News

India: Bloody attack on Christians preparing to celebrate Christmas, hundreds injured

November 25, 2020

Persecution of Christians in India: note in the story below that the area where this attack took place “is isolated, perhaps to not allow witnesses and the police refuse to respond to calls.” Even worse, as we have seen many times, police are all too often more sympathetic to the accusers than to the victims.

Christianity has been in India since apostolic times, brought there by St. Thomas the Apostle in A.D. 52, as attested by St. Ephraim, St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory the Theologian, among others. St. Thomas was martyred in India in A.D. 72. Today the Malankara Orthodox Church of the East still survives there, an apostolic Church that broke with Holy Orthodoxy over the Council of Chalcedon in 451. There also remains a small number of Orthodox Christians under the jurisdiction of the the Holy Metropolis of Singapore. Roman Catholics and Protestants came to the Indian Subcontinent much later. As this article shows, Christians are frequently persecuted in India, mistreated and even brutalized by the Hindu majority. This persecution occasionally turns violent.

Christians of the ancient apostolic Churches are less often subjected to this treatment than are evangelical Protestants, but this persecution is a matter of concern for all Christians, and for all people of good will who believe in the dignity of every human person and in every person’s freedom to worship as his or her conscience dictates.

For previous ChristianPersecution.com coverage of the persecution of Christians in India, see here.

“Bloody attack on Chhattisgarh Christians preparing to celebrate Christmas. Hundreds injured.” By Nirmala Carvalho, Asia News, November 25, 2020:

Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Hundreds of people have been injured at a gathering of Christians preparing to celebrate Christmas. There are even some unconfirmed reports of deaths. The area is isolated, perhaps to not allow witnesses and the police refuse to respond to calls.

The violence took place in the village of Sindhwaram, in Chhattisgarh: from 2 this night until the morning, a crowd of drunk and armed people attacked a tent where groups of Christians who had been celebrating the beginning of the Advent season in preparation for Christmas had gone to sleep the previous day. The gathering was also attended by faithful from other villages around. The village members have sealed off the area and are not allowing anyone to enter or take photos or videos.

Activist Arun Pannalal, president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, managed to get in touch with the Gajral police station only this morning at 6 am. The police denied all violence. The victims are being housed in the police station. Members of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum say that as soon as they heard of the attack, they immediately phoned the police, but the phone lines were cut off from 2am until this morning.

The Chhattisgarh region is known for a series of violence against Christians and other religious minorities….