Pieter Friedrich, a USA journalist and author
specialising in the analysis of South Asian affairs has gone on a seven-day hunger strike, protesting against
the persecution of Christians in India.
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| Journalist and author Pieter Friedrich |
Friedrich went on hunger strike on Wednesday 5th January 2022, noting
that 2021 was the worst year for Christians in India since the persecution that began in 2014 when Narendra Modi's Bharatiya
Janata Party came to power.
"In total, they suffered nearly 500 attacks.
That’s almost four times as many attacks on Christians as were reported in
2014, the first year that the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to
power" he said.
In 2021, Faith Reporters reported about lawsforbidding Indians from becoming Christians, an Adventist Pastor accusing
authorities for backing religious persecution and a preacher who was beaten inpublic accused of being an enemy of the state.
On the second day of his hunger strike, Friedrich said
that over 95 percent of those were mob attacks conducted by organized mobs of
50, 100, or even 500 people and authorities arrest the victims instead of the
attackers.
"If the American Church cannot hear the screams
of the beaten and bloodied and sometimes crucified Christians of India, can
they at least hear the growling hunger of my empty stomach as I refuse food in
solidarity with our persecuted brothers and sisters of the Indian Church?"
he conclude.
Reported violation of freedom of conscience in India
The
US Commission of International Religious Freedom’s 2021 annual report ranked
India the fourth after Burma (Myanmar), China and Eritrea in the list of
countries that oppress religious freedom.
“The
government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), promoted Hindu nationalist
policies resulting in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of
religious freedom,” the report commented.
“In
late 2020, Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, passed an ordinance
avoiding any marriage conducted for the “sole purpose of unlawful conversion or
vice-versa,” the report noted.
The Open Doors,
an organisation that tracks religious freedom, in their recent report ranked
India in the top ten countries whose regimes oppress religious freedom using
religious nationalism to label those who are not reverent to Hinduism as
enemies of the state.
“Christians are accused of following a foreign faith and often physically attacked. If they don’t re-convert, their community may boycott them, with a devastating effect on their ability to earn income and buy food” the report says.
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