9-Sep-08 - Injured Priest Tells of Hindu-Extremist Attack, Assailants Attempted to Burn Him Alive [via EWTN]

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Priest and 2 Laypeople Slain in India

Italian Cardinal Urges Solidarity With Persecuted

zenit.org/article-23700?l=english

MUMBAI, India, SEPT. 23, 2008 (Zenit.org).- As the wave of anti-Christian violence continues in India, two more laypeople were added Monday to the list of victims.

A Catholic priest, Father Samuel Francis, was also killed over the weekend, but authorities have not yet ruled out the possibility that his slaying was the result of a robbery, according to AsiaNews.The All India Christian Council reported that in Orissa alone, 37 Christians have already been killed, among them two Protestant pastors; more than 4,000 houses have been burned, and close to 50,000 faithful have fled to camps or sought refuge in the forests.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa and president of the Italian episcopal conference, spoke out against these events, denouncing the “anti-Christian persecution taking place in India, Iraq and other parts of the world.”
 
******INDIA: MURDER, RAPE, ARSON CONTINUE
fiacona.org/newsdetail.php?catid=100&newsid=231
Rape, Murder, Arson in Orissa

Attacks on Christians continued in the Kandhamal district. While a young woman was reportedly gang-raped by unidentified rioters on Sunday night (Sept. 21), a man went missing and was allegedly killed on Friday (Sept. 19).
Father Ajay Singh of the Catholic Archdiocese of Bhubaneswar, Orissa’s capital, told Compass that a local Oriya-language newspaper, Dharitri, reported that a 20-year-old woman was raped by about 15 men in an area under Tikabali police jurisdiction in Kandhamal late on Sept. 21. The victim, who was living in a relief camp and believed to be Christian, had gone back to her house to see her grandmother.
A group of men stormed the house and took her to a nearby jungle and raped her, Singh said, adding that the police had confirmed the incident.

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**Kandhamal beats Gujarat in violence statistics
Farzand Ahmed
Bhubaneswar, November 5, 2008

indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19402&sectionid=4&issueid=78&Itemid=1
…
Clearly 1,000 deaths (official) in the entire state of Gujarat during fours months stand nowhere in comparison to 500 deaths in one district of Orissa in one month. Kandhamal is just a small district of the state.
A CPI (Marxist-Leninist) fact-finding team in its report quoted officials admitting that not less than 500 people, mostly Christians were killed in the month-long anti-Church riots in which VHP and Bajrang Dal played a direct role.
The report said: *“The official figure for deaths has been reported to be 31; however, a senior government official on the condition of anonymity informed (the team) that he himself consigned two hundred dead bodies - found from the jungle - to flames after getting them collected in a tractor. As per his estimates based on the intensity and pace of killings the number of those killed is over five hundred”. *The report signed by J. P. Minz was published in the November issue of the Liberation, CPI (ML)'s official journal.
The report further said: “In the communal fire two hundred Christian villages and 127 Church and prayer halls were either destroyed or burnt. Apart from this, schools, hospitals, hostels and convents also have been damaged. The incidents of killings, rape and loot also were carried out in addition to former incidents. The shocking fact is that all these incidents took place in full view of police and the police remained mute spectators”.

Regarding the role of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal the report said: “The victims in all the relief camps unanimously told the fact finding team that it is the VHP and Bajrang Dal cadres who have sowed the seeds of communal division in the villages. They used to organise meetings of the Kandha tribals and incite them to attack the Christian hamlets and also provided funds for doing this”.

Hitherto Naveen Patnaik believed in the official tolls of 31 but the CPI (ML)'s new revelation was likely to widen the rift between BJD of Naveen and BJP which hoped that killing of Swami and Hindu backlash would electorally help the party.

BJP is a partner of the alliance that rules Orissa.
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