As you know I had asked for clarifications on this year's persecution report put out by the Christian religio-political organization misnamed Catholic Secular Forum. Because of my longstanding skepticism towards religio-political activists manipulating public opinion, especially among their coreligionists, in the service of their own religious chauvinistic and ideological agenda, the questions that I ask about such reports are:
1) Are the claims made in them supported by independent genuinely secular organizations or the mainstream secular press? 2) Do the actual reported facts support the claims of persecution, as opposed to isolated crimes that are committed on a daily basis against individuals of all religions due to family disputes, opposition by parents to inter-religious marriages, burglaries, thefts, sex crimes and random violent acts by criminals, police brutality and other diverse causes? I had also asked the person who had circulated this report in this forum to provide me with the actual report or the email address of the Christian chauvinistic organization in question. Unfortunately, I did not receive anything from him. But Bosco was kind enough to direct me to the following webpage of the Indian Christian Activist Network (at least this network is honest about its mission as evidenced by an appropriately chosen name): http://ch.spinnakerpro.com/run/v3.aspx?x=39793667-48-920 The webpage does not provide the actual data that led to the sensational numbers of 4000 Christians who were targeted, and 1000 women and 500 children who became victims. But under the flashy heading of "Martyred for being Christian", it highlights the 7 worst instances of "persecution", which I assume are the best pieces of evidence they have to offer to support their charge of widespread persecution of the Christian Church in India. These instances involve rape and/or murder. I was able to use the few specific details of these cases to answer the above two questions of mine. I give below my analysis of the facts that I gathered, and let you draw your own conclusions as to what we are dealing with here in this worldwide campaign. 1. First of all, no credible genuinely secular organization such as Human Rights Watch, United Nations, U.S. State Department or the European Centre for Law and Justice has issued a press release or report making or substantiating any of these claims. If 4000 people, including 1000 women and 500 children were persecuted in a single year in India because of their religion then surely one of these organizations would have alerted the world about the worst of these atrocities. 2. I checked to see if any of the seven cases were reported by the mainstream secular English press. There was not a single report anywhere on six of them. Only one of the incidents was reported by the Times of AP. All these reports were only plastered all over the internet by a large network of Christian propaganda websites with names like "persecutedchurch.org", "persecution.in", "christianpersecutionindia.blogspot.com", "Gospel for Asia", etc. 3. The one report that appeared in the mainstream media can be found at: http://timesofap.com/politics/19-year-old-nursing-student-found-murdered-in-church.html It is about a girl who happened to have been murdered in a church. The murderer(s) was/were not identified. So naturally their religion has not been ascertained. 4. Now, of the remaining six cases reported only on Christian propaganda websites, we have the following facts: Case 1: The autopsy report of a 7 year old boy whose father became a Christian after witnessing that his brother performed a miracle, indicated that he died of drowning, and his body had animal bites on it. His family believes he was murdered. The alleged murderer has not been identified. Please see one of the reports at: http://www.gfa.org/persecution/child-murdered/ Case 2: A 35 year old Christian man was beheaded by his father-in-law (with the help of a Shaman) for refusing to convert to the latter's tribal religion after marrying his daughter. Please see: http://christianpersecutionindia.blogspot.com/2013/06/tripura-christian-man-beheaded-for-not.html Case 3: A 26 year old believer was killed by unknown persons. The religion of the killers is naturally unknown. Please see: http://www.efionline.org/persecution/566-persecution-watch-may-3-2013 Case 4: A medical missionary was found dead in a river swept by the floods when he was crossing a bridge in an area controlled by Naxalites. Please see: http://www.missionariesoftheworld.org/2013/07/medical-missionary-dr-jaishankar-of.html Case 5: A 30 year old woman was raped and murdered. Two Hindus were arrested and released. It is uncertain whether the woman was raped because of her faith. She was murdered because she sounded the alarm. Please see one of the reports at: http://persecutedchurchnews.blogspot.com/2013_09_08_archive.html Case 6: A Christian youth died in police custody. Please see: http://persecution.in/category/topic/christian-youth-dies Please make up your own mind whether any of these instances indicate whether Christians and the Christian Church are being persecuted in India by other religious communities or the state, as is claimed by those who have released this year's persecution report. Cheers, Santosh On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 10:21 AM, Santosh Helekar <chimbel...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Since this is a secular forum, one would like to know whether any real > secular organization such as Human Rights Watch has independently confirmed > this report from a Christian organization. One would like to know for example > whether these alleged attacks against innocent folk were primarily because > they were Christian, or whether they are attacks against folk who happened to > be Christian. In a secular forum one would also like to know how many Muslims > were attacked because they were Muslims. > > Cheers, > > Santosh > > > On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 9:55 PM, Marshall Mendonza <mmendonz...@gmail.com> > wrote: >> >> >> >> Maha 2nd in no. of attacks on Christians in ’13 >> >> TIMES NEWS NETWORK >> >> >> Mumbai: Maharashtra has witnessed among the largest number of communal >> attacks on Christians in 2013, second only to Karnataka, says a >> recently-released report by the Catholic Secular Forum (CSF), an >> organization chaired by Justice Michael Saldanha, former judge at the Bombay >> and Karnataka high courts. Across the country, the report points at >> 4,000-odd offenses aimed at Christians, with 400 clergy and 100 churches >> attacked in a year. >> While Karnataka may have had a higher number of attacks on Christians >> over the last year, the report suggests that Maharashtra is the next >> Hindutva laboratory. “The new government in Karnataka is sensitive to the >> attacks on Christians.However, inMaharashtra, the police and the lower >> levels of state administration are highly saffronized,” said Joseph Dias, >> author of the report and general secretary of CSF. ***************************************************************** No offense meant. But let the chips fall where they may. *****************************************************************