ICC Note:

In a recent report by the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), attacks on Christians in India have increased in the first six month of 2016. According to EFI, Christians have already been attacked over 130 times in 2016. This includes the murder of pastors, burning of churches, and beating of church members. In the Bastar District of India’s Chhattisgarh State, village councils have passed resolutions making the practice of Christianity illegal since June 2014. Still the government has done little to rectify this situation, leaving hundreds of Christian families to be denied their basic constitutional rights. 

9/16/2016 India (Christian Daily) – Attacks against Christians in India increased in the first six months of 2016, according to a new report by Evangelical Fellowship of India.

The EFI said that it had recorded 134 attacks on Christians in the first half of 2016, but it cautioned that the figures were a “fraction of the violence on the ground” since they were only enumerating “carefully corroborated” episodes of crimes.

The EFI statistics of persecution incidents in just six months up to June are close to the amount of violence recorded in 2014 (147) and 2015 (177).

The various forms of “violence” included murders of pastors, burning of churches, vandalism, burning of Bibles, rapes, destruction of Christian school properties, and forced re-conversions from Christianity to Hinduism.

In March, a mob of Hindu extremists attacked a Pentecostal church in the state of Chhattisgarh while the believers were gathered in worship. The assailants broke the musical equipment and chairs inside the church.

“They alleged that people were being converted here,” said Arun Pannalal, the president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum. “The police came and seized vehicles the attackers came in. They desecrated the Bible and some of the pictures that were hung on the wall.”

“Every day Christians are attacked. What is reported in the media is like the tip of an iceberg,” a native Christian told International Christian Concern (ICC).

According to All India People’s Forum, an NGO dedicated to social and economic development in India, the police was, at many instances, found complicit with the fundamentalist organizations in abetting the attacks.

…