The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to make slow but steady inroads into Kerala, an unassailable bastion for the saffron party so far, results of the recently held local body elections indicate.
Although the BJP failed to perform as expected in the Kerala civic elect-ions, it has significantly improved its 2015 tally, reports the Times of India.
Why is India denying prisoners spectacles and straws?
But in recent weeks, jail authorities in India have been called out for being especially cruel to prisoners, particularly the govern-ment’s critics who are described as “human rights defenders” by international rights groups.
Earlier this month, the Bombay High Court reminded officials of Mumbai’s Taloja jail that they needed to show some “humanity” while dealing with the needs of inmates.
“We need to conduct workshops for jailers. How are such small items denied? These are all human considerations,” Justices SS Shinde and MS Karnik said.
The “small items” here were spectacles that jailed activist Gautam Navlakha had been denied.
The judges’ comment came after his family told the press that his spectacles were stolen in prison and that when they sent a fresh pair, the authorities refused to accept them.
“He was allowed to call me on 30 November, three days after his glasses were stolen. He’s 68, he needs a high-powered lens and without them, he’s nearly blind,” his partner, Sahba Husain, told me.
Since the start of the pandemic in mid-March, India has stopped all visits by family or lawyers to jail. Inmates are not even allowed to receive parcels.
Husain says Navlakha told her that he had spoken to the jail superintendent and had been assured that he would receive his spectacles.
Husain, who lives in Delhi, quickly got a new pair made and posted them on 3 December.
“I checked three-four days later and realized that the parcel had reached the jail on 5 December, but had been refused and returned.”
It was only after the judges read out a lesson in “humanity,” and subsequent outrage on social media that jail authorities provided a new set of spectacles to Mr Navlakha.
A former secretary of the non-governmental organisation People’s Union for Democratic Rights, Navlakha is no ordinary prisoner. He’s spent a lifetime working for civil liberties and is respected globally.
He’s been in jail since the middle of April in connection with what is known as the Bhima Koregaon case.
He’s among 16 activists, poets and lawyers who have been arrested over the past two years on charges of instigating caste violence at a Dalit rally in Bhima Koregaon village in the western State of Maharashtra on 1 January 2018. They all deny the charges against them.
PM to help sort out Kerala church issues
With differences between Orthodox and Jacobite factions in widening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will talk to both groups to find a lasting solution to some issues, said Mizoram Governor P S Sreedharan Pillai. The governor, also hailing from Kerala, said he had briefed the Prime Minister about all issues and sought his intervention to help solve them. He said leaders of both factions will be met separately and later to joint meeting will be called. Pillai also said he will also discuss the issue with Home Minister Amit Shah.
The growing friction between the two factions has invited enough embarrassment for the community and often created big law and order problems in the state. Earlier Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan also tried to broker peace between two but failed to make much headway as both sides stuck to their stands.
“There is a complaint that central funds for minority welfare are not distributed proportionately between different communities in the state. The Church has been raising its concern in this regard for quite some time. So the PM will hear their woes also,” Pillai said.
“We hope the PM’s intervention will help us get justice,” said Jacobite Church trustee Joseph Mar Gregorios. “We are ready to go by any agreement that is bound by law of the land and decision of the apex court,” said Orthodox Church secretary Biju Oommen. Recently, a tiff between the two spilled over to the streets inviting enough embarrassment for believers.
Dalit Christians hold protest march in southern India
Dalit Christians in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have held a protest in march against discrimination faced by Dalits in 45 Catholic parishes of Pondicherry-Cuddalore Arch diocese.
Protesters submitted a memorandum to parish priests on Dec. 20 and requested them to forward it to Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, India’s apostolic nuncio. “The memorandum contains Dalit Christians’ long-standing common demand for equal rights for all,” M. Mary John, president of the Dalit Christian Liberation Movement (DCLM), told UCA News.
“They fervently appeal to the nuncio and the Holy See for their urgent intervention to secure them justice and equal rights. DCLM has been vigorously pursuing these demands with the Catholic hierarchy in India as well as with the Vatican for years.
“The current protests follow a peaceful sit-in by 40 Dalit priests at the archbishop’s house in Puducherry from Nov. 29 to Dec. 4 demanding a dialogue with the archbishop and the administrators.”
John said Dalits have long faced caste discrimination and continued denial of key administrative posts in the archdiocese and in leadership of ministries.
Meat issue: Goa Church writes to chief minister
The Church in Goa has urged the state chief minister to urgently intervene to resolve meat shortage that has severely affected people’s protein intake and tourism industry.
The Council for Social Justice and Peace (CSJP) wrote to Pramod Sawant that the western Indian state started experiencing the shortage after neighboring Karnataka State passed a bill to ban cattle slaughter.
The Goa archdiocese’ social action wing says its December 15 memorandum is sent on behalf of meat traders and consumers as well as in the interest of the tourism industry in the state.
“This intervention is requested on behalf of the vast majority of beef consumers as well as for the benefit of the culinary business in Goa and for the benefit of tourism in the state,” says the letter signed by the council’s executive secretary Father Savio Fernandes. The Church body wants the Goa chief minister to “urgently intervene in the matter with Karnataka on behalf of Goa asking it not to notify the bill in their state in order to safeguard the livelihood of hundreds of meat traders who along with their employees are totally dependent on this trade for their survival.”
YOUCAT India gets new national director
The Conference of Catholic Bishops of India has appointed Maria Francis from the Archdiocese of Bangalore as the new national director of YOUCAT India.
She will coordinate the ministries of the Youcat India Missionary Movement and will guide its members in India.
Youcat, short for Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, also styled as YOUCAT, is a 2011 publication that aims to aid youth to better understand the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Francis is an engineer by profession and a member of the Holy Redeemer Parish, Hennur, Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka State in southern India.
A bleak winter for the Church in India
The Church in India has never been under such stress as in the Christmas season of 2020.
Starved of finances under a harsh law that regulates inter-national donations and the near absence of worshippers in the Covid-19 curfew, the Church cutting across denominations is pummelled by accusations from political foes and the seething anger of a section of the faithful outraged at exposes of corruption and moral turpitude, sometimes in the highest echelons of the clergy.
As the largest denomination, claiming a full 60 percent of the Christian population of about 30 million among 1.25 billion Indians, the Catholic Church gets more than its share of the torment from within and outside.
For the Episcopal, Evangelical, Pentecostal and independent churches, while some of the bigger groups have leaders facing serious charges of financial bungling and alienation of property — the polite word for selling off churches, graveyards or institutional lands — the main threat remains from the laws against religious conversion, once confined to a mere six states but now rapidly legislated in many more provinces by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] which rules the country and controls two-thirds of the states. It does not seem too far away when it will be operational across the country.
Baghdad declares Christmas a national holiday – Card Sako’s ‘joy and satisfaction’
Iraq’s Chamber of Deputies voted on a bill sanctioning Christmas as a “national holiday with an annual frequency” for all citizens. Welcoming the news as a source of great “joy and satisfaction” and confirmation of the importance of “the Christian presence” for the whole country, Chaldean patriarch, Card Louis Raphael Sako explains: “Parliament voted on our request to consider Christmas a holiday for all Iraqis.” And the motion “passed, to our great satisfaction.”
Interviewed by AsiaNews, Msgr Basilio Yaldo, auxiliary of Baghdad and general coordinator of the Iraqi Church Pope Francis’ imminent visit to Iraq, speaks of a “historic vote, because today Christmas is truly a celebration for all Iraqis. And this happens for the first time.”
In the past, he adds, “the government granted Christians a day off, now it applies to everyone and it will be for years to come. It is no longer a temporary measure to be renewed every year. This is a message of great value and great hope for Christians and for all of Iraq and is inevitably linked to the pontiff’s apostolic journey to our country in March. This is one of the first fruits we hope will bring many others in the future.”
On October 17, the Chaldean primate met the President of the Republic Barham Salih. In addition to the situation of Christians, Card Sako had forwarded the “official request” to the head of state to proclaim the birth of Jesus a “holiday for all.” The green light arrived recently is a further recognition for a community victim in recent decades of serious sectarian violence and targeted attacks that have triggered a massive exodus. A flight that reduced the original population of the early 2000s to a third.
“His Beatitude and Eminence – reads a note released by the patriarchate – thanks the President of the Iraqi Republic Barham Salih, for having adopted the request […] to make Christmas (December 25th) a national holiday every year. He also thanks Muhammad al-Halbousi and the parliamentarians for their favourable vote for the good of Christian citizens.” – AsiaNews
How the Chinese Communist Party Robs Children of Their Religious Faith
The U.S. State Department on Dec. 7 designated China a “country of particular concern” for its systematic, egregious, and ongoing violations of the religious freedom of its citizens.
The Chinese Communist Party has rightly been under scrutiny for its persecution of religious groups, including the internment of Uighurs in concentration camps in Xinjiang and the organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners, as well as for arrests and imprisonment of followers for reason of their practice, the destruction of church buildings and symbols, and the arrest or intimidation of Christians holding private Bible studies.
At a recent event on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly’s Third Committee session, the Jubilee Campaign—together with the Coordination of Associations and Individuals for Freedom of Conscience—brought the untold stories of Chinese children’s experiences of religious persecution.
The left is actively working to undermine the integrity of our elections. Read the plan to stop them now. The event exposed the fact that the Chinese Communist Party has utterly failed to uphold its treaty obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which China is a signatory.
While entire religious communities have been persecuted in China because of their religious and spiritual beliefs, children have suffered tenfold.
The government has separated children from their parents and has threatened to beat the children if the parents do not renounce their faith. Government authorities have even threatened parents of adopted children that they will forcibly take away those children, return them to their original families, or put them up for adoption again if the family does not give up its beliefs.
In addition, in keeping with the 2018 Revised Regulations on Religious Affairs in China, local authorities have interpreted the regulation to ban attendance for all children at churches and other houses of worship, as well as to prohibit children from attending any religious activities, such as religious summer camps, or religious instruction, such as Sunday school.
Vietnamese poet jailed for 12 years for subversion
A court in central Vietnam has imposed a harsh prison sentence on an elderly poet and blogger for his posts critical of the communist government.
On Dec. 15, the People’s Court of Nghe An Province sentenced 68-year-old Tran Duc Thach to 12 years in prison for charges of “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s government” under Article 109 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code. He will also have to serve another three years’ probation after his sentence.
Vietnam News Agency reported that Thach, who was arrested in April, was accused of writing and posting articles distorting the country’s political, economic and social events, and smearing government leaders on Facebook from May 2019 to March 2020.
The state-run agency said the former soldier, who served with North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War, was among five co-founders of the Brotherhood for Democracy, which is banned by the government. Many of its members have been jailed since its establishment in 2013.
It said his crimes were seen as being dangerous and aimed at fighting the one-party government.
Thach had been imprisoned for three years in 2009 for “conducting propaganda against the state” along with his two fellow dissidents Vu Van Hung and Pham Van Troi. However, he was among over 10,000 prisoners granted amnesty in 2011 to mark the country’s National Day.
His poetry describes life without freedom and justice, while his novels cover human rights abuses and the legal system in the Southeast Asian country.