Anti-Christian pogroms in Orissa

In India's Orissa state, Hindu mobs have been burning churches, gang-raping nuns and murdering Christians in recent days. Here's a blog that's compiling news about the pogroms, the details of which are utterly horrifying. For example, Catholic News Service reports:

Father Thomas Chellen, undergoing treatment at a Catholic hospital in Bhubaneswar, India, said he was grateful to be alive after a Hindu mob nearly set him on fire.

"They had poured kerosene on my head, and one held a matchbox in his hands to light the fire. But thanks to divine providence, in the end, they did not do that. Otherwise, I would not have been there to tell this horror," the 55-year-old priest, director of the pastoral center at Konjamendi in the Indian state of Orissa, told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview from his hospital bed Aug. 28.

Following the Aug. 23 murder of a Hindu leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, by Maoist extremists, Father Chellen said Hindu mobs started attacking Christian centers in Kandhamal, the district where the slain leader was based.

More:

"They began our crucifixion parade," said Father Chellen. The gang of about 50 armed Hindus "beat us up and led us like culprits along the road" to the burned pastoral center.

"There they tore my shirt and started pulling off the clothes of the nun. When I protested, they beat me hard with iron rods. Later, they took the sister inside (and) raped her while they went on kicking and teasing me, forcing (me) to say vulgar words," said the priest who has cuts, bruises and swollen tissue all over his body and stitches on his face.

"Later both of us, half-naked, were taken to the street, and they ordered me to have sex with the nun in public, saying nuns and priests do it. As I refused, they went on beating me and dragged us to the nearby government office. Sadly, a dozen policemen were watching all this," he said.

Angry at his plea to the police for help, the mob beat the bleeding priest again.

Notice that Maoists killed the Hindu leader -- the Indian government confirms this -- but the Hindu mobs are taking it out on Christians. Until I saw the link on Amy Welborn's blog, the only thing I'd read about any of this violence was a story deep inside the New York Times earlier in the week, with the headline: "Faiths Clash, Displacing Thousands in East India." Ah, yes, "faiths clash;" what's next for the Times, reporting a gang rape by saying, "Sexes clash"? I've noticed this over the years when the MSM reports on violence members of other religions inflict on a Christian minority in a faraway land: they tend to present it as Just One of Those Things -- that is, as if there really were no victims, only clashing parties. I noticed it six years ago, when Baptist medical missionaries serving the poor in Shia-controlled Lebanon were murdered by Muslims. The reporting I read framed it as a "faiths clash" deal. You know, Muslims and Christians are fighting, who can say who's right, yadda yadda... .

Anyway, terrible, terrible things are going on in Orissa now. Those people need our prayers. The government of India ought to hear from us too. How can India let such savages run rampant over any minority, Christian or otherwise? What kind of country is India, anyway? Contact the Indian ambassador and ask:

Amb. Ronen Sen
Embassy of India
2107 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20008
USA - 20008
Telephone: (202) 939-7000
Fax: (202) 265-4351
Embassy Hours: 930 AM - 600 PM EST