “American religion,” local villagers have charged them with dealing drugs and breaking religion laws.
“We were never engaged in the use or selling of illegal drugs,” said one area Christian. “And even people who want to become Christian after receiving healing, we advise them to first inform the government about their intention to become Christians, and after they receive their permit that’s the only time we accept them.”
Furthermore, he added, the churches secure permits for all large gatherings, and they even invite officials to join their celebrations.
“We appeal to the Lao government to release our imprisoned brothers and sisters, for they are innocent of the charges against them,” he said. “We appeal to the Lao government to grant Christians the freedom to worship God and give them the rights due to them.”
Local Christians, closely monitored by the government, are not allowed to use mobile phones, obtain food or leave the village without permission, a Christian source said.
“All these restrictions are imposed for suspicion that they will contact Gen. Vang Pao and the other Christian escapees,” he said.
Christians are prohibited from worshipping together and fear that police will besiege the church. Area villages are under tight police control. Authorities are still pursuing Christian leaders who escaped and are following closely Christians who go to other villages, sources said.
The Christians said there are about 50 refugees living near the border with Thailand who need food and water; they are “broken because their wives and children are in prison.”
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Uproar over Claim of Malaysia as ‘Islamic State’ Is Silenced
Government gags media discussion of minister’s claim.
by Jasmine Kay
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, August 10 (Compass Direct News) – A government halt to media discussion of whether Malaysia is an “Islamic state” last month was one indicator of how close to the surface strong religious feelings are raging.
Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak drew such protest and counter-protest from religious groups for claiming that Malaysia is an “Islamic state” that the Internal Security Ministry felt compelled to issue a gag order on media coverage of the issue.
At the International Conference on the Role of Islamic States in a Globalized World, organized by the Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia, Najib said on July 17 that Malaysia was an Islamic state and had never been a “secular nation” according to Western definition, since governance has “always been driven by our adherence to the fundamentals of Islam.”
He qualified his remarks, however, by saying that the Federal Constitution guarantees religious freedom to non-Muslim minorities, who make up about 40 percent of the population.
The deputy prime minister’s claim drew immediate protests from religious, political and civil society groups who fear restrictions on religious freedom, especially in the wake of a recent Federal Court decision unfavorable to Lina Joy, a Christian convert who tried unsuccessfully to remove “Islam” from her identification card.
Bishop Dr. Paul Tan, chairman of the Christian Federation of Malaysia, responded to the comments by issuing a press statement voicing his concerns and appealing to the deputy prime minister to retract his remarks.
He claimed that use of the term “Islamic state” is unacceptable to Malaysians of other faiths on three grounds: The term is not used in the Federal Constitution; the founding fathers of the country’s independence never intended for Malaysia to be an Islamic state; and non-Muslim coalition parties that make up the ruling government never consented to, nor officially endorsed, the term “Islamic state” to describe the country.
Ong Ka Chuan, general secretary of the Malaysian Chinese Association, a political party that is part of the ruling coalition government, noted documents prepared by British authorities before granting independence to Malaysia in 1957 clearly stating that “members of the Alliance delegation … had no intention of creating a Muslim theocracy” and affirming that Malaysia “would be a secular state.”
Fearing that continued discussion on the matter would cause tension between different religious communities in the country, three days after Najib’s remarks the Internal Security Ministry issued a gag order to all mainstream media prohibiting them from publishing on the matter. Interestingly, the gag order did not apply to statements coming from Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi or Najib himself.
Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, a former prime minister, expressed support for Najib’s declaration via a web-based news agency, Malaysiakini, on July 24. In September 2001, Mahathir had made a similar declaration that was hotly debated, though discussion on it fizzled out over the years.
In an attempt to quell non-Muslim concerns on religious freedom in the country, Prime Minister Abdullah said on Sunday (August 5) that Malaysia is neither a secular state nor a theocratic state. He said Malaysia practices parliamentary democracy, and that the government gives due attention to all races who enjoy religious freedom as provided for in the constitution.
Religious Freedom Concerns
To many, the prime minister’s statement is insufficient to address mounting concerns many have about religious freedom in the country.
In May, the highest court in the land delivered its judgment against Joy, the Muslim convert to Christianity who sought to have the word “Islam” deleted from her identity card. In a 2-1 majority decision, the court ruled that the National Registration Department was right in requiring her to obtain an exit certificate from the sharia court before it could do so.
Joy did not regard turning to the sharia court as an option, since she is no longer a Muslim and the sharia court has no jurisdiction over non-Muslims.
Earlier in January, Revathi Masoosai – an ethnic Indian born to Muslim-convert parents but raised by her Hindu grandmother – was sent to an Islamic rehabilitation camp for six months when she applied to change her name and religion at the sharia court.
Revathi had married a Hindu, Suresh Veerapan, according to Hindu rites in 2004, and they now have an 18-month-old daughter. While she was in detention, Islamic authorities seized her daughter and handed the child to her mother to be raised as a Muslim.
Released from detention, Revathi maintains that she is a Hindu. She is not allowed to live with her husband since she is legally still a Muslim while he is not. In Malaysia, Muslims can marry only Muslims.
Over the last two years, some grieving families have had to fight legal battles with Islamic authorities over burial rites for their loved ones following claims that the deceased family members had converted to Islam. Also, some women have had to turn to the courts for custody of their children when their husbands converted to Islam. In at least one case, a non-Muslim wife was told she had to seek redress from the sharia court.
Jurisdictional conflict
Jurisdictional conflicts have arisen due to Malaysia’s dual legal system, whereby civil courts apply to all, while sharia courts are binding on Muslims in certain family and personal matters.
These conflicts are complicated further by the constitution’s Article 121(1A), which states that “the [civil] courts … shall have no jurisdiction of any matter within the jurisdiction of the sharia courts.”
In a July 25 Federal Court judgment involving a dispute over monies between the deceased’s third wife, Latifah Mat Zin, and the daughters of his second wife, Rosmawati and Roslinawati Sharibun, Justice Abdul Hamid Mohamed said that issues of jurisdictional conflict must be resolved by Parliamentary amendments to existing laws or the making of new laws. The justice thus affirmed that the role of the courts is only to apply the law.
He clarified that if one of the parties is a non-Muslim, the sharia court has no jurisdiction over a case even if the subject matter falls within its jurisdiction. Likewise, he said just because one of the parties is a non-Muslim does not mean that the civil court will have jurisdiction over the case if the subject matter does not fall within its jurisdiction. To determine jurisdiction, he said, both courts must look to the statutes.
Ambiga Sreenevasan, chairperson of the Bar Council, commended the high court for clarifying issues that have long plagued Muslims and non-Muslims and for emphasizing the importance of conforming to the constitution.
She noted, however, that the judgment highlighted that there could be situations where there is no remedy in either court – something that must be “comprehensively addressed.”
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Pakistani Jail Officials Beat Christian, Halt Bible Classes
Prison superintendent denies banning pastor from visiting jail.
by Peter Lamprecht
ISTANBUL, August 3 (Compass Direct News) – Pakistani officials have halted all Bible classes for Christian prisoners in a Punjab jail, isolating the inmate who taught the classes and barring a local pastor from his weekly visits, a non-governmental organization (NGO) working in prisons reported.
Protestant pastor Munir Phool has been refused entry to Kasur city’s district jail for his weekly Sunday visits since June 25, when Catholic prisoner Dil Awaiz was put in a high-security cell and tortured, according to Sharing Life Ministries Pakistan (SLMP).
A police official denied that Phool was still banned from visiting the jail on Sundays and claimed not to remember the exact details of the incident that had ended the Bible classes.
Phool, who managed to speak with Awaiz during regular visiting hours yesterday, said that the prisoner and former Bible teacher had been targeted by a former jail deputy superintendent who abused Christian prisoners.
Awaiz, 33, told Phool that Muslim inmates became angry on June 25 when a Christian prisoner drank from one of their water glasses. Many lower-income Muslims in Pakistan consider Christians unclean and refuse to share eating utensils and other physical objects with them.
Awaiz said that Deputy Superintendent Sheikh Akram responded by forcing the Christian man to drink out of a glass used for cleaning toilets.
Later that day, when Akram heard Awaiz teaching the Christian inmates that, as Christians, they should expect persecution, he challenged Awaiz for implying that jail staff members were harassing the minority inmates, Phool said.
The deputy superintendent had Awaiz beaten and thrown in a high-security cell, deprived of contact with other Christian prisoners. The remaining Christian inmates, 55 out of approximately 2,000 prisoners in the jail, were forced to discontinue their Bible classes since none of them could read or write.
Jail staff members placed Christian prisoner Munir Rehmat, 39, into a high-security cell several days later after he inquired about resuming Bible classes, Phool said. The pastor said that both Awaiz and Rehmat remain in high-security detention but are well physically.
Kasur District Jail Superintendent Mohsin Rafeeq told Compass today that he could not remember the exact details of the incident.
“There was an exchange of hot words between a Christian teacher, I don’t recall the name of that teacher, and the Muslim fellows who were living in the same barracks,” Rafeeq said. Speaking by telephone from Lahore, Rafeeq said he had stopped the Christian teacher from holding Bible classes and the problem had been solved.
When Compass inquired whether Awaiz had been beaten or placed into a high-security cell, the prison superintendent claimed he could not remember.
Phool, who has been visiting the jail weekly since he first began pastoring in Kasur at the end of 2003, said that yesterday prison officials told him that he could not visit the prison until he obtained permission from the Inspector General of Punjab Prisons.
“No, no, no,” Rafeeq objected to this claim. Rafeeq said that it was due to the supposed “rift” between Christian and Muslim prisoners that he had requested that Phool temporarily discontinue his Sunday visits. Rafeeq denied that Phool was still banned from holding his meetings.
Unjustly Jailed
Hailing from the Christian village of Clarkabad, Awaiz has been jailed since June 2005 on charges of assisting his brother in a 2002 murder.
“He is absolutely innocent in this case, because he was not in the village when the murder took placed,” SLMP worker Shahzad Kamran told Compass, confirming that Awaiz’ brother was guilty.
Kamran, whose NGO works to provide religious education and support for Christian prisoners throughout the Punjab province, said that Bible classes had been a daily occurrence in the Kasur jail.
“They used to hold the classes outside and sometimes on the hospital verandah,” Kamran commented, explaining that there was no church or specific room designated for Christian worship.
In a separate report last week, the SLMP stated that Mian Faheem, a new jail superintendent at Faisalabad’s Borstal Institute and Juvenile Prison, was singling out 13 juvenile Christian prisoners to clean the prison toilets.
“Mian Faheem is always trying to appoint them to clean the washrooms, uses very filthy language with them, abuses them and threatens them,” Kamran said.
END
*** Photographs of Faisalabad Borstal Institute and Juvenile Prison and juvenile Christian inmates are available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.
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Pakistani Religious Minorities Told to Convert or Die
Christians remain fearful after deadline passes for converting to Islam.
by Peter Lamprecht
ISTANBUL, August 16 (Compass Direct News) – Christians and Hindus in northern Pakistan have received dozens of letters threatening them with death if they refuse to become Muslims, church sources and a police official said yesterday.
Police continued to provide security around churches and temples this week, even as Christians received new deadlines for converting to Islam.
Though the original August 10 deadline for conversion has passed, Peshawar’s minorities continue to live in fear, canceling church activities and skipping services, a Catholic priest said.
“Embrace Islam and become Muslims … otherwise, after next Friday, August 10, your colony will be ruined,” read more than a dozen identical letters collected by the Church of Pakistan (COP) in Peshawar, 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of Islamabad.
A spokesman for COP, Pakistan’s largest Protestant body, said that on August 7 some of the threatening letters had been thrown into the courtyards of Christian and Hindu homes in Peshawar’s Kohati, Interior City and Cantonment districts. Different letters were mailed to Peshawar’s Catholic and Protestant churches.
“All in all, we were able to collect only 15 of the letters from the community,” said Ashar Dean, assistant director of communications for COP’s Peshawar diocese.
Explaining that they were delivered to neighborhoods heavily populated by minority families living in small houses around a common courtyard, Dean said that the letters probably reached more than 100 Christians and Hindus.
A separate letter mailed to COP diocesan priest Joseph John threatened suicide attacks against churches.
“Our mosques and children are being martyred at American orders,” read the letter. “Therefore the churches will also be wiped out from the face of the earth.”
Christian leaders immediately informed local police about the threats, prompting a meeting with City Police Chief Abdul Majeed Marwat on August 10.
“The security in their areas has been beefed up around churches and other places of worship,” Marwat told Compass yesterday, reiterating promises made to minority leaders last week.
A Christian politician also brought the letter to the national government’s attention on Friday (August 10), English-language daily Dawn reported. Pervaiz Masih, a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, read a copy of the threat letter to the assembly and called on the government to take note of insecurity it had created among Peshawar’s Christians.
But Christians remain uncertain how seriously authorities have taken the threat.
“The speaker [of the house] took the matter very lightly and asked [Pervaiz Masih] to remind him about it in the presence of the interior minister,” Dawn reported on August 11.
While some Christian sources told Compass that Peshawar police had done a good job providing security, others were hesitant to speak openly on the telephone for fear that their criticism would draw police anger.
“It’s just a hoax, I presume,” said Police Chief Marwat, explaining that a similar incident in May had turned out to be a teenage prank.
More than 50 Christians fled the village of Charsadda this spring when a local Christian politician received a letter threatening death if the community did not embrace Islam. Two young students from an Islamic school eventually confessed to the deed and were forgiven in a June 4 meeting between Muslim religious leaders, government officials and COP Bishop Mano Rumalshah.
At least five families who fled Charsadda after the original threat have not yet returned, Dean said.
When asked why Christians did not pursue a court case against the Muslim youths, Dean said that their faith placed emphasis on reconciliation and that a court case could have backfired.
“If we had been harsh, things would have escalated and gone against our interests,” said Dean.
The cryptic comment reflects years of violent (though often isolated) incidents against Christians in Pakistan.
In November 2005, a mob of several thousand Muslims destroyed four churches, a convent and Christian schools in the Punjabi town of Sangla Hill after a Muslim accused a Christian of committing blasphemy. No one was held responsible for the attacks.
“We have experience of our [Christian neighborhoods] being attacked by extremists, so we took this very seriously,” Dean commented.
Peshawar Catholic priest Yousaf Amanat speculated that references to the United States in the letters could reflect anger over recent anti-Islamic comments by U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.). The Republican presidential hopeful said on July 31 that the best way to deter a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States was to threaten to bomb Mecca and Medina in retaliation.
“It was written that we are friends of the American people,” said Amanat, explaining that many Pakistani Muslims automatically link Pakistani Christians to the West because of their religion.
New Threat
Amanat, of St. Michael’s parish, said that he received a letter by mail telling him to convert to Islam by Tuesday (August 14).
“I was away from the parish, and when I came on Monday evening the post was on my desk,” Amanat said. “It was written that if we don’t become Muslim we will be killed.”
Ongoing threats have caused many Peshawar Christians to avoid church and other public gatherings.
A human rights activist from the region told Compass that Catholic Church attendance went down 40 percent on the Sunday after the threat. Amanat confirmed the detail, saying that he was forced to cancel several church activities planned for the week.
“With this type of threat, there is no kind of security that can stop the suicide attacks,” said Dean.
Hindus constitute 2 percent and Christians 1.5 percent of Pakistan’s population, according to the U.S. State Department’s latest report on report on religious freedom.
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Missing Christian Girls in Pakistan Married Off to Muslims
Police stall efforts to recover children.
by Peter Lamprecht
ISTANBUL, August 24 (Compass Direct News) – Two Pakistani Christian children have converted to Islam and married Muslim men after they went missing earlier this month in Faisalabad, according to apparently falsified marriage certificates delivered to their families.
The certificate for the missing 16-year-old girl indicates that the marriage took place 12 days before her disappearance, and the other certificate puts the missing 11-year-old’s age at 18.
Police seem to be stalling efforts to recover the minors, prompting the girls’ lawyer to bring a case against officers in the Punjab city of Faisalabad this week.
“This type of incident is increasing in Faisalabad,” a representative of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan told Compass from Faisalabad today.
When Zunaira Rasheed, 11, disappeared from her home in Faisalabad’s Warispura neighborhood on August 5, her mother was at first reluctant to go to the police, she said.
Abida Parveen said she was worried that news of the disappearance might ruin her daughter’s “honor” and with it her chance of marrying, according to Pakistani journalist Qaiser Felix of Asia News.
While searching for her daughter, Parveen was approached by a Muslim man from the neighborhood, Rana Azher, who offered to help her in exchange for money.
“We saw your daughter going in a rickshaw with Muhammad Adnan,” Rana Azher told Parveen. The Christian mother immediately went to Adnan’s home but was not allowed inside.
Desperate for help, Parveen eventually scraped together 12,000 rupees (US$200) to pay Azher to negotiate with Adnan on her behalf. Azher soon produced a copy of a certificate of marriage between Rasheed and Adnan but failed to do anything more.
“Unfortunately, I found out too late that those men who said they would help me only want money,” Parveen said in an August 22 Asia News article. “I have sold all I have, but it wasn’t enough, and now I am alone.”
The August 9 certificate, signed by Muslim cleric Kareem Muhammad Ramazan in Lahore, gave Rasheed’s name as Fatma Bibi (indicating her conversion to Islam) and stated her age as 18.
Despite the name and age difference, Rasheed’s family said they were not in doubt that the Fatma Bibi indicated in the certificate was the same person as their daughter because the certificate gives Rasheed’s address and father’s name.
Parveen eventually registered a report with local police, but law enforcement officers have yet to recover her daughter.
The Christian woman, who works as a maid in Muslim homes to support her four children, said that Rasheed had been engaged to be married to a relative.
“They are a very poor family from a backward area, and there is a practice among backwards and poor people to get their children married early,” journalist Felix told Compass. He said it was not clear whether this marriage was actually scheduled to take place any time in the near future.
Kidnapping Accusation
In a second incident last week, Shamaila Tabassum, 16, disappeared after telling relatives she was on her way to the hospital with several Muslim neighbors to visit her father, whom she said had suffered a serious accident.
The Christian girl’s family became worried after her supposedly hospitalized father arrived home from work in perfect health.
Her uncles said that they had passed Tabassum while they were bicycling home from work on the afternoon of August 16, approximately three kilometers (1.8 miles) from their home in Faisalabad’s Elahiabad neighborhood.
Seeing her uncles, Tabassum exited the Toyota Corolla she was riding in, told them that her father had been admitted to the city’s Allied Hospital, and then left in the car. According to the uncles, three Muslim neighbors – Mohammad Mazhar, his sister Naseem Akhter and a cousin named Zheer Ahmad – as well as an unknown fourth man, were in the car with Tabassum.
Worried for his daughter’s safety, Tabassum’s father visited Mazhar’s house that evening, lawyer Khalil Tahir said.
“[Mazhar’s] house was locked,” Tahir said, and Mazhar’s relatives claimed not to know his whereabouts.
On August 18, Tabassum’s father registered a case with police at Faisalabad’s Sadar police station, accusing Mazhar of kidnapping his daughter. He indicated in the police report that he was worried Mazhar would attempt to force his daughter to convert, said lawyer Tahir.
On Wednesday evening (August 22), a former head of the Elahiabad union council visited Tabassum’s home to deliver a certificate of her marriage to Mazhar.
“Now your daughter has converted to Islam, so there is no need to go to court,” Rana Javed told the girl’s father.
According to the certificate, Tabassum and Mazhar were married by a Muslim sheikh in the city of Sargodha, 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Faisalabad. But the document was dated August 4, fully 12 days before Tabassum’s disappearance.
“This is obviously a falsified document, because on August 4 she was at home,” Tahir said. The document also carried a new Muslim name for Tabassum, indicating her conversion to Islam.
Though Pakistanis under the age of 18 cannot carry out legal transactions – including conversion and marriage – without the consent of their guardian, prejudiced lower court judges often turn a blind eye to the law in order to favor Muslims in cases against Christians, Tahir said.
The Christian lawyer said he had agreed to take both cases pro bono because both families are extremely poor.
Tahir said that the investigation was delegated to Assistant Sub-inspector Mohammad Ameen, who has yet to register the criminal case under Pakistan’s penal code.
“The Station House Officer [SHO] is legally bound to register the case,” Tahir commented. The lawyer filed a written petition against Sadar SHO Mohammad Zafar on Monday (August 20) for failing to have his subordinate follow through on the investigation.
Zafar has been called to appear before Additional District and Sessions Judge Gabriel Francis on August 31, Tahir said.
“Many Pakistani Christians are poor, and this is the reason that they are being targeted,” writer Felix told Compass. “There are many other individual cases of forced conversion that go unreported because of their poverty.”
Felix said that impoverished Christians are often unable to pursue their cases in court when their interests conflict with those of more influential Muslims.
Amina Zaman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan told Compass that three priests from the area recently reported a growing number of incidents similar to that of the disappearance, conversion and questionable marriages of Tabassum and Rasheed.
“It is increasing in Pakistan and especially in Faisalabad,” Zaman said.
Christians make up 1.5 percent of Pakistan’s population, according to the U.S. State Department’s latest report on religious freedom.
END
*** A photograph of Shamaila Tabassum is available electronically. Contact Compass Direct News for pricing and transmittal.
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School in Vietnam Denies Entry to Christian Boy
District announces new rule barring “students who follow a religion.”
Special to Compass Direct News
LOS ANGELES, August 13 (Compass Direct News) – A school in central Vietnam has denied entry to a fifth-grade boy because he is Christian, according to a letter from an elementary school principal to the ethnic minority child’s parents.
Tran Van Ha, principal of Ka Dang Public Elementary School in Quang Nam province, wrote to Phong Hong Phong’s parents on July 2 that the Degar (Montagnard) child could not take an entrance exam because the school district had announced a new rule barring “students who follow a religion.”
“Student Phong Hong Phong meets all the requirements to take the entrance examination for the Residential High School for Ethnic Minorities of Dong Giang District,” Ha wrote to the child’s father, also named called Phong Hong Phong. “However, after this [the previously announced requirements], the Residential High School for Ethnic Minorities of Dong Giang District announced in addition that students who follow a religion will not be allowed to take the examination. And so student Phong Hong Phong does not meet the requirement to take the examination.”
A source in Vietnam that provided the letter and others to Compass said that other parents received similar correspondence. He added that, although Vietnam has shown some progress in religious freedom, “Ethic minority Christian students still meet with considerable official discrimination.”
The letter was clearly directed at Christians, he said. Protestants make up an estimated one half of the 1 million Degar people of Vietnam’s Central Highlands, and another 200,000 are estimated to be Catholic. The Katu tribe in this region of Quang Nam province reportedly practiced human sacrifice until the 1950s, and several thousand Katu are now Christians.
While 80 percent of Vietnam’s population adheres to no religion, about 9.3 are Buddhist, according to the CIA World Factbook, with only 6.7 percent Catholic and .5 percent Protestant.
According to the principal’s letter, a copy of which was obtained by Compass, the apparently embarrassed Ha asks the parents for their “understanding and sympathy,” saying that the decision was outside of his control.
“It is not the Ka Dang Public Elementary School that is discriminating against students who follow a religion, but this is the policy of the Residential High School for Ethnic Minorities of Dong Giang District,” he writes.
Vietnam has been under pressure to improve the lot of its often poor ethnic minorities in the western and northern mountainous regions. With the generous foreign aid it receives, Vietnam has established a number of residential high schools for ethnic minority students in the Western Highlands.
Degar Christian leaders have long complained that children of Christians are discriminated against and not allowed entrance into the residential schools. Considered highly desirable, the schools offer the only opportunity for secondary education for many students, as they provide funding for tuition and room and board for poor students.
The school year was about to start, said the Christian source, and many Christians students did not know how they would further their education. “Does being a Christian believer require our children to remain ignorant?” he asked.
Christian leaders in Vietnam point to the letter as evidence that Vietnam still operates by “actual polices” that contradict those promulgated for public and foreign consumption. Discrimination based on religion is supposedly strictly forbidden in Vietnam’s constitution and religious regulations.
While it is rare for clear documentation illustrating the contradiction between positive public pronouncements and actual discrimination to become public, there are still frequent reports of systematic discrimination against ethnic minority Christians.
Ironically, some Christian leaders in Vietnam expressed sympathy for Ha. One said, “Whether Principal Ha’s written explanation of discrimination was done out of ignorance about how this news could travel or was calculated, he will surely be in big trouble.”
On June 13, Ha had published a bulletin for his fifth-grade students spelling out stringent requirements to take the entrance exam. The students had one week, until June 21, to complete the requirements.
Phong had fulfilled all written requirements and was denied permission to take the exam. When his father complained, he received the letter of explanation from Ha.
“I hope that you parents will encourage your child to complete his studies even though he is not allowed to study in the residential school,” Ha writes. “Our Ka Dang Public Elementary School promises to create every favorable condition so that your child will progress in his education and training.”
END
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COMPASS DIRECT NEWS
News from the Frontlines of Persecution
Jeff Sellers, Managing Editor
Bureau Chiefs:
Barbara Baker, Middle East
Sarah Page, Asia
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