Friday, 11 December 2009
Vishal Arora/ Compassion News
Police in Orissa state have arrested an official of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for allegedly leading an attack that ended in the rape of a Catholic nun during last year's anti-Christian mayhem in Kandhamal district.
Officers in the eastern state of Orissa had been searching for Gururam Patra, identified by local residents as the general secretary of the BJP in Kandhamal district, for more than 14 months. Arrested on Saturday in Balliguda, Patra was charged with leading the attack but not with rape.
Dilip Kumar Mohanty, an investigating officer, told Compass that a non-bailable warrant had been issued against Patra, accused of being "the main organizer" of the attack on Aug. 25, 2008, in which then-28-year-old Sister Meena Lalita Barwa said she was gang-raped. Mohanty said he had gathered "sufficient evidence" against Patra.
"He is the one who went into the house where the nun was staying and took her out, along with his associates who outraged her modesty," Mohanty said.
Previously police had arrested 18 associates of Patra.
The Rev. Ajay Singh of the Catholic Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar told Compass that Patra had become a "terror" for local Christians, as "he was threatening against [those] identifying the accused in numerous cases."
Violence in Kandhamal took place in August-September 2008, killing more than 100 people - mostly hacked to death or burned alive - and incinerating more than 4,500 houses, as well as destroying over 250 churches and 13 educational institutions. The violence began after a VHP leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, was killed by Maoists (extreme Marxists) on Aug. 23. Hindu extremist groups wrongly blamed local Christians for the assassination.
A local Christian from K. Nuagaon village, where the nun said she was raped, told Compass on condition of anonymity that Patra was the general secretary of the BJP for Kandhamal district. But the BJP and its ideological mentor, the Hindu nationalist conglomerate Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps or RSS), were reluctant to admit association with him.
Suresh Pujari, president of the Orissa state BJP, told Compass that he did not know if Patra was a member of his party.
"I have heard his name, but I have never met him," he said. "The BJP is a big organization, and I cannot know everyone."
RSS spokesperson Manmohan Vaidya told Compass that Patra was a block president (a local government position) in Balliguda during the violence.
"He may have attended a few meetings of the RSS, but he was never associated with the organization officially," he said.
Investigating officer Mohanty said police have yet to establish his affiliations, but "it appears that he was from the RSS group." Mohanty said Patra was not accused of rape but of being the main leader of the attack.
On Nov. 11, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, told the state assembly House that 85 people from the RSS, 321 members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP) and 118 workers of the Bajrang Dal, youth wing of the VHP, were rounded up by the police for the attacks in Kandhamal.
Educated by Christians
Union Catholic Asian News (UCAN) agency reported Patra attended a Catholic school, Vijaya High School, in Raikia town in Kandhamal district.
The news agency quoted the Rev. Mathew Puthyadam, principal of the school when Patra attended, as saying that he was a good student and respected the priests.
"I really wonder how he changed," Puthyadam told UCAN.
UCAN reported that Puthyadam said right-wing Hindu groups commonly recruit people educated at Christian schools and indoctrinate them against Christians. There were a few other former students of Catholic schools who also led mobs that attacked Christians in Kandhamal, he added.
Puthyadam reportedly said that when Patra's mother brought him to the school, she said he lost his father in early childhood and they had no money to continue his studies; the priest arranged sponsorship through a Christian aid agency to cover his fees and lodging at Bishop Tobar Hostel.
‘Police Refused to Help'
It was during these attacks that Barwa of the Divyajyoti Pastoral Centre in K. Nuagaon area in Balliguda, said she was attacked and raped.
At an Oct. 24, 2008, press conference, the nun said 40 to 50 people attacked the house in which she and priest Thomas Chellantharayil were staying; he also was attacked in the Aug. 25 incident. She said the assailants first slapped and threatened her, then took her out of the house.
"There were three men who first threatened to throw me into the smoldering fire," she said. "Then they threw me on the veranda [which was] full of plastic pieces. One of them tore my blouse and undergarments. While one man stood on my right hand, the other stood on my left hand and the third man raped me."
Another man tried to rape her as she got up, she said, and when a mob arrived she was able to hide behind a staircase. But the mob pulled her out and threatened to kill her while others wanted to parade her naked in the street.
"They then beat me up with their hands," she said. "I was made to walk on the streets wearing my petticoat and sari, as my blouse was torn by one of the attackers. When we reached the market place I saw two policemen there. I asked them to help me, but they refused."
When the nun filed a complaint at the Balliguda police station, she said, police made no arrests until The Hindu newspaper highlighted her case on Sept. 30, 2008.
Christian leader John Dayal, a member of India's National Integration Council, said the government has yet to fully address violence against Christians.
"The administration, civil and police, have to act with their full strength to stop the hate campaign that has been unleashed in the last one year, and which has penetrated distant villages, creating schism and hatred between communities," he said.
On Sunday Christians and rights activists formed a new organization, the Association of Victims of Communal Violence in Kandhamal in Phulbani to deal with the growing communal divide in Kandhamal.
"The major task of the new association, working closely with clergy and civil society activists irrespective of religion, is to restore public confidence and to ensure that the victims and witnesses felt safe enough to depose in court," said Dayal.
He said Christian leaders hope this grassroots initiative will also help in the process of reconciliation and allow people to go back to their villages, where right-wing groups are threatening them with death if they do not convert to Hinduism.
Dayal also said there were rumors of human trafficking in Kandhamal, and that the new association felt special projects for women and especially young girls were urgently required.
"I pray they remain rumors," he added.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Kandhamal victims unite, knock at Government’s doors for justice; action for grassroots reconciliation, security and confidence
December 10, 2009
A meeting of Priests, Pastors, community leaders and activists held at Berhampur on 7th December 2009 has endorsed the formation of the Sampradayik Hinsa Prapidita Sangathana [Association of Victims of commuinal violence in Kandhamal] formed earlier in Phulbani after a series of meetings in which human rights and civil society activists from Bhubaneswar and Cuttack also took part.
All these meetings were the first of their kind since Hindutva violence against the Christian community in Kandhamal and other districts of Orissa left over 5347 houses looted and burnt, 295 churches destroyed, women and girls raped, and more than 75 people murdered in the name of religion and ethnicity. Large-scale displacement and migrations followed with over 50,000 people becoming refugees in their own motherland.
Two fast track courts set up in the aftermath of the violence have lost the confidence of the people with murderers, one of them a BJP legislator Manoj Pradhan, being released in several cases with eye witnesses too scared to dispose against the culprits. About 2500 complaints had been registered but only 823 FIR have been registered. All the cases were classified into murder (27 cases), attempt to murder cases, rape case, etc.
The major task of the new association, working closely with clergy and civil society activists irrespective of religion, is to restore public confidence and to ensure that the victims and witnesses felt safe enough to depose in court. This grassroots action will also help in the process of reconciliation and hopefully allow people to come back to their villages which are now barred to them by Hindutva activists who are forcing them to first convert to Hinduism before assimilating in the old habitations.
However, the association has expressed its deep distrust in the current justice delivery system, saying the Fast Track Courts are working perhaps too fast in trying to finish off the cases without looking closely at the evidence. Of cases involving 12 murders, there has been conviction just in one case, for instance.
The association has also decided to boycott the Justice Mohapatra commission probing the murder of VHP vice president Lakhmanananda Saraswati and the violence that followed his death at the hands of a Maoist group on 23rd August 2008. They said the commission has preconceived notions and has already formed its conclusions without even waiting for evidence.
The meeting at Berhampur, presided over by Archbishop Cheenath, was also attended by other Bishops and church leaders including Bishop Sarath Nayak of Berhampur and Believers Church bishop Bardhan, National Integration Council Member John Dayal, Human rights activist Dhirendra Panda and senior lawyers from the Christian Law Association, Human Rights Law Network, and the All India Christian Council and all church groups represented in the region.
Meanwhile the Archbishop of Bhubaneswar-Cuttack and Kandhamal, Most Reverend Raphael Cheenath, SVD, has also met the Collector and submitted him a memorandum highlighting the same issues of instilling a sense of security among the villagers and giving them adequate compensation, rehabilitation and employment.
It was made clear at the various meetings that security of the people remained the main concern. The sense of insecurity is also leading to a gross miscarriage of justice in the two Fast Track courts. As victims have complained to the Orissa High Court separately, witnesses are being coerced, threatened, cajoled and sought to be bribed by murderers and arsonists facing trial. Shoddy police investigations have already created a crisis in the dispensation of justice, and even genuine eye witnesses are reneging in court as they see the court premises full of top activists of fundamentalist organisations and often the same persons who had burnt their houses. The police remain mute watchers, as always.
The witnesses are threatened in their homes, and even their distant relatives are being coerced. This requires urgent and immediate action by the District administration and the Police to ensure that the process of justice is not thwarted and sabotaged.
There are major lacunae in the relief and rehabilitation of the victims of mass arson. Not a single Christian place of worship or Christian NGO has been compensated for their tremendous loss, but the poor victims are also being mocked by the inadequate compensation. The violation of principles of rehabilitation is at several levels. The first is in identifying the houses as fully or partially damaged. Secondly, houses by the dozens have not been enumerated by the government surveyors. Thirdly, the victims of the 2007 arson, especially in Barakhama have been criminally left out of the reckoning and for those 225 or so poor families, it has been second year without adequate shelter.
It costs about Rs. 85,000 to reconstruct a house and yet the government gives only Rs 50,000 in separate tranches. It is the duty of the state to give the full money. Just to save the people from the vagaries of the weather, the Church has sought to pitch in, but their resources are meagre and more than 2,500 families cannot be helped by the Church.
There is no information from government or the district administration about the livelihood of those affected by the violence. The administration without delay must conceive and execute a scheme so that every family effected by violence has at least one person, if not more, in gainful employment in government projects so that they can live a life of dignity, and to prevent large scale migration and pauperisation of victim families.
It was felt special projects for the women victims, and especially young girls, are also required urgently in Kandhamal. There are already rumours of human trafficking. I pray they remain rumours.
The administration has to act swiftly on the issue of allotting land for homes to those persons who have fallen into the gap of the Forest Act, and have no land to build their houses. They have to be identified, allotted land so that they can live in peace without facing the perpetual threat of being ousted.
The administration, civil and police, have also to act with their full strength to stop the hate campaign that has been unleashed in the last one year, and which has penetrated distant villages, creating schism and hatred between communities. The law of the land must be implemented severely to contain and deter those indulging in this activity.
A meeting of Priests, Pastors, community leaders and activists held at Berhampur on 7th December 2009 has endorsed the formation of the Sampradayik Hinsa Prapidita Sangathana [Association of Victims of commuinal violence in Kandhamal] formed earlier in Phulbani after a series of meetings in which human rights and civil society activists from Bhubaneswar and Cuttack also took part.
All these meetings were the first of their kind since Hindutva violence against the Christian community in Kandhamal and other districts of Orissa left over 5347 houses looted and burnt, 295 churches destroyed, women and girls raped, and more than 75 people murdered in the name of religion and ethnicity. Large-scale displacement and migrations followed with over 50,000 people becoming refugees in their own motherland.
Two fast track courts set up in the aftermath of the violence have lost the confidence of the people with murderers, one of them a BJP legislator Manoj Pradhan, being released in several cases with eye witnesses too scared to dispose against the culprits. About 2500 complaints had been registered but only 823 FIR have been registered. All the cases were classified into murder (27 cases), attempt to murder cases, rape case, etc.
The major task of the new association, working closely with clergy and civil society activists irrespective of religion, is to restore public confidence and to ensure that the victims and witnesses felt safe enough to depose in court. This grassroots action will also help in the process of reconciliation and hopefully allow people to come back to their villages which are now barred to them by Hindutva activists who are forcing them to first convert to Hinduism before assimilating in the old habitations.
However, the association has expressed its deep distrust in the current justice delivery system, saying the Fast Track Courts are working perhaps too fast in trying to finish off the cases without looking closely at the evidence. Of cases involving 12 murders, there has been conviction just in one case, for instance.
The association has also decided to boycott the Justice Mohapatra commission probing the murder of VHP vice president Lakhmanananda Saraswati and the violence that followed his death at the hands of a Maoist group on 23rd August 2008. They said the commission has preconceived notions and has already formed its conclusions without even waiting for evidence.
The meeting at Berhampur, presided over by Archbishop Cheenath, was also attended by other Bishops and church leaders including Bishop Sarath Nayak of Berhampur and Believers Church bishop Bardhan, National Integration Council Member John Dayal, Human rights activist Dhirendra Panda and senior lawyers from the Christian Law Association, Human Rights Law Network, and the All India Christian Council and all church groups represented in the region.
Meanwhile the Archbishop of Bhubaneswar-Cuttack and Kandhamal, Most Reverend Raphael Cheenath, SVD, has also met the Collector and submitted him a memorandum highlighting the same issues of instilling a sense of security among the villagers and giving them adequate compensation, rehabilitation and employment.
It was made clear at the various meetings that security of the people remained the main concern. The sense of insecurity is also leading to a gross miscarriage of justice in the two Fast Track courts. As victims have complained to the Orissa High Court separately, witnesses are being coerced, threatened, cajoled and sought to be bribed by murderers and arsonists facing trial. Shoddy police investigations have already created a crisis in the dispensation of justice, and even genuine eye witnesses are reneging in court as they see the court premises full of top activists of fundamentalist organisations and often the same persons who had burnt their houses. The police remain mute watchers, as always.
The witnesses are threatened in their homes, and even their distant relatives are being coerced. This requires urgent and immediate action by the District administration and the Police to ensure that the process of justice is not thwarted and sabotaged.
There are major lacunae in the relief and rehabilitation of the victims of mass arson. Not a single Christian place of worship or Christian NGO has been compensated for their tremendous loss, but the poor victims are also being mocked by the inadequate compensation. The violation of principles of rehabilitation is at several levels. The first is in identifying the houses as fully or partially damaged. Secondly, houses by the dozens have not been enumerated by the government surveyors. Thirdly, the victims of the 2007 arson, especially in Barakhama have been criminally left out of the reckoning and for those 225 or so poor families, it has been second year without adequate shelter.
It costs about Rs. 85,000 to reconstruct a house and yet the government gives only Rs 50,000 in separate tranches. It is the duty of the state to give the full money. Just to save the people from the vagaries of the weather, the Church has sought to pitch in, but their resources are meagre and more than 2,500 families cannot be helped by the Church.
There is no information from government or the district administration about the livelihood of those affected by the violence. The administration without delay must conceive and execute a scheme so that every family effected by violence has at least one person, if not more, in gainful employment in government projects so that they can live a life of dignity, and to prevent large scale migration and pauperisation of victim families.
It was felt special projects for the women victims, and especially young girls, are also required urgently in Kandhamal. There are already rumours of human trafficking. I pray they remain rumours.
The administration has to act swiftly on the issue of allotting land for homes to those persons who have fallen into the gap of the Forest Act, and have no land to build their houses. They have to be identified, allotted land so that they can live in peace without facing the perpetual threat of being ousted.
The administration, civil and police, have also to act with their full strength to stop the hate campaign that has been unleashed in the last one year, and which has penetrated distant villages, creating schism and hatred between communities. The law of the land must be implemented severely to contain and deter those indulging in this activity.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Kandhamal Update 4th December 2009
4TH DECEMBER 2009
From John Dayal in Kandhamal:
Of the 12 murder cases tried inthe fast Track courts in Phulbani, Kandhamal district or Orissa, India, the accused have been let off in 11 murders, and convicted in just one. A member of the State Legislative assembly on the Bharatiya Janata party ticket, Mr Manoj Pradhan, has been let off in th four cases in which he has been tried so ar. He and his henchmen have been accused by witnesses of terrorising them, or seeking to bribe them.
A belated effort is now being made to revive civil society and the process of justice and reconciliation towards a lasting peace in Kandhamal, which remains the worst single case of persecution of Christians in South Asia. Most of the over 5,000 houses destroyed in the December 2007 and August 24-October 2008 mayhem remain un-built, and several thousand of the 50,000 Christian refugees are still to return home. Many cannot as they have been told they have to convert to Hinduism before they will be accepted in the villages. The threats and coercion continue till today.
The police and administration, as usual, look on. The one change is the Chief Minister, Mr Naveen Patnaik’s acceptance, in an answer in the State legislature, that it was the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and its sister organisations of the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad which were responsible in the anti Christian violence, the first time the government has accepted this reality. Two judicial commissions of enquiry, plodding on in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, are yet to admit this fact.
The following is an update:
I. The Harsh Reality of Orissa and especially of Kandhamal is:
1. No one raised a voice when violence hit the Christians in December 2007 and August 2008, not even the governments
2. Civil Society in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, if it existed, played dead, and nation was not moved.
3. Barring a few Left parties who could protest, the Political Apparatus remained silent and invisible, including so called friendly parties and groups
4. The Media was violently biased, specially the Oriya Media
5. Fact Finding groups either misunderstood the causes, or just blamed either Conversions or Dalit-Tribal conflicts as the cause of the violence, and even people’s enquiry commissions incouding An Oriya Judge and Teesta Setalvad have yet to give their reports on the 2007 violence.
6. Post violence, civil society and peace institutions have yet to be revived.
7. Church was shattered, deeply wounded and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the violence. Barring the PILs in the Supreme Court, no real pressure on Government to construct all houses fully, pay sustenance allowances etc, and government jobs.
II. Post Violence;
1. Church is focussed on helping complete houses instead of using the law to let government complete the houses. As a result, though the Catholic Church says it will help complete 1200 houses, Believers Church 900 Houses, Eficor about 300 houses, and CNI a similar number, another 2,500 houses remain without help. Also without help are the 250 or so victims of the 2007 violence, especially in Barakhama, who have been left to thereon devices.
2. Although there has been much work by religious groups in distributing Holy Bibles and clothes, and in counselling victims, there has not been commensurate work in enhancing the sense of security.
3. The result is that complainants and witnesses to violence feel very insecure and are susceptible to coercion, blackmail and perhaps allurement.
4. The result has been that despite the effort of well meaning young lawyers, especially of the CLA and HRLN, not much progress has been made in getting convictions especially in the murder cases involving BJP political leaders.
5. In many villages, refugees have not been able to return because the threat of forcible conversion to Hinduism remains.
6. The government peace committees remain on paper, or are loaded against Christians
7. Not much headway has been made in getting the Collector to secure land for non Tribals so they can construct their houses.
8. No headway has been made at village level towards reconciliation
III. Reviews:
1. Civil Society groups have met sporadically to assess the situation, including those coming from Delhi, but there has not been much sharing of info and concepts.
2. The first major initiative was taken by Fr Ajay and Mr Dhirendra Panda to call a meeting on 3rd November 2009 in Bhubaneswar to assess the satiation. Almost the entire political spectrum, excluding the BJP, BJD and Congress, were present, incouding women groups, tribal and Dalit groups and specialists. Several victims were also present. Dr Dayal, and Advocate Sr Mary Scaria, Ms Lansinglu Rongmei, Mrs Tehmina Ram Arora and Ms Vrinda Grover met several times in New Delhi to discuss the legal issues.
3. As part of the follow up of the decisions and recommendations of those meeting, some activists held meetings in It was also decided o get senior advocates and observers to be present for some time in the Fast Track courts so that grounds could be prepared for intervention in superior courts.
4. As a follow-up of those meetings and after consultations with senior Bishops of Orissa of various denominations, it was felt that the Church had a major role to play at the grassroots level to reconstruct social and civil society structures to give courage and strength to the victims. This can be done only at the homeland village level and not by outsiders from Bhubaneswar or elsewhere in the country.
5. It was therefore decided to call a meeting in Berhampur, the nearest big town, of all religious workers – Priests, pastors, catholic religious, NGO workers, catechists and others – on 7th December 2007 for a full day discussion cum workshop to discuss the issue and to encourage the religious groups to begin grassroots work apart from the religious work and relief they have been doing.
6. It was decided to bring experts to help brief the religious on these issues.
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