RIGHTS-INDIA: PRIEST'S MURDER BETRAYS OFFICIAL APATHY, GROUPS SAY

Inter Press Service

3 September 1999

By Ranjit Dev Raj

 

NEW DELHI, Sep. 3 (IPS) -- The killing of a Catholic priest yesterday in eastern Orissa state betrays official apathy to continuing fundamentalist violence against minorities, say human rights groups.

Father Arul Doss, a Roman Catholic priest died in a hail of arrows in the tribal Mayurbhanj district near where an Australian evangelist Graham Staines and his two young sons were burnt alive by alleged Hindu fundamentalists in January.

In a letter to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Archbishop of Delhi, Alain de Lastic blamed the "unabated terror campaign against the Christian community in Orissa which led to the brutal slaying..." of the priest.

The United Christian Forum for Human Rights of which the Archbishop is president has called for nationwide demonstrations tomorrow to protest the killing of Father Doss, a priest from the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

In Delhi, the protests will be in the form of a march by diverse religious organizations, including Hindu religious groups, to the India Gate monument, said Forum convener John Dayal.

Although it is unclear who exactly was responsible for the slaying of Father Doss, Dayal laid blame on "the same ideology responsible for the Staines' murders."

"We are distressed that such crimes continue to occur despite assurances by both the Central and the state government that adequate steps are being taken to ensure the safety and security of minority communities and especially religious persons," the Archbishop said in his letter.

Father Doss was killed barely hours after the Congress party, which rules Orissa, led a state-wide strike to protest the killing of a Muslim youth, Sheikh Rehman by suspected Hindu fundamentalists in Mayurbhanj district last week.

According to eyewitness, Rehman was hacked to death by Dara Singh, suspected member of the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu fanatic group affiliated to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which leads the ruling coalition at the center.

Dayal said the killing of Rehman clearly showed that not only Christians but other minorities were also being targeted by "communal" forces with both the Central and state governments shrugging off responsibility and blaming each other.

However, the pro-Hindu, BJP of Prime Minister Vajpayee has reacted to the killings by going on the offensive and demanding the "immediate resignation of the Congress government in Orissa," Vajpayee, promoted as a moderate within the BJP, said rather than extract political mileage

out of the incident on the eve of the general elections, political parties and social organizations should get together and prevent further violence.

Ever since the party came to power in March last year, India has seen a wave of violence against Christian missionaries and institutions, especially in the tribal areas of western Gujarat state and in Orissa.

Union Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani has himself admitted that by February 1999 there had been as many as 116 communal crimes again Christians, more than in all the 51 years since India's Independence.

The wave seemed to abate only after the public outrage generated by the burning alive by a mob of Hindu fundamentalists, led by Dara Singh, of the Staines as they slept in a jeep. International condemnation of the incident was swift and biting.

Vajpayee said it made him hang his head in shame and President K.R. Narayanan placed it "among the world's inventory of black deeds."

Union Home Minister Advani quickly ordered the setting up of a commission of inquiry headed by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court but appeared to set the tone for it by declaring that Hindu groups were not involved in the killings.

In the event, the Justice Wadhwa commission of inquiry, tabled last month held Dara Singh responsible but saw no reason to link him with Hindu fundamentalist groups in spite of police reports to the contrary.

The South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center (SAHRC), in a report on the Wadhwa Commission of Inquiry released last week, suggests what several Christian organizations have already said -- that it was a whitewashing exercise.

In the report, the SAHRC says the findings of the commission were in "stark opposition to the preponderance of evidence placed before the commission that Dara Singh was closely associated with and was a member of the Bajrang Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)."

The SAHRC report also opined that the commission had failed to locate the killings of the Staines in a national context and "link it to the tide of violence against Christians in 1998."

Finally, the SAHRC, an independent, well-established body accused the commission of "playing party politics by blaming the Congress government in Orissa for the Staines killings."

"The report does nothing to reassure minorities that their rights will be protected in accordance with international law and the Constitution of India," the SAHRC report said.

The report's worth "lies only in showing the world that the Government of India did something," it concluded.