Orissa: government forbids rebuilding of destroyed churches

August 23, 2011

Three years after an anti-Christian rampage left an estimated 100 dead and 50,000 homeless, the government of the Kandhamal district in the eastern Indian state of Orissa is forbidding the construction of new churches and the rebuilding of churches that had been destroyed.

“Thousands of faithful Christians in Kandhamal are still under evacuation, they are camped on the outskirts of cities, have lost all their possessions, live in poverty and suffer from problems of unemployment,” the Fides news agency reports. “In addition, the trials against the perpetrators of the massacres of 2008 are conditioned to often end in acquittals, perpetuating a situation of general impunity.”

 

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Further information:

• Stop to the construction of churches in Orissa: religious freedom violated and Christians discriminated (Fides)
• India: official in Orissa threatens to demolish refugees' church (CWN, 8/18)