Christians in India targeted by Hindu extremists attempting a repeat of the 2008 massacre
Locator map of the state of Orissa, India with district boundaries. Photo/Jayanta Nath via wikimedia commons
Some 50 Hindu extremists attacked a tiny Christian village in the southeastern India, Orissa.
Asia News reports that the pastor of a Pentecostal Church and 12 families of his community were seriously wounded as the police seized explosives and dynamite in another district (Puri) of Orissa. According to the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), Hindu nationalists are preparing a “diabolical plan” to repeat the 2008 violence of Kandhamal.
Orissa was the site of a 2008 anti-Christian pogrom that left an estimated 100 dead and 50,000 homeless.
“Every single Christian denomination has been attacked, our schools, our colleges, our orphanages. Everything that Christians own –Christian homes, Christian institutions, Christian churches– have been attacked,” said Dr. Richard Howell of the Evangelical Fellowship of India back in 2008 describing the incidents. “The idea is to eliminate Christians from Orissa.”
The violence took place in the district of Balasore.
According to the GCIC president, the attack “is meant to terrify the Christian minority. They want to repeat what happened in 2008, with the anti-Christian progroms in the Kandhamal district.”
Confirming this hypothesis was the discovery of some handmade explosives in another district of the state.
On June 15, a group of Hindu nationalists attacked and seriously injured the Rev. Baidhar, 50, while he was returning home in the village of Mitrapur after a prayer service. The attackers left the minister on the ground, bleeding. Shortly after, some believers found him and took him to a local hospital to receive the necessary treatment.
