Compass Direct News’ Top 10 Stories of 2010

7. Christian Villagers in Laos Driven into Jungle
Officials and residents of Katin village in Ta Oih district, Saravan Province, on Dec. 26 destroyed rice paddies farmed by 11 Christian families previously living in the village after the expulsion of another seven families on Dec. 23. Residents drained water from the rice paddies, burned fencing that protected the crop from animals and stomped on new seedlings to ensure the rice would not grow, advocacy group Human Rights Watch for Lao Religious Freedom (HRWLRF) reported. The fields were destroyed just a few days after the Katin village chief and other village authorities armed with guns entered the homes of another seven Christian families, totaling 15 people, and ordered them to give up their faith. When they refused, officials marched them out of the village and warned them not to return.

Two of these families professed faith after officials expelled 11 Christian families last January, and another four families joined them after officials in July threatened to shoot any of the expelled Christians who attempted to return to Katin. Yet another family professed allegiance to Jesus Christ after officials in late October warned that the six Christian families would be evicted in January 2011 if they held to their beliefs. The newly-expelled Christians then sought shelter with the 11 families who were still living at the edge of the jungle despite assurances from provincial and district officials that they had every right to remain in Katin village. HRWLRF representatives believe district-level officials may have secretly approved the expulsions. “Village officials don’t usually do anything without informally consulting the district head,” a spokesman told Compass.

When village officials last January expelled the 11 families, totaling 48 people, for refusing to give up their faith, the Christians built simple shelters at the edge of the jungle but suffered from a lack of adequate food and water. Officials also destroyed their houses, confiscated livestock and essential registration documents and denied their children access to the village school. In May, village officials granted the families permission to take rice stored in their family rice barns to ward off starvation. Shortly afterwards, members of the 11 families returned off-season to farm their family rice paddies, adjacent to the village, in order to preserve land rights and maintain their food supplies.

8. Foreign Christians Suddenly Expelled from Morocco
Between March and June authorities expelled 128 foreign Christians in an effort to purge the country of any foreign Christian influences. In April, nearly 7,000 Muslim religious leaders backed the deportations by signing a document describing the work of Christians within Morocco as “moral rape” and “religious terrorism.” The statement from the religious leaders came amid a nationwide mudslinging campaign geared to vilify Christians in Morocco for “proselytism” — widely perceived as bribing people to change their faith. In the same time period, Moroccan authorities applied pressure on Moroccan converts to Christianity through interrogations, searches and arrests. Christians on the ground said that, although these have not continued, there is still a general sense that the government is increasingly intolerant of Christian activities.

The government’s portrayal of foreign Christians created an atmosphere in which national Christians suffered more societal harassment and discrimination. By the end of the year more than 150 foreign Christians were deported or declared persona non grata, with police arresting and interrogating national Christians in the search for evidence to justify the expulsion of the expatriates.

9. Wave of Persecution in India’s Karnataka State
A report in March found a wave of persecution had struck Karnataka state, where Christians faced more than 1,000 attacks in 500 days. An independent investigation by a former judge of the Karnataka High Court found that the spate began on Sept. 14, 2008, when at least 12 churches were attacked in one day in Karnataka’s Mangalore city, in Dakshina Kannada district, and the number of attacks reached 1,000 in January 2010. “On Jan. 26 — the day we celebrated India’s Republic Day — Karnataka’s 1,000th attack took place in Mysore city,” said Justice Michael Saldanha, former judge of the Karnataka High Court. Saldanha told Compass the figure was based on reports from faith-based organizations. Blaming the state government for the attacks, Saldanha said the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had “outdone Orissa.” The wave of persecution in Karnataka began as fallout of the anti-Christian mayhem in eastern Orissa state, where Maoists killed a Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader on Aug. 23, 2008, with Hindu extremists wrongly accusing Christians. The attacks in Orissa’s Kandhamal district, the epicenter of the bloodbath, killed more than 100 people and burned 4,640 houses, 252 churches and 13 educational institutions.

Karnataka Home Minister V.S. Acharya denied the results of the inquiry. “The allegation of Karnataka having faced 1,000 attacks is absolutely false,” Acharya told Compass. “Karnataka is the most peaceful state in India, and the people are law-abiding.” But the stream of reports of violence against Christians in Karnataka continued throughout the year. In addition to the attacks, numerous Christians also have faced false charges of fraudulent or forced conversions throughout Karnataka. “I have been to many police stations where complaints of [forced] conversions have been lodged against Christians, and when I asked the police why they were acting on frivolous complaints, most of them told me that they had orders from above,” Saldanha said. In his report, he notes that Christians “are dragged to the police station under false allegations, immediately locked up, beaten up and denied bail by the lower judiciary, which functions as the loyal partner of the police department and refuses bail on the grounds that ‘the police have objected.'” The report says 468 Christian workers in rural areas had been targeted with such actions since September 2008. “Numerous others have been threatened and beaten up,” the report states. “The police are totally out of control, with the lower judiciary having abdicated its constitutional obligation of safeguarding the citizens’ rights, particularly from a tyrannical state machinery, while the state government proclaims that everything is peaceful.”

Chief Minister Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yeddyurappa and Home Minister Acharya belong to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (Hindu nationalist conglomerate or the RSS), believed to be the parent organization of the BJP, Saldanha pointed out. He also said that although the attacks on Christians had turned public sentiment against the BJP in Karnataka, the party seemed to care little as both opposition parties, the Congress Party and the regional Janata Dal- Secular (JD-S) party, were “in shambles” in the state.

In May 2009 the BJP lost national elections, and since then sections of the party are in desperation, he said, adding, “Perhaps this is one of the reasons why attacks continue to happen in Karnataka.” The BJP came to sole power in Karnataka in May 2008. Prior to that, it ruled in alliance with the JD-S party for 20 months. There are a little more than 1 million Christians in Karnataka, where the total population is over 52 million.

10. China Releases Gao Zhisheng — and then Seizes Him Again
Christian human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, captured in February 2009 and released by Chinese officials on April 6, 2010, went missing again on April 20. Bob Fu of the China Aid Association (CAA) said Gao went back into the hands of Chinese security forces. Gao, initially seized from his home in Shaanxi Province on Feb. 4, 2009 and held incommunicado by security officials for 13 months, was permitted to phone family members and colleagues in late March before officials finally returned him to his Beijing apartment on April 6. Gao had told a reporter from the South China Morning Post (SCMP) that he expected to travel to Urumqi within days of his release to visit his in-laws, and witnesses saw him leaving his apartment sometime between April 9 and 12, SCMP reported on April 30. Gao’s father-in-law reportedly confirmed that Gao arrived at his home with an escort of four police officers but spent just one night there before police took him away again. Gao phoned his father-in-law shortly before he was due to board a flight back to Beijing on April 20. He promised to call again after returning home but failed to do so, according to the SCMP report. Fu said he believes international pressure forced authorities to allow Gao a brief re-appearance to prove that he was alive before seizing him again to prevent information leaking out about his experiences over the past year.

During a previous detention in 2007, Gao’s captors brutally tortured him and threatened him with death if he spoke about his treatment. Gao later described the torture in an open letter published by CAA in 2009. He had come to the attention of authorities when he began to investigate the persecution of house church Christians and Falun Gong members. In 2005 he wrote a series of open letters to President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao accusing the government of torturing Falun Gong members. When the letters appeared, authorities revoked Gao’s law license and shut down his law firm, sources told CAA. He was given a suspended three-year jail sentence in December 2006, following a confession that Gao later claimed was made under extreme duress, including torture and threats against his wife and children. Gao was then confined to his Beijing apartment under constant surveillance — forbidden to leave his home, use his phone or computer or otherwise communicate with the outside world, according to a report by The New York Times. A self-taught lawyer and a Communist Party member until 2005, Gao was once recognized by the Ministry of Justice as one of the mainland’s top 10 lawyers for his pro bono work on human rights cases, according to SCMP.