“The silence of the prime minister, the incompetence of the interior minister even after his visit to the state, and the indecisi-veness of the local government in ending the violence are worrying. The authorities cannot escape responsibility and shift blame.”
In the face of violence that has now been going on continuously for a month and a half in Manipur State, he is calling the government of Narendra Modi to its responsibilities by the Archbishop of Imphal, Msgr. Dominic Lumon.
He does so in a detailed report issued to all of India’s brother bishops on the situation in the battered northeastern Indian state rocked since early May by serious fighting between the Meitei and Kuki.
“The violence and fires,” writes Msgr. Lumon, “continue unabated, especially in the suburbs of the region. Precious lives have been lost, homes and villages burned or destroyed, property vandalized and looted, places of worship desecrated and burned. More than 50,000 people have lost their homes and are languishing in camps for the displaced. Many have left the capital Imphal and the state to safer places in neighboring Mizoram State, other northeastern states, and metropolises. There is a complete collapse of the constitutional apparatus in the state. In short, there is fear, uncertainty and a general sense of hopelessness.”
The archbishop points out that in the clash between the two communities it is the entire Manipur community that suffers, regardless of affiliations. “In a month and a half,” he denounces, “the elected state government and the central administration in New Delhi have been unable to restore the rule of law and put an end to the insane violence. It can be said that we are facing the collapse of the state machinery at the local level. One wonders why President’s Rule (direct administration by the federal government in New Delhi, provided for in serious cases by Article 356 of the Indian Constitution ed.) is still not considered as an option.”
The prelate speaks of many more casualties than the 100 deaths in the official figures, “Violent activities in the suburbs outside the capital are greatly underestimated,” he writes. “But still house fires continue to occur, even in the heart of the city of Imphal.
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Cambodian Catholics honour martyrs killed by Khmer Rouge
More than 3,000 Catholics including bishops, priests, and laypeople in Cambodia participated in a Mass to commemorate clergy, religious, and laypeople who were martyred by the Pol Pot regime in the seventies.
The event was held in Tang Kork District, Kampong Thom Province, about 100 kilometres from the capital Phnom Penh on June 17, Catholic Cambodia reported.
During the program, church officials called the martyrs the “fathers” of today’s Catholic community in Cambodia.
“The testimony of the martyrs guides us along the way” Bishop Olivier Schmitthaeusler, the Apostolic Vicar of Phnom Penh and an MEP missionary, said during the program.
Enrique Figaredo Alvargonzález, the apostolic prefect of Battambang, Pierre Suon Hangly the apostolic prefect of Kompong-Cham, priests, nuns, and laity attended the Mass in remembrance of the “Cambodian Martyrs.”
Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, a school for Nepal’s marginalized
On mission in a very poor area of western Nepal. With a big dream that is taking its first steps: that of opening a school in Dhangadhi to give a future to the children of those living in this extreme periphery at the foot of the Himalayas.
This is the missionary frontier of Fr. Ajo Thelappilly, an Indian Catholic priest of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI), coordinator of the social works of Nepal Carmel Mata Samaj, an NGO that has been active in Nepal as part of the mission that this religious institute opened in the country for a decade.
“We arrived on March 22, 2011,” Fr. Thelappilly recounts, “at the request of Msgr. Anthony Sharma, a Jesuit who was Nepal’s first local bishop and later died in 2015. We belong to the St. John’s province of our institute, which has missions outside our home country as well as in northern India. Currently here in Nepal we are six missionaries active in four different missions: Punarbas and Parasan in Kan-chanpur district and in Dhangadhi and Phulwari in Kailali district, all in the westernmost part of the country.”
Compared to the capital Kathmandu these are much more underdeveloped areas of Nepal.
“The inhabitants belong mainly to the Magar, Chhetri, and Tharu groups known for their ancient traditions and culture ,” Fr. Ajo continues. ”Agriculture provides them with a basic livelihood, but in local markets for their products they earn very little. Occasionally, then, the region receives heavy rains and subsequent flooding, which makes life even more difficult. There are also landless people who are completely dependent on daily work in neighboring India or in Dhangadhi, the most important city in the area. Most of their children work in hotels and markets as child laborers.”
Vicar of Anatolia warns that the Christian community is at ‘great risk’ after the earthquake
The Christian community “is at great risk” and still reeling from the quake of 6 February. Amid “great desperation”, only a handful of Christians are left in places like Antakya (Antioch), the core of the devastation, this according to Bishop Paolo Bizzeti, vicar of Anatolia.
In Turkey’s quake-ravaged regions, everything has to be rebuilt from scratch – homes, schools, jobs – because, “other-wise, people will leave.” To avoid this, the vicariate met on 13-15 June in Iskenderun (Alexandretta) to discuss the situation and decide what to do in the coming weeks to deal.
“Christians are no different from other minorities,” Bishop Bizzeti said. “They are affected by the same problems like every-one else: housing, jobs, education, daily life, ordinary things. All this will take years to fix. Even today it is hard to say what can be done from the outside to help; the key point is to keep in mind that Christianity’s roots are in these places.’
For the prelate, “Western Churches should pressure on their governments and raise awareness so that they can help and contribute to the Christian presence in the Middle East. I’m talking about serious policies, to put on the agenda.”
The 7.7 earthquake remains an open wound in Turkey. The situation is still one of active emergency in 11 large areas in southern and south-eastern Turkey and in northern Syria.
Report accuses former President Rajapaksa of obstructing mass grave investigations
Former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is accused of tampering with police records to obstruct investigations into mass graves discovered in an area where he served as a military officer during a Marxist rebellion in 1989.
The charges are contained in a report entitled ‘Mass Graves and Failed Exhumations’ publish-ed by a number of activist groups: Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP), Centre for Human Rights and Development (CHRD) and Families of the Disappeared (FoD).
“Witnesses to crimes are gradually disappearing: 178 mothers of missing persons have already died in recent years. We protest and fight for justice, not knowing when we will get it,” said Manuvel Uthayachandra, mother and president of Families of the Disappeared.
The paper highlights how successive Sri Lankan governments have interfered in the investigation of mass graves, pointing out that only 20 mass graves have been partially exhumed in the last 30 years and of over 550 bodies found almost none have been identified.
“None of Sri Lanka’s numerous commissions of enquiry have been mandated to examine the mass graves, while efforts to uncover the truth have been hampered,” says the paper, which focuses on the failure of investigations in Matale district in central Sri Lanka and Mannar town, located in Northern Province, where a mass grave was discovered in 2018.
Philippines against US request to let 50,000 Afghan refugees in the country
Some Philippine government officials and politicians are opposed to a US request to temporarily host about 50,000 Afghan refugees before they are moved to the United States.
“While the proposed arrangement is humanitarian in nature, it will not involve the admission or hosting of Afghan refugees,” said the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs in a statement.
The request was presented in Manila back in October last year, this according to Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to Washington and cousin of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who added that if the request is granted, the United States will cover all costs.
Speaking to the Senate, he noted that the people in question are not refugees, but former employees of the US government who will arrive in groups of about 1,000 people at a time.
After the Taliban came back to power on 15 August 2021, tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked with the US military or media were evacuated to neighbouring Pakistan and other third countries where their applications for a US visa are being assessed. In total, about 150,000 are still pending after almost two years.
Pakistan had barred entry to US officials to conduct interviews with refugees and hindered the establishment of resettlement centres. Meanwhile, in the last 18 months, the residence permits of asylum seekers who had managed to obtain them have expired.
Without papers, Afghans cannot study or work and can be arbitrarily sent back to the border or arrested by local authorities, who often extort money from them.
Ambassador Romualdez explained that the United States simply asked for assistance in processing visas, which will be issued at a special facility in the Philippines.
While the Philippine government has stated that it is considering the proposal (a decision should be reached by mid-July), Senator Imee Marcos, sister of the president and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has started a probe into the request, concerned that some refugees might spy for the Americans.
“During the past year, security and espionage threats have substantially increased because of the sharp escalation in tension between the rival superpowers,” she said.
Church arson reported in India’s strife-torn Manipur state
A more than five decades old Catholic Church, presby-tery, and boarding school were burned down, while a convent was taken over by suspected outlaws in riot-hit Manipur state in northeastern India at the weekend, Church officials said. The fresh wave of violence erupted on June 4 as the federal government appointed a three-member judicial commission to probe ethnic violence in the state that has claimed 98 lives so far and displaced over 45,000 people.
“We were informed that St. Joseph Church, its presbytery, and a school boarding attached to the parish were set on fire and the Franciscan Clarist Congregation (FCC) convent in the parish is currently under the control of outlaws whose identity is not yet established,” a senior diocesan priest from the Archdiocese of Imphal, who did not want to be named, told on June 5.
St. Joseph Parish at Sugnu, a small township at the southern tip of the Kakching district inhabited by the Meitei and Kuki communities, is one of the oldest Catholic churches in the archdiocese.
Hundreds of houses belonging to Christians in the township were burned down a couple of days before.
“We cannot go to the affected locality to get a ground report due to restrictions, but credible sources informed us about the arson and other developments,” the priest said.
He said the parish has more than 4,000 members from 35 villages in its vicinity, where Christians have abandoned their houses and fled to safer places including relief camps.
India court says Catholics can sue diocese over language used in Mass
A state court in south-western India has ruled that lay Catholics may sue their local diocese over its refusal to offer Mass and other forms of prayer and worship in the local language of Konkani.
The High Court in the state of Karnataka decreed May 26 that civil courts have jurisdiction to hear the case, in which the plaintiffs are demanding that at least one Mass on Sun-day and other feast days be offered in Konkani, a language spoken by roughly two million people along India’s western coast.
Konkani is one of 22 languages recognized in the Indian constitution, and is the official language of the state of Goa. The lawsuit is being brought by four lay Catholics in the city of Chikkamagaluru, loca-ted in Karnataka, against the Diocese of Chikkamagaluru.
The diocese had opposed the suit, arguing that such matters should be governed by the Catholic church’s own internal Code of Canon Law. It insisted that the plaintiffs have not been barred from worship, but that they cannot insist on praying in any particular language and that the use of a language in worship is a ritual question rather than a matter of civil rights.
The high court, however, determined that civil courts in India have the authority to hear complaints alleging violations of the fundamental rights secured by Articles 25 and 26 of the Indian constitution.
The Karnataka High Court found, however, that the issue of conducting prayers in the Konkani language in a church under the control of the Diocese of Chikkamagaluru cannot be regarded simply as a matter of ritual, that the archdiocese is bound by the law of the land, and therefore that the civil justice system may hear the case.
“The Church desires that all should know the Good News of Jesus. If we need to reach the non-Christians with this Good News, we have to use the local language. Only then will everyone understand the teachings. The church should become a ‘local Church,’ in the sense that whichever state we are in, the state language should take prominence.”
Involve in nation’s burning issues, Indian Catholic religious told
The head of India’s Catholic religious has urged her more than 130,000 people to get out of their comfort zones and play their prophetic role as the country faces burning and critical issues.
“I am writing this letter to share with you my concern at the many serious happenings in different parts of the country,” writes Apostolic Carmel Sister Mary Nirmalini to the men and women members of 399 religious congregations that make up the Conference of Religious India (CRI).
The CRI president’s June 1 letter lists the burning issues as the ongoing targeted violence in Manipur on the Christians and other tribals; the continual attacks on Church personnel and institutions in various parts of India; the denigration of the Muslims; the mainstreaming of hate speeches; and the pathetic plight of our protesting women wrestlers.
“In the face of these growing hostilities, the question I have been asking myself is: Can I remain silent? What would Jesus have done if he was physically present in the India of today?” she writes. Christ, she continues, would have definitely taken “a visible and vocal stand against these acts of violence and injustices.”
Hindu radicals threaten to close two Delhi archdiocesan churches
Some rightwing Hindu groups have threatened to close two churches of the archdiocese of Delhi that covers the national capital and parts of Haryana state.
The latest incident happened June 4 at St Joseph Vaz Catholic Mission Church, Kherki Daula in Gurugram (Gurgaon) district, Shashi Dharan, the archdiocesan public relations officer, told Matters India.
Just after the 10 am English service, a group of 20-25 people came to the church wearing saffron scarves and carrying tridents and swords on bikes and cars and threatened the priest and two Catholics who were talking to him. They gave the priest two weeks’ time to close the church.
They also said they will not allow the church in the village. They claimed they were from Hindu Sena (army).
Shashi Dharan said one person from the crowd slapped Father Amalraj, who later com-plained of a hearing problem.
The PRO said a five-member team led by vicar general Father Vincent D’Souza went to Kherki Daula in Gurugram district of Haryana after its parish priest Father Amalraj alerted the archbishop’s house about troubles from Hindu radicals.