ICC Note:
A new book, authored by Cardinal Oswald Gracias, explores India’s worst instance of anti-Christian violence: the 2008 Kandnamal riots. As a result of this violence, it is estimated that over 100 Christians were killed, over 600 villages were attacks, over 6,500 homes were burned, and over 54,000 people were displaced. Many of the victims of this violence have still received no justice, which is another point this new book explores. Will the publishing of this book help bring about change in Kandhamal? 
02/07/2017 India (UCAN) – Cardinal Oswald Gracias, president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India, has released a book detailing the delay of justice to the victims of anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal and the continued the human right violations against Christians.
Noted lawyer Vrinda Grover and a law professor Saumya Uma coauthored the 304-page “Kandhamal: introspection of Initiative for Justice 2007-2015.”
It is the first comprehensive investigation of the justice process in one of the most traumatic cases of communal violence targeting the Christian community in India, its joint publishers Media House and United Christian Forum claimed.
Cardinal Gracias released the book during the ongoing meeting of Latin-rite bishops in Bhopal.
“This book examines whether nine years later, closure and justice have any resonance in the lives of the victims of the anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal’, the authors say in their note.
Kandhamal, one of the poorest districts in the state of Odisha, ranks dismally low on the Human Development Index. In December 2007 and again in August 2008, Kandhamal witnessed widespread and organized attacks on the Christian community.
Human rights groups estimate that around 100 people were killed, including disabled and elderly persons, children, men and women. More than 600 villages were ransacked; at least 6,500 houses were looted and burnt; at least 54,000 people were left homeless; 395 churches and other places of worship, were destroyed.
The Kandhamal violence can be viewed in the context of other anti-Christian attacks over the past few decades, particularly in 1997-98 and 2014-15. Attacks against Christians in India have been in the form of killings of priests, sexual assault of nuns, and the physical destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges and cemeteries by organizations whose main aim is to promote and exploit communal clashes to increase their political power base.
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