New Report Reveals Indian Police Encouraged Massacre of Orissan Christians
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 8, 2011 – A human rights report released Wednesday concludes that Indian police forces encouraged mobs of Hindu supremacists during the 2008 massacre of Christians in Orissa, India.
Published by National People’s Tribunal (NPT), a human rights jury formed by a coalition of social activists, the report investigates the motives behind the VHP’s massacre of 70 Christians and torture of nearly 18,000 more. Edited by Delhi High Court Chief Justice A.P. Shah, the report details how Orissa’s government colluded with the militant Hindu supremacist group, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) as Christians suffered widespread torture, rape and murder. Several were burnt alive.
“Indian police officers in every police station in India torture Indian citizens every day,” said Bhajan Singh, a founding director of Organization for Minorities of India, a human rights institute. “Their most frequent victims are Indian minorities. Many police openly join supremacist groups like VHP and so can be expected to ignore the torture of minorities by rioting VHP members. Even when the most heinous atrocities take place directly before their eyes, police never act if the perpetrator is a Hindu supremacist. The brutal abuse of Sister Meena perfectly illustrates that.”
Sister Meena Lalita Barwa, a nun, was seized August 25, 2008 by a mob of VHP members and gang-raped inside a pastoral centre. When she briefly escaped, the armed mob abducted Father Thomas Chellan. Sister Meena recounts: “I hid myself under the staircase. The crowd was shouting ‘where is that sister, come let us rape her, at least 100 people should rape.’ They found me under the staircase and took me out to the road. There I saw Fr. Chellan was kneeling down and the crowd was beating him. They were searching for a rope to tie us both of us together to burn us in fire. Someone suggested to make us parade naked.”
Her kidnappers paraded her naked past a large group of police officers, who ignored Sister Meen’s pleas for help. She recounts: “When I reached the market the market place about a dozen of OSAP policemen were there. I went to them asking to protect me and I sat in between two policemen but they did not move… They were talking very friendly with the man who had attacked me and stayed back.”
Violence against Orissan Christians first sparked in December 2007 when top VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, without proof, accused Adivasi Christians of aiding Naxalite-Maoist insurgents. Adivasi are the indigenous inhabitants of India who are considered outside the Hindu caste system. Yet they still suffer social persecution by supremacist Hindu groups, particularly the many who identify as Christian instead of Hindu.
Violence climaxed in August 2008 after Naxalites assassinated Saraswati. Christians denied responsibility, Naxalites claimed responsibility and yet the VHP blamed Christians. So VHP mobs began targeting Adivasi and Dalit Christians in Kandhamal district of Orissa. Seventy were killed, 18,008 severely injured, 50 are missing presumed dead, 640 Christians homes were burnt, 54,000 Christians made homeless and 149 churches destroyed. Ten thousand remain homeless, according to NPT’s new report.
Dalits are treated as the outcastes in the Hindu caste system. The VHP belongs to a family of supremacist known as Sangh Parivar. These groups adhere to Hindutva, and ideology that treats non-Hindus are foreign to India, professes India to be a Hindu nation and subjugates all but the upper-caste. For centuries, Dalits have been pushed to the bottom rung of society by socially empowered upper-caste Hindus. They remain the most discriminated against people group in South Asia.
Violence in Orissa prompted the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent human rights monitoring body, to place India on its “Watch List” in 2009. India remains on this list, which is reserved for countries that “require close monitoring due to the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the governments.” In its 2011 report, the USCRIF explained that “an inadequate police response failed to quell the violence,” stating: “Mass arrests following the Orissa violence did not translate into the actual filing of many cases, and the courts prosecuting the claims absolved a high percentage of cases for lack of evidence.”
Implicating Orissa’s government for failing to prosecute perpetrators of atrocities, NPT stated: “The criminal justice system was rendered ineffective by the authorities’ ambiguities and omissions, including police, judges and the state itself, as well as their collusion with extremist groups.” Although some media outlets suggested conversion efforts by Christians sparked violence, NPT calls those claims “propaganda,” saying: “The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has used it to play Dalit Christians against Hindu Adivasi.”
Arvin Valmuci, communications coordinator for OFMI, cited his group’s November 2011 report, “Demons Within: The Systematic Practice of Torture by Indian Police.” Noting the omnipresence of torture in Indian police stations, Valmuci said, “Torture is so universally accepted and encouraged among India’s police forces that it is a virtual certainty that anyone who is a police officer in India knows that torture occurs, has definitely been exposed to it, probably has participated in it and almost certainly has helped cover it up. Sister Meena’s experience is glaring proof.”