Hate crimes and targeted violence against Christians in India during the first two months of 2019 showed a jump of 57 percent over the same period in 2018, a new report revealed.
During January and February, 77 incidents of “hate and targeted violence against Christians” were documented in India as compared with the 49 cases recorded during the same period last year, according to the Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI).
The EFI report said that the official figures are invariably low, because most cases of persecution go unreported, either because the victim and witnesses are too frightened to speak out, or because the police ignore the harassment and fail to file mandatory First Information Reports.
The sharp rise in Christian persecution for 2019 had already been forecast by Release International, a U.K.-based charity that helps persecuted Christians around the world, which warned in early January that persecution against Christians would rise this year, particularly in a few key nations, including India.
“These are countries that have long been on the list but we’re seeing an upwards curve, an alarming rise in persecution,” said Andrew Boyd, spokesman for Release International, underscoring India’s “militant Hinduism.”
The acts of persecution and harassment in January and February include the murders of two Christians last month, one in Odisha state and the other in Chhattisgarh state. The Christians — one of whom was a convert — were killed by Maoist rebels, known as Naxalites, after villagers hostile to the Christian faith falsely reported them to the rebels as police informants.
On March 18, ADF India said that India’s Christians have been victims of “collective, systematic violence” in the first months of 2019, and that even Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity had been threatened.
Open Doors’ World Watch List of nations where it is most difficult to be a Christian placedIndia at number 10 in 2019. Just seven years ago, India was ranked number 31 but has climbed the ranks every year since Narendra Modi, a hardliner of the Bharatiya Janata Party, came to power as prime minister in 2014.
Christians make up just 2.3 percent of India’s population of 1.3 billion, which is overwhelmingly Hindu.
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