ICC Note: Thousands of Christians from the Kandhamal District of India’s Odisha State continue to feel pain ten years after unprecedented violence was unleashed against their community. The 2008 anti-Christian riots that swept across the Kandhamal District are still considered India’s worst instance of Christian persecution in its modern history. How long will it take for this Christian community to heal?

08/28/2018 India (UCAN) – Thousands of Christians remain displaced from villages they had to flee during anti-Christian violence that engulfed the eastern Indian district of Kandhamal 10 years ago.

The impact of the events that killed some 100 people and displaced over 50,000 continues to haunt villagers, said Father Ajay Singh, a Catholic priest and rights activist.

“It was a planned operation,” said Father Singh about what occurred. “Some 5,000 people are away from their villages and are forced to live a miserable life. They can enter their villages only if they become Hindus.”

Father Singh was speaking at a photo exhibition and seminar organized in New Delhi, in which social activists, church leaders and political leaders recalled the horror of the seven-week riots that also destroyed more than 300 churches.

Seminars, debates, silent processions, prayers and meetings were held across India to mark the Aug. 25 anniversary of the 2008 carnage in the tribal-dominated Kandhamal district of Odisha state.

Indian bishops’ conference general secretary Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas said Christians have forgiven their attackers.

“We feel the pain but no anger as Christ teaches us to forgive,” Bishop Mascarenhas said at a Mass organized in state capital Bhubaneswar.

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