Christians still being attacked in Orissa, warns Archbishop

|PIC1|Attacks against Christians in Orissa are continuing despite reassurances from the Indian Government of greater security, warns the Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar.

Archbishop Cheenath said that Catholic priests returning to their parishes after last year’s violence "are still not free to move about and the police themselves have recommended they request police escorts ahead of time [when travelling]," reports the Catholic News Agency.

The Archbishop said that Christians were still being persecuted and that Hindu extremists are even "not allowing them to use public restrooms when extremists are using them".

People can be punished if they enter churches, he said, and men are often kidnapped whilst women are forced to wear degrading outfits.

He also said that the government had still not determined how much economic compensation to give for buildings destroyed by the extremists. So far, the government has only offered compensation considerably below the actual value of the destroyed properties.

Last year, around 8,000 Christians were forced to seek shelter in makeshift government camps, with many more hiding in surrounding forests after Hindu extremists launched a series of attacks against the Christian community in Orissa that left more than a hundred people dead.

Around half of the refugees are believed to have returned home, but with the murder of a Baptist priest in February, many of the Christians there remain fearful of extremists.

Following the priest's murder, Father Prasanna Singh, a parish priest in Kandhamal, warned that many more Christians could die if the government failed to protect them.

He said: "If the government cannot take stern steps to control this violence, (the Hindu radicals) will finish off all priests and Christian leaders"