NEW DELHI: The United Christian Forum (UCF), a Delhi-based civil society organisation focused on Christian issues, has said that the first 2.5 months of 2024 have witnessed a large-scale erosion of basic fundamental rights and protection of Indian Christians.
The UCF in a statement in Delhi said, “January witnessed 70 incidents of violence against Christians followed by 62 incidents in 29 days of February and 29 incidents in 15 days of March, 2024”. This comes to a total of 161 incidents in 2.5 months.
The incidents include violence, attacks on churches or prayers meetings, harassment of those following their faith, ostracisation and limiting access to community resources, and false allegations, particularly those pertaining to forced conversions, the Christian forum said.
Ostracisation of Christians for following their faith continues in Chhattisgarh, according to the press release. “Christians are being denied access to water from the community-bore-well of the village. In this state, sadly, even dead Christians are not spared as many were denied burial as per Christian rituals. Local villagers have been threatening to cremate the bodies as a final act of Gharwapasi….Locals are physically assaulting, threatening their lives and vandalizing their homes,” the UCF has said.
In Uttar Pradesh, which saw the second highest number of incidents after Chhattisgarh, there is “clear evidence of state-sponsored harassment of Christians” as “the police files false allegations of conversion against the pastors even for praying in birthday parties and other social gatherings”, the release said.
“In all, there are 19 states in India wherein Christians are facing threat to their lives for practicing their faith. There are 122 Christians who have either been detained or arrested on the false allegation of conversions in just 75 days of 2024,” the group stated.
