India: Attacks continue despite Congressional letter
By Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Despite having received a letter last month from the U.S. Congress requesting that India’s prime minister condemn the sectarian attacks on his nation’s religious minorities, PM Narendra Modi remains unmoved.
According to International Christian Concern, India has seen a dramatic rise in the persecution of its Christians by Hindu nationalist groups.
“I continue to be very disappointed by India’s response to the religious persecution taking place across the country,” Congressman Joe Pitts told ICC. “In the one month since myself and 33 of my colleagues in the House and Senate called on Prime Minister Modi to publically condemn the ban on non-Hindu faiths in the Bastar District and other violent assaults on religious minorities, there has been little but evasion and obstruction by Mr. Modi’s government.”
William Stark, ICC’s Regional Manager for South Asia, said: “It has been over a month since Prime Minister Modi and his government received an open letter from 34 members of the US Congress calling on him to specifically speak out against the intolerance faced by India’s religious minorities, yet little has changed. In fact, Prime Minister Modi and his government have not only failed to condemn attacks faced by India’s religious minorities, they have belittled the suffering for millions by calling reports of persecution in India ‘aberrations.’ While Prime Minister Modi has remained silent, we have recorded 27 separate attacks on Christians in India, affecting over 1,400 Christians. These attacks are not aberrations; they are the result of a trend in which millions of Indian citizens from minority faiths are being denied their constitutional right to religious freedom….”