ICC Note:

Recent reports indicate that Christians in Nepal must travel long distances in order bury their dead. While burial issues may not seem like a source of persecution, ease of burial indicates levels of tolerance for the burial customs and rituals of religious minorities. Because it is so difficult for Christians in Nepal to bury their dead, there are questions as to the legitimacy of Nepal’s constitutional recognition of religious freedom.

 3/26/2017 Nepal (World Watch Monitor) – One way in which the freedom of religion or belief in a country can be measured is whether minorities are permitted to carry out their own rituals during key ‘rites of passage’ such as birth, marriage and death.

One of the world’s fastest-growing Christian communities is that in Nepal. Between the censuses of 2001 and 2011 its Christian population more than doubled from 180,000 to 375,699.

Nepal’s new Constitution, introduced in 2015, recognizes the freedom of religion or belief but, as this video report by Vishal Arora shows, death in a Christian family in Nepal brings not only sorrow but also a gruelling struggle to find land for burial. As local residents object to any burial in their vicinity, churches in Kathmandu and surrounding areas have bought 130,000 square feet of land on a secluded mountain to build a cemetery.

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