Extremists Demolish a Christian Prayer Hall in the state of Karnataka in India
02/05/2022 INDIA (FIACONA) - According to the Express News Service, some suspected of Hindu nationalists have demolished a Christian prayer hall on 5th February in Panjimogaru town of Mangaluru in Karnataka state of India. According to Roy Castaleno, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Catholic Diocese of Mangalore, the church was built over 40 years ago on a 585 sq ft land which was now managed by the St Antony Building Committee formed by local people of the area. According to the news service, Castaleno said, some men started clearing the trees on the church premises without permission. So, he called the police but the police did not respond. But on Saturday, the news report said around 11 am when all men had gone away to work, some people came with the backhoe and quickly tore down the building. The demolition was recorded by some local women on their mobile phones. A police case was filed and the Deputy Commissioner of Police KV Rajendra has sought a complete report but it is still not clear who demolished it. There has been no arrests so far.
Child abuse: Indian Commission seeks only ‘conversions’
02/04/2021: Journalistic investigation accuses the president of the NCPCR, the Indian national body for the rights of the child: "Carry out the Hindutva agenda against Christians and Muslims". All while in India the Covid-19 pandemic has created over 147 thousand orphans. "How Hindutva has kidnapped the body for the protection of children". To launch the heavy accusation against the Hindu nationalist movements that form the political base of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is an investigation published in these days in India by the information site Scroll.in. A phenomenon that deals with a topic that in recent months we have encountered more and more often also in our reports on AsiaNews : the direct involvement of Indian public institutions that are supposed to defend the rights of children in the "anti-conversion" campaigns of Hindu nationalists that go to hit Christian schools and hostels that welcome minors. As the Scroll.in investigation documents, the issue of conversions has recently become a real obsession for the NCPCR: other cases are remembered such as the assault on St Joseph's School by Ganj Basoda , which is located in Madhya Pradesh. in the district where Kanoongo originates. At the beginning of December the school was the victim of
Nun stays in prison, while other Sisters are attacked in Tamil Nadu
The suicide of a girl in a hostel run by the Franciscans of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is being used to fuel accusations of conversion. The case is now in the hands of India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, but according to the local school board no complaints were ever filed against the nuns. Meanwhile, in another district, two nuns were attacked by Hindu radicals. For Archbishop Felix Machado, Hindu nationalists “have cleverly constructed a narrative and found ways to carry it out” against Christians. Chennai (AsiaNews) – Sr Sahaya Mary, a 62-year-old member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, will remain in prison. She was arrested in connection with the suicide on 19 January of a girl at a hostel run by the Sisters in Michaelpatti, a village in Thanjavur district (Diocese of Kumbakonam). Hindu nationalists have been exploiting the tragedy, which stems from the girl's troubled relationship with her family, in order to accuse the nuns of pressuring the girl to convert. They rely on a video that went viral in which the girl mentions being asked to convert two years ago, which she refused to do. The nun’s application for bail was turned down by the Madras
Holy men and seers gathered at an annual Hindu festival demand, India be declared a Hindu nation, and want death penalty for conversions.
(FIACONA NEWS SERVICE) Jan 31, 2022, New Delhi: Thousands of Hindu holy men who are attending the annual 47-day religious festival called Magh Mela have demanded that the Modi government make way for declaring India officially a Hindu nation-state by removing the word "secular" from the preamble to the Constitution of India. They also have resolved that the Modi government in Delhi must pass legislation that makes religious conversion of any Hindu to another faith is an act of treason, a crime deserving capital punishment reports Times of India. The conference is held during the 47 day festival on the banks of the Ganges river. The demand of the holy men, for whom Mr. Modi and his government have a great deal of respect, and whose support they need to stay in power, comes at a time when attacks against Christians are becoming a normal occurrence every day across India. The Hindu nationalists of the BJP party accuse the Christian families and pastors of converting the local people even if they hold a private prayer meeting at a home or at a church. Such prayer meetings are branded as conversion attempts and are subject to attacks and violence. The supporters of Mr. Modi's
Colleges and universities across the US are moving to ban caste discrimination
(CNN)On paper, the change was subtle -- the word "caste" appearing in parentheses after the term "race and ethnicity." But for many advocates and student leaders, the tweak to California State University's anti-discrimination policy that quietly went into effect on January 1 was a civil rights victory: An acknowledgment from the nation's largest, four-year public university system that the insidious form of oppression that has long haunted some on campus is, in fact, real. Caste-oppressed students, who mostly hail from South Asian immigrant and diaspora backgrounds, say that casteism tends to manifest in US colleges and universities through slurs, microaggressions and social exclusion. But because these dynamics play out within these minority communities, most other Americans have little understanding of how they operate -- leaving these students, many of whom refer to themselves as Dalits, without recourse. Click here to read the full story on CNN
