Christians and others suffering in India - End US Aid and trade with India?

[The Straight Story]

CHRISTIANS CONTINUE TO SUFFER IN INDIA -- HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS (Extensions of Remarks - January 12, 2007)

GPO's PDF

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HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS
OF NEW YORK
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Friday, January 12, 2007

* Mr. TOWNS. Madam Speaker, just before the new Congress convened, many of us celebrated Christmas with families and friends. I hope that every one of my colleagues, old and new, had a very happy Christmas and holiday season. But Christmas is another anniversary also for the Christians of India. Since Christmas 1998, 8 years now, India has been focusing its persecution in large measure on Christians.

* In September, the convent and school of Loreto were violently attacked by the violent Hindu organization the Bharatiya Janata Yuva, a youth arm of the BJP, which is the political arm of the RSS, a Fascist organization that published a book on how to get minorities, including Christians, falsely implicated in criminal cases. A BJP spokesman demanded a high-level inquiry into the school, according to the Tribune newspaper of Chandigarh, saying it engaged in ``irrational behavior.'' As I noted at the time of the attack, apparently, being a Catholic is irrational behavior and ``unscientific activity'' in the world of Hindu militants.

* Over 300,000 Christians in Nagaland have been murdered in India. Nuns have been raped, priests have been murdered, Christian schools and prayer halls have been attacked. Laws have been passed requiring the permission of the Hindu regime before one may be baptized. Christians have faced jail time, as well as threats and physical violence, just for sharing their faith.

* Missionary Graham Staines was sleeping in his jeep with his two young sons when they were surrounded by a mob chanting ``Victory to Hannuman,'' a Hindu god. The mob then burned Staines and his sons to death. Missionary Joseph Cooper of Pennsylvania was beaten so severely that he had to spend a week in an Indian hospital. Then the Indian government threw him out of the country. Police gunfire broke up a Christian religious festival on the theme ``Jesus is the answer.'' Is this the secularism that India is so proud of?

* It would be bad enough if Christians were the only ones suffering. But they are not. Sikhs, Muslims, Dalits, and others have also felt the lash of Indian repression. The time has come for freedom in the subcontinent. The time has come for the persecution to end.

* Madam Speaker, there is a way to help bring freedom and secularism to the people of south Asia. We should end all U.S. aid and trade with India until everyone within its jurisdiction enjoys full human rights there. And now that we have a new Congress, we should go on record in support of freedom everywhere in South Asia. There is no better time than now. If we can help to stop the persecution we have a duty to do so.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r110:9:./temp/~r1101MNOtr::

[muntrv]

1. India is NOT a dictatorship.

[Deja Q]

5. So there must be more men in India...

It's been said, even on DU, some men will force their women to abort if the woman is carrying a girl. :(

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2006_02_tue_04.shtml
the site makes a brief mention of it, but there's plenty of talk on google - some saying it's for real, others saying it's a myth.

http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/hnp/population/iwhindia.htm
also mentions "sex selective abortion".

Doesn't sound like a democratic practice, what does the woman having to get the abortion think? Or the baby that daddy helped to make for that matter?

[dflprincess]

2. Would this include banning American companies from sending

jobs to India?

[Deja Q]

4. Funny how the world works...

:crazy:

[WCGreen]

3. Perhaps if Christians stopped trying to impose their

religion on everyone, then they wouldn't rankle to "natives"...

Remember, Christian Missionaries from Britain were a major part of Colonization...

The people have long memories in deed...

[happyslug]

7. No this is Hindu Fundamentalism

Like Christian and Islamic Fundamentalism, Hindu Fundamentalism has less to do with Religion per se, then a way to express pressure built up inside a Society that has been forbidden any other outlet. India like much of the world, has been undergoing severe economic change. This has hurt a lot of working class people, who unable to help themselves out of their economic hard times, look to religion to get them out of the problem. You then have religious leaders who take these people looking for a solution to their economic problem and who blame "non-believers" and even worse people who have defected from the "true faith".

You see this among the Buddhism in Sir Lanka, you see this among the Communists in Russia (Fundamentalist Communists, a funny term, but since 2000 the fastest Growing Party in Russia has been the Communist party, that is why you do not hear about it in the US Press anymore, when it was on Decline during the 1990s all you hear was how small the vote for the Communists were, but since 2000 you have heard nothing).

In Europe, where you have Economic hardship but no where near the rest of the World (The European Welfare State is still keeping most of their poor from starving) you do not see Religious Fundamentalism, but you see it in Latin America (Except Cuba) Africa, the Mid-East and the Far-East. You do not hear of it in Japan (Though Japanese Nationalism is similar for it is tied in with Shintoism) but it affects even China (And the Communist watch it both among its Mos lem Minority and its Han Majority for example the followers of Falun Gong which is a traditional Chinese form of "Fundamentalism").

My point here, most waves of Fundamentalism reflect economic hard times during which people look to their roots for solutions. Most times this is harmless as people just become more religious, but if the pressure is to great and the economic downturn to long, people will turn Radical. In Europe in the late 1800s this radicalization was captured by the Communists which lead to revolutions during and right after WWI, but since WWI the Communist have failed to produce their heaven on earth leaving the area of radical reform to the Fundamentalists. These have been moving all over the world and will continue until we stop cutting these people economic throats with our trade policy that looks to the lowest wages. People tend to forget the last wave of Fundamentalism occurred at the same time as Radical Communism and for the same reason, economic hardship and people looking for an answer to those economic hardship.

[Reterr]

6. Oh those poor Christians...suffering everywhere

from Indian to the US. I don't know much about this but India is a secular country I think, which is more than we can say and I highly doubt that Christians there are "suffering routinely" despite some isolated instances here and there, any more than Muslims are suffering here.
Ok wait...that sounds like I am saying Muslims don't suffer discrimination here, which they definitely do. But, my point here is that we are hardly in a position to be pointing fingers.