Christmas in India. "There was no room for them at the inn"

Rome, January 14, 2009
by Sandro Magister

ROMA, January 13, 2009 – In the areas of Orissa that have been the theater of anti-Christian attacks, celebrations were held this Christmas without significant incidents. Unlike what happened at Christmas of 2007, when more than a hundred churches and a thousand homes were devastated and burned.

But about 20,000 Christians from the district of Kandhamal, the epicenter of the attacks, continue to stay away from their villages, which they fled in August and September. Their homes have been destroyed, and above all they do not feel sufficiently protected. They are living in tents on the edges of the forest, in a dozen refugee camps. The police are closing the camps one by one, forcing the refugees to go back home in exchange for 10,000 rupees (about 150 euros), 50 kilos of rice, and a roll of plastic to use as a shelter.

On January 4, the supreme court of India – after giving a hearing to the attorney of the archbishop of Bhubaneswar, Raphael Cheenath – criticized the government of Orissa for its late and feeble reaction to the anti-Christian pogrom last summer, and told it to "resign if it is incapable of protecting the minorities." The government of Orissa is headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Biju Janata Dal, the two parties of reference for the Hindu groups that committed the violence. the rest

Orissa: insecurity and hatred await Christians forced out of refugee camps