Washington, USA (February 10, 2013):
According to certain media reports Indian Christians and Sikhs united
last month to urge California Congressmen to support a House resolution
that would make human rights and justice for religious minorities a
priority in U.S.-India talks.
HR 417 is waiting on hearings in the
U.S. House Foreign Affairs and Judiciary committees, which must approve
it before it can come to the House floor for a vote. The annual talks,
which President Barack Obama began in 2009, last took place in June
2013.
“This
is a particularly concerning issue at the moment because India is going
to elect a new prime minister in May,” said Pieter Singh, executive
director of Sikh Information Centre and Advisor to the Organization for
Minorities of India.
Singh said both candidates, Rahul Gandhi
and Narendra Modi, are linked to past attacks on religious minorities,
including Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians. Gandhi is the grandson of
Indira Gandhi, who led a military assault on the Golden Temple, a Sikh
holy place, in 1984. Modi has been accused of being complicit in the
2002 massacre of Muslims in Gujarat state, according to Agence France
Presse. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata party, a Hindu
nationalist political group.
“This is where religious minorities in
India are at the moment,” Singh said. “These two men are fighting to
rule India and look at their records.” The union of Christians and
Sikhs, was a “natural alliance” given their religious motivation to help
the oppressed, he said.
In 2009, the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) put India on a “watch list” for
its inadequate response to anti-Christian violence in Orissa (now
Odisha) in 2008, and the Gujarat killings of Muslims in 2002. In 2013,
USCIRF’s annual report placed India in Tier 2 status, noting that
Christians, Sikhs, and Muslims said intimidation and harassment had
increased, especially in states with laws against “forced” conversions.
William Stark, International Christian
Concern’s Regional Manager for South Asia, said most persecution in
India stems from Hindutva, the ideology that to be Indian is to be Hindu
and that other faiths are foreign. Authorities said Hindu extremists
were part of the group that stabbed a Christian pastor to death on his
doorstep in early January, Morning Star News reported.
Hindu extremists use anti-forced
conversion laws, which makes it illegal to “induce” someone to convert,
to arrest Christians because the interpretation of the word “induce” can
include the promise of eternal life, Stark said. In 2013, the Catholic
Secular Forum counted 4,000 offenses against Christians, including
attacks on clergy and churches.
“Passing HR 417 means valuing peace and
the preservation of human life over political gain, and supporting the
resolution is one of the key ways Christians can act to relieve the
oppressed,” Singh said in a statement.
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