Bhubaneshwar, INDIA, 17.10.08 – The Hindu fundamentalist groups that have been involved for more than a month in Orissa’s anti-Christian pogrom are becoming more methodical. Sometimes with police assistance they prevent Christians from meeting to pray, try to murder new converts, and are trying to take over the land where churches and Christian homes once stood in order to wipe off the face of the earth any trace of Christian presence.

After visiting three government-run refugee camps, Fr Ajay Singh, director of Jan Vikas, a Catholic centre for social action complained that “our people are being treated like animals. They have been given just one blanket per family and sanitation and hygiene are simply non-existent. But what is even more tragic is the fact that they are not even allowed to pray, and are instead closely monitored by security forces. Women are particularly vulnerable—they are not allowed to get any counselling so that their emotional health is deteriorating rapidly.”

Meanwhile some Christians are “reconverting” to Hinduism, forced to burn Bibles and prayer books, have their heads shaved, coerced into drinking cow urine (to purify them), placed for days under the watchful eye of Hindu groups so that they do not have any contacts with their former co-religionists.