How to turn a country over to the mob
Stop a marriage, demolish a bus stop, frighten minorities. As the rule of law collapses in India, the whims of Hindu extremists become de facto State policy. Even in Karnataka, very few people know of the Hindu Jagruti Sene – their Facebook page has no more than 1,000 followers. In normal circumstances, no one would have bothered if a group on the fringes of the Hindu right demanded that the main train station in the dusty, poor northern city of Kalaburgi painted in green be repainted because “it looks like a mosque”. But this is the new India with every old vice resurrected and magnified, with fundamentalist demands, however nutty and bigoted, taken into serious consideration. So, it was no surprise that a few days later, the Indian railways – known for a notoriously slow bureaucracy, which takes years to even clear footbridges connecting metro and mainline stations – repainted Kalaburgi station white. Meanwhile, in the state capital of Bengaluru, a more well-known Hindu group called the Hindu Jangruti Samiti – its previous successes include a stop to the shows of “anti-Hindu” stand-up comics – successfully began lobbying legislators of the state and India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party for a ban on the
Texas Hindu charity that fundraised to demolish churches in India faces calls for investigation
A coalition of Christian and interfaith leaders in Texas are calling on members of U.S. Congress to condemn "anti-Christian hate and bigotry" from a local nonprofit they say is raising funds to demolish churches in India. The Federation of Indian American Christian Organization in North America (FIACONA) held a news conference Tuesday, warning that the Texas-based Global Hindu Heritage Foundation (GHHF) is raising money in the United States to level churches and forcibly convert Christians and Muslims in India to Hinduism. A Dec. 13 letter obtained by The Christian Post and addressed to U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Internal Revenue Service and others alleges GHHF is "one of many Hindu supremacist groups" using the U.S. as an "operating base" to promote violence against Christians in India. Founded in 2006, GHHF advocates an ideology known as Hindutva, or extremist Hindu supremacism, which holds that India belongs solely to Hindus to the exclusion of an estimated 220 million Indian Christians and Muslims, according to the statement. The letter — which was also co-signed by Church of The Way in Frisco and Concerned Indian American Christians in DFW — accuses GHHF and similar groups of "funding and actively promoting" attacks
Indian govt ‘must come clean on Fr Stan Swamy’s death’
Evidence ‘planted’ on the late Jesuit priest’s computer to ‘falsely’ implicate him in the Bhima-Koregaon case, US agency says Catholic activists and priests want the Indian government to “take full responsibility” for the custodial death of Jesuit Father Stan Swamy after latest findings by US-based digital forensic experts that false evidence was planted on the priest’s computer by hacking it. Arsenal Consulting, a Massachusetts-based digital forensics firm, in a recent report, said the “digital evidence used to arrest senior human rights defender Father Swamy in the Bhima-Koregaon case was planted on his computer’s hard drive.” The 84-year-old Jesuit, a rights activist based in eastern Jharkhand state, died as an undertrial in Mumbai on July 5 last year after being denied bail on medical grounds despite suffering from multiple age-related ailments. He was arrested on Oct. 8, 2020, by India's anti-terror National Investigation Agency (NIA) and accused of being party to a conspiracy allegedly hatched by outlawed Maoist rebels to unleash mob violence at Bhima-Koregaon in the western state of Maharashtra on Jan. 1, 2018. Arsenal said “the attacker responsible for compromising Father Swamy’s computer had extensive resources [including time] and it is obvious that the primary goals were surveillance and incriminating document delivery.” Disclosing details of
Hackers planted evidence on computer of jailed Indian priest, report says
Jesuit priest Stan Swamy died after spending more than eight months in jail on terrorism charges NEW DELHI — For months, Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest, claimed his innocence in courts and pleaded for medical care, but Indian authorities denied him bail. He died at a hospital in July 2021 after spending more than eight months in jail on terrorism charges. Now, an examination of an electronic copy of his computer by Arsenal Consulting, a Massachusetts-based digital forensics firm, concludes that a hacker infiltrated his device and planted evidence, according to a new report by the company. The analysis is more proof that Swamy and his co-defendants were framed in a case that exemplifies the Indian government’s crackdown against civil society and prominent critics, the defense team says. More than a dozen activists, academics and lawyers have been imprisoned under an anti-terrorism law — some for more than four years — accused of having ties to a banned Maoist armed group that aims to overthrow the government. They deny the charges. The stringent terrorism law has drawn criticism in part because the accused can rarely secure bail and cases brought under the law have a poor conviction rate. They were accused of plotting
USCIRF ISSUES STATEMENT – USCIRF Outraged by Omission of Nigeria and India from State Department’s List of Countries of Particular Concern
USCIRF Outraged by Omission of Nigeria and India from State Department’s List of Countries of Particular Concern Washington, DC – The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) finds it inexplicable that the U.S. Department of State did not include Nigeria or India in its latest designations of “Countries of Particular Concern” (CPCs) under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), turning a blind eye to both countries’ particularly severe religious freedom violations. “There is no justification for the State Department’s failure to recognize Nigeria or India as egregious violators of religious freedom, as they each clearly meet the legal standards for designation as CPCs. USCIRF is tremendously disappointed that the Secretary of State did not implement our recommendations and recognize the severity of the religious freedom violations that both USCIRF and the State Department have documented in those countries,” said USCIRF Chair Nury Turkel. “The State Department’s own reporting includes numerous examples of particularly severe religious freedom violations in Nigeria and India.” Pursuant to IRFA, the State Department re-designated 10 countries as CPCs—Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. The State Department also added Cuba and Nicaragua to its CPC list, both of which previously had been on the Department’s SWL. In its 2022 Annual Report in
