‘No one ever forgets living through a mouse plague’: the dystopia facing Australian rural communities, explained by an expert

source, Author provided

Steve Henry, CSIROImagine constantly living with mice. Every time you open a cupboard to get linen, clothes or food, mice have been or are still there. When you go to sleep they run across your bed and, in the morning, your first job is to empty traps filled with dead mice. And the stench of dead mice fill the streets.

Even the cats and dogs get sick of mice and stop chasing them.

This is the dystopian reality for many towns as, over recent months, mouse numbers in northern NSW and southern Queensland have risen to plague proportions, devastating summer crops and fodder storages. One farmer told me he’s removing 100 dead mice from his swimming pool each night.

This week, for example, truckloads of sorghum from Southern Queensland farms have been rejected from sale after mouse droppings were discovered. This means loads of grain need to be cleaned before they’re suitable for sale.

No one ever forgets living through a mouse plague.

One of the largely unquantified repercussions of mice is the social and mental health impact on farmers, their families and rural communities — places only just starting to recover from the recent, devastating drought.

I work with scientists and rural communities to reduce the impact of mice. So, with no end to the plague in sight, let’s look at the issue in more detail.

Mice outbreaks in Australia

The earliest accounts of mouse outbreaks in Australia are from the late 1800s, after the house mouse, Mus musculus, was likely introduced in the late 1700s as stowaways with the First Fleet. Similar plagues are uncommon in other countries — even though mice are found worldwide — as favourable climates lead to lots of food and shelter, which sustain high mouse populations in Australia.

Outbreaks like we’re seeing now tend to follow a run of dry years. The house mouse is very well adapted to live in Australian conditions, and they can survive through protracted dry periods and thrive when there’s lots of food and moisture. While often not conspicuous, they’re present in most environments — all the time.

As climatic conditions become favourable for crop production, they’re also favourable for mouse breeding. And mice reproduce alarmingly fast.

They start breeding at six-weeks old and give birth to a litter of six to ten pups every 19 to 21 days after that. After giving birth to one litter, females can immediately fall pregnant with the next litter, meaning there’s no break in the production of offspring.

In good seasons, when the rate of survival is high, the rate of population increase is dramatic. A single pair of mice can give rise to 500 mice in a breeding season. This year, the breeding season has lasted through summer and into autumn, as the weather has been milder with lots of rain.

Desperate times, desperate measures

Mouse outbreaks or plagues occur across the cropping zone — the extensive area where crops are grown in Australia — approximately every five years. However major outbreaks like the one we’re experiencing today are less frequent.

In some towns across the cropping zone, the smell of dead and decomposing mice is becoming a significant problem in shops, rubbish bins and under buildings and homes, where mice that have been baited have gone to die.

And the outbreak is growing. I’m getting reports from farmers of high mouse numbers from other parts of the cropping zone, through southern NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

1,600 bales of hay, completely decimated by mice.
Adam Macrae, Author provided

Mice can cause damage during all stages of crop growth, and they don’t limit themselves to cereals. Farmers have reported significant damage in canola, lentils and other pulse crops. Likewise, mice removing freshly sown seed, browsing shoots and feeding on developing heads and seed pods all reduce crop yield.

Mice also cause significant damage to on-farm storages of grain and fodder. Contamination of grain with mouse faeces can lead to grain distributors and export markets rejecting produce (such as with sorghum in Southern Queensland).

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This year has been so bad, farmers say they’re giving up on efforts to control mice with bait, and instead ploughing their summer crops back into the ground. Other desperate measures include burying entire haystacks to protect them from total decimation by mice.

The cotton industry, rarely impacted by mice, has even sought an emergency permit to allow control of mice in cotton crops using zinc phosphide baits, the only approved chemical control measure for mice in broad-scale agriculture in Australia.

So how does this horror end?

The drivers for the end of a mouse outbreak are not well understood. It’s thought a combination of high numbers, food running short and disease leads to mice turning on each other, eating sick and weak animals and offspring, resulting in a dramatic crash in the population. Farmers, in previous outbreaks, have reported mice disappearing almost overnight.

CSIRO is developing strategies to reduce the impact of mice in agriculture.
Sharon Watt, Author provided

CSIRO, with the support of the Grains Research and Development Corporation, is working on developing a range of new ways to reduce the impact of mice in crop production systems. Key focuses include monitoring populations to make predictions about future outbreaks and developing of better predictive models.

We’re also investigating how current cropping practices influence mouse behaviour and their population dynamics. This will help us assess potential new control strategies, develop more effective baiting procedures, and consider the potential of future genetic control technologies.

Still, the introduced house mouse will be an ongoing problem in Australian farms and rural communities for years to come. We must urgently find ways to reduce the economic and social impact of mice, not only for the sustainable production of crops, but also for the mental well-being of rural communities.

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Shy rodents may be better at surviving eradications, but do they pass those traits to their offspring?

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Steve Henry, Research Officer, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bushfires, drought, COVID: why rural Australians’ mental health is taking a battering

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David Perkins, University of Newcastle and Hazel Dalton, University of Newcastle

Among the Bushfire Royal Commission’s 80 recommendations, released last week, was a call to prioritise mental health support during and after natural disasters.

The Australian Medical Association this week called on the federal government to implement the recommendations to lessen the health impacts of future disasters, noting the ongoing mental health fallout from the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.

The Royal Commission’s report comes as Australia heads into a bushfire season during a pandemic. Some farmers have this year lost their crops due to unseasonal rain and hail, as many rural communities anticipate further “big weather” events. Certain local economies, which are reliant on exports like wine and barley, are concerned about strained trade relations with China.

The combined effects of these adverse events is taking a toll on the health and well-being of rural people.

A year of cumulative stress

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released last month showed rural suicide rates are much higher than those in the big cities.

The causes of psychological stress for rural people are many and varied, depending on who you are and where you live. Many are facing environmental and weather events at increasing frequency and intensity. Some of these events happen rapidly, such as fire and floods, whereas others are long-lasting and uncertain, like drought.

The effects of these events include direct losses such as injury and death, as well as loss of livestock and buildings. Indirect losses include declines in businesses and employment, and the disruption of social fabric when friends or family leave town.

Recovery or adaptation can take many years.

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These stresses of course come in addition to life’s normal challenges likes illness, bereavement and relationship breakdown.

For rural people, COVID has likely compounded these cumulative stresses and contributed to higher levels of trauma, mental ill-health and in some cases, suicidal behaviour.

Band-aid policies

In most rural communities, access to mental health services is relatively poor.

There’s longstanding evidence Medicare Benefits Scheme expenditure for mental health services is skewed towards metropolitan services.

State expenditure is focused on hospital services and care for those with high and complex needs. Consequently, many rural people with mild to moderate needs are under-served.

Traditionally, governments respond to crises reactively and by treating these events as short-term and disconnected. But this isn’t the experience of rural people.

Each adverse event is accompanied by (usually short-term) funding announcements by governments and agencies for new Headspace centres, expanded telephone helplines, websites, counsellors, or coordinators in the most affected areas.

Sometimes there’s overlap of effort across different government departments, federal and state jurisdictions or from different disaster responses, potentially wasting resources.

For example, in NSW, the longstanding drought has recently broken. But the social and economic recovery will take longer — possibly up to five years with consistent rain as it did following the Millennium drought.

Counsellors were funded to support rural residents during the drought in 2018, with more counsellors funded in response to the bushfires. And now additional services are being offered due to COVID.

While the extra support is welcome, the fragmentation and temporary nature of the funding means rural people may not know what services are available, and accessing services becomes confusing.

What’s more, with short-term contracts, it may be the same staff moving between roles and agencies, therefore not actually adding new staff to support local rural communities. This funding instability makes it difficult to retain a stable rural mental health workforce.

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What can be done?

In the first instance, policymakers need to ask people living in rural areas what they need and involve them in the process of developing appropriate and accessible services.

Second, we need to adopt a systemic approach that examines the full range of adverse events that affect the mental health and well-being of individuals, families and communities. This means going beyond treating illness, to addressing environmental, economic, social and personal factors.

As part of this, we need people on the ground to support communities through preparedness activities such as educating people about mental health and how to access services, while stepping into disaster response and recovery as needed. Continuity and building on what already exists locally is key.

The Rural Fire Service is a good example of such a structure. It has a clear role in disaster response, but also works to prepare communities between disasters (for example, by conducting back-burning and educating about bushfire plans).

Localised support is important because preparedness and response look very different depending on where you live in rural Australia. For example, Lismore on the northern NSW coast experiences regular flooding, whereas Broken Hill in the state’s far west contends with more frequent drought, and fierce dust storms.

Third, to fully understand and plan for the diversity of rural communities, we need sophisticated data planning, collection and analysis systems. Beyond health data, we need to look at the social, economic, environmental factors which all contribute to mental health and the way people access care.

If we can do this well, local planning will become easier, more transparent and tailored to need.

Finally, rural communities need support to develop local leadership, so they’re empowered to lead local responses. This is unlikely to succeed with short-term band-aid solutions, but rather with long-term investment and strategic policy to build and sustain capacity to cope with adversity.

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Collective trauma is real, and could hamper Australian communities’ bushfire recovery

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David Perkins, Director, Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health and Professor of Rural Health Research, University of Newcastle and Hazel Dalton, Research Leader and Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Healing the urban-rural divide: Why a ‘locals-first’ approach doesn’t work in a pandemic

DARREN ENGLAND/AAP

Timothy Baker, Deakin University; Emma Tumilty, Deakin University, and Kristy Hess, Deakin University

Toilet paper and ventilators may be unlikely bedfellows, but they serve as powerful symbols of the growing tensions between urban and rural regions in Australia and elsewhere amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last month, the media reported dozens of frenetic “supermarket swoops” across the nation. Busloads of city residents converged on rural grocery stores to fill their trolleys with supplies, leaving the shelves bare for local shoppers.

As a result, supermarket managers and security guards stepped in to be custodians of the local, refusing access to those who did not look familiar.

It is important to note that “local” is a powerful cultural idea. Local shoppers don’t legally have a right to toilet paper in this instance, but there is a moral perception they should have first dibs based on their need for essential services and in the interests of social order.

No ‘locals only’ option for hospitals

The toilet paper fiasco serves as an analogy for a much graver issue as the pandemic spreads around the world.

What happens if overwhelmed city hospitals hoard the staff and resources needed to manage COVID-19, leaving rural areas to fend for themselves? Rural areas of the United States are already confronting this reality.

To compound the problem, many people have been eager to escape crowded cities like Sydney, London, New York and San Francisco for the imagined safety of the countryside. This places strain on rural healthcare providers, making it difficult to prepare for and utilise already stretched resources.

Small town health services cannot plaster “locals only” posters on their doors or allow only “familiar faces” access to lifesaving equipment.

As rural professionals in medicine, ethics and media/cultural studies, we bring an interdisciplinary perspective to the issue of local resourcing and implications for the urban-rural divide.

We understand that in a pandemic, urban health care workers would also feel a need to protect and ensure supplies at their local hospitals first. But the equity of urban-rural resourcing during the COVID-19 crisis warrants more attention.

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Big media focus on urban problems

Urban areas in Australia already have almost three times as many hospital specialists per capita as outer regional areas and many times more critical care specialists.

Our regional health systems are struggling. Many hospitals rely on fly-in-fly-out emergency, anaesthetic and intensive care doctors. These doctors (often from city hospitals on short-term contracts to fill gaps in the local roster) are now limited by quarantine restrictions. They also want to stay near their metropolitan hospitals in case they are needed.

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There’s a concern that a capital city’s rush for resources could also leave patients in rural hospitals without medical necessities, similar to the panic buying of supermarket goods that has left some remote Indigenous communities without basic food and hygiene necessities.

Yet, these issues have not been discussed enough. Big media tends to focus on the impact of this health crisis on major metropolitan areas where more people live.

How we can more equitably share resources

We need a better strategy for rural-urban resource allocation during the crisis.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen suggests solutions may have to be tailored to specific contexts (like rural and urban settings) to be effective and ensure everyone’s health is of equal value. Drawing on his “capability approach”, we need to allocate resources in a way that is community-centred, equity-focused and puts an emphasis on deliberative democratic processes.

To hash out solutions, stakeholders in rural and urban hospitals should gather around a “virtual” table to discuss their differing needs. Government organisations and medical colleges have already begun this process.

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Effective resource allocation could impact who gets critical care treatment. Centralising resources is a proven lifesaver in normal times when transport is secure, but pandemics threaten to overwhelm our ability to move rural patients to hospitals in big cities. Transport could be delayed by days or even cease for a time.

Accessibility of life-saving equipment becomes key. We need to increase the capacity of transport services to get rural patients to cities when need be and ensure there is enough staff and equipment in regional areas to treat as many patients as possible locally.

The long-term benefits of better urban-rural cooperation

An unexpected upside to COVID-19 may be an increased sharing of knowledge and ideas between rural and urban communities.

Regional Australia has many general practitioners with anaesthetic skills, for instance. They are experienced in short-term ventilation for operations. These doctors can become “accidental intensivists”, meaning they could take care of critically ill patients, with preparatory online courses and real-time video support from urban specialists (who get to remain in their urban communities).

Urban doctors may also benefit from interacting with rural doctors who are already experts in making do with fewer resources. This kind of digital interaction could be useful long after the crisis has abated, too.

Civil wars have been fought over access to resources many times in the past. There is no reason to broaden the urban-rural divide in a war against a virus that has no borders.

Timothy Baker, Associate Professor and Director, Centre for Rural Emergency Medicine, Deakin University; Emma Tumilty, Lecturer, Deakin University, and Kristy Hess, Associate Professor (Communication), Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia: NSW – Warrumbungle National Park Fire Crisis

The link below is to an article (with video) reporting on the horrific bushfire burning in the Warrumbungle National Park, a fire which has now destroyed some 33 homes, over 50 rural buildings and heavily damaged the Siding Spring Observatory.

For more visit:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/it-came-up-so-quick-and-was-phenomenal-the-moment-mark-will-never-forget-20130114-2cp34.html

Judge Exonerates Jailed Evangelist in Bangladesh

Judge rules Christian did not ‘create chaos’ by distributing literature near Islamic event.

DHAKA, Bangladesh, March 31 (CDN) — A judge this week exonerated a Christian sentenced to one year in prison for selling and distributing Christian literature near a major Muslim gathering north of this capital city, his lawyer said.

After reviewing an appeal of the case of 25-year-old Biplob Marandi, the magistrate in Gazipur district court on Tuesday (March 29) cleared the tribal Christian of the charge against him and ordered him to be released, attorney Lensen Swapon Gomes told Compass. Marandi was selling Christian books and other literature when he was arrested near the massive Bishwa Ijtema (World Muslim Congregation) on the banks of the Turag River near Tongi town on Jan. 21.

On Feb. 28 he was sentenced for “creating chaos at a religious gathering” by selling and distributing the Christian literature.

“Some fundamentalist Muslims became very angry with him for selling the Christian books near a Muslim gathering,” Gomes said, “so they harassed him by handing over to the mobile court. His release proves that he was innocent and that he did not create any trouble at the Muslim gathering.”

The judge reviewing the appeal ruled that Marandi proved in court that he sells books, primarily Christian literature, for his livelihood.

“I am delirious with joy, and it is impossible to say how happy I am,” said his brother, the Rev. Sailence Marandi, a pastor at Church of Nazarene International in northern Bangladesh’s Thakurgaon district. “I also thank all those who have prayed for my brother to be released.”

After processing the paperwork for Marandi’s release from Gazipur district jail, authorities were expected to free him by the end of this week, according to his lawyer.

“My brother is an innocent man, and his unconditional release proved the victory of truth,” Pastor Marandi said. “I am even more delighted because my brother’s release proves that he was very innocent and polite.”

The pastor had said his brother did not get the opportunity to defend himself at his original trial.

Marandi’s attorney on appeal argued that his religious activities were protected by the religious freedom provisions of the country’s constitution. The Bangladeshi constitution provides the right for anyone to propagate their religion subject to law, but authorities and communities often objected to efforts to convert people from Islam, according to the U.S. Department of State’s 2010 International Religious Freedom report.

Every year several million male Muslims – women are not allowed – attend the Bishwa Ijtema event to pray and listen to Islamic scholars from around the world. Some 9,000 foreigners from 108 countries reportedly attended the event, though most of the worshippers are rural Bangladeshis. About 15,000 security personnel were deployed to maintain order.

Bangladeshi Muslims equate the annual event with the Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. This year the Bangladesh event was held in two phases, Jan. 21-23 and Jan. 28-30.

At the same event in 2009, Muslim pilgrims beat and threatened to kill another Bible school student as he distributed Christian literature. A patrolling Rapid Action Battalion elite force rescued Rajen Murmo, then 20, a student at Believers’ Church Bible College, on Feb. 1, 2009.

Bangladesh is the world’s third-largest Muslim-majority nation, with Muslims making up 89 percent of its population of 164.4 million, according to Operation World. Christians are less than 1 percent of the total, and Hindus 9 percent.

Report from Compass Direct News
http://www.compassdirect.org

Christian in Bangladesh Goes to Prison for Evangelism

DHAKA, Bangladesh, March 23 (CDN) — A Christian has been sentenced to one year in prison for “creating chaos” by selling and distributing Christian books and other literature near a major Muslim gathering north of this capital city.

A magistrate court in Gazipur district handed down the sentence to Biplob Marandi, a 25-year-old tribal Christian, on Feb. 28 after he was arrested near the massive Bishwa Ijtema (World Muslim Congregation) on the banks of the Turag River near Tongi town on Jan. 21.

A copy of the verdict says that he was sentenced according to Section 296 of Bangladeshi law 1860 for “creating chaos at a religious gathering.”

“Duty police found Marandi creating chaos as he was propagating his religion, Christianity, by distributing the tracts as a mobile court on Jan. 21 was patrolling near the field of the Bishwa Ijtema,” the verdict reads. “The accusation – creating chaos at a Muslim gathering by distributing Christian booklets and tracts – against him was read out in the court before him, and he admitted it. He also told the court that he had mainly wanted to propagate his religion, Christianity.”

The Rev. Sailence Marandi, pastor at Church of Nazarene International in northern Thakurgaon district and older brother of Biplob Marandi, told Compass that there was no altercation when his brother was distributing Christian tracts; likewise, the verdict makes no mention of any confrontation.

“I guess some fanatic Muslims found my brother’s works un-Islamic,” he said. “They created chaos and handed over my brother to the police and the mobile court.”

Pastor Marandi said he could not understand how a court could determine that one man could disturb a gathering of hundreds of thousands of Muslims.

“Fanatic Muslims might say this impossible thing, but how can the honorable court can say it?” he said. “In the verdict copy it is written that my brother admitted his offense in the court. This case being very religiously sensitive, I suspect that his confession statement might have been taken under duress.”

Pastor Marandi said his brother was selling Christian books to supplement his livelihood as an evangelist on a street near the event, and there were many curious pedestrians of all faiths among Muslims from around the world.

“Where there were more people, he would go there for selling books and distributing Christian tracts,” he said.

The pastor said he was surprised that Marandi was convicted and sentenced so quickly.

“My brother did not get the chance for self-defense in court,” he said. “Without opportunity for self-defense, sentencing him for one year for evangelical activities was a travesty of justice. It cannot be accepted in a democratic country.”

He added that the family hired a Muslim lawyer for Marandi who did little for him.

“If he had worked, then there would have been cross-examination regarding the confession statement,” Pastor Marandi said. “I think that some Muslim fanatics could not tolerate his evangelical activities near the religious gathering place and handed him over.”

The family has since hired a Christian attorney, Lensen Swapon Gomes, who told Compass that he filed an appeal on Monday (March 21) as Marandi’s religious activities were protected by the religious freedom provisions of the country’s constitution.

“I appealed to the court for his bail and also appealed for his release from the one-year punishment,” said Gomes. “I hope that the honorable court will consider his case, because he is an innocent man and a victim of circumstances. The offense for which he is convicted is bailable.”

The Bangladeshi constitution provides the right for anyone to propagate their religion subject to law, but authorities and communities often objected to efforts to convert people from Islam, according to the U.S. Department of State’s 2010 International Religious Freedom report.

Every year several million male Muslims – women are not allowed – attend the event to pray and listen to Islamic scholars from around the world. Some 9,000 foreigners from 108 countries reportedly attended the event, but most of the worshippers are rural Bangladeshis. About 15,000 security personnel were deployed to maintain order.

Bangladeshi Muslims equate the annual event with the Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. This year the Bangladesh event was held in two phases, Jan 21-23 and Jan. 28-30.

Jagadish Edward, academic dean of Gloria Theological Seminary in Dhaka, told Compass that Marandi had engaged in evangelical work after completing three years at the seminary in 2005. Marandi had come to Dhaka from northern Thakurgaon district some 400 kilometers (249 miles) away.

“He was very polite and gentle,” said Edward. “As an evangelist, he knew how to respect other religions. I was really surprised when I heard he was arrested and sentenced for one year.”

At the same event in 2009, Muslim pilgrims beat and threatened to kill another Bible school student as he distributed Christian literature. A patrolling Rapid Action Battalion elite force rescued Rajen Murmo, then 20, a student at Believers’ Church Bible College, on Feb. 1, 2009.

Bangladesh is the world’s third-largest Muslim-majority nation, with Muslims making up 89 percent of its population of 164.4 million, according to Operation World. Christians are less than 1 percent of the total, and Hindus 9 percent.

Report from Compass Direct News
http://www.compassdirect.org

Christians Face 1,000 Attacks in 500 Days in Karnataka, India

Investigation concludes Hindu nationalist state government is responsible.

NEW DELHI, March 22 (CDN) — Christians in Karnataka state are under an unprecedented wave of Christian persecution, having faced more than 1,000 attacks in 500 days, according to an independent investigation by a former judge of the Karnataka High Court.

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, said Justice Michael Saldanha, former judge of the Karnataka High Court.

“On Jan. 26 – the day we celebrated India’s Republic Day – Karnataka’s 1,000th attack took place in Mysore city,” Saldanha told Compass, saying the figure was based on reports from faith-based organizations.

Saldanha conducted the People’s Tribunal Enquiry into the attacks on Christians in Karnataka on behalf of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties’ Dakshina Kannada district chapter, the Catholic Association of South Kanara (another name for Dakshina Kannada) and the Karnataka Chapter of Transparency International.

“Attacks are taking place every day,” said Saldanha, chairperson of the Karnataka Chapter of Transparency International.

The latest attack took place on Wednesday (March 17), when a mob of around 150 people led by the Hindu extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP) and its youth wing, Bajrang Dal, stormed the funeral of a 50-year-old Christian identified only as Isaac, reported the Karnataka-based Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC).

As Pastor Sunder Raj of St. Thomas Church in Gijahalli, near Arsikere in Hassan district, was about to begin the funeral service, the mob pulled the coffin apart and desecrated the cross the relatives of the deceased were carrying. They threw the body into a tractor and dumped it outside, saying his burial would have contaminated Indian soil and his body should be buried in Rome or the United States, added the GCIC.

With police intervention, the funeral took place later the same day.

Blaming the state government for the attacks, Saldanha said the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had “outdone Orissa.”

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. “There is liberty in the state. Sections of the media are trying to hype it, and such claims are politically motivated. Karnataka is the most peaceful state in India, and the people are law-abiding.”

The wave of persecution in Karnataka began as fallout of the anti-Christian mayhem in eastern Orissa state, where Maoists killed a VHP 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.

Violent attacks have stopped in Orissa, but Karnataka continues to burn.

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,” he 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 are from 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 general (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.”

Saldanha said the state government was controlling media coverage of the attacks by “monetary appeasement.”

“The citizens are told that the situation is happy and under control, principally because the greater part of the media is being fed or appeased with massive publicity advertisements which have cost the state exchequer over 400 million rupees [US$8.8 million], most of the money clandestinely billed to the various Government Corporations and Public bodies,” Saldanha states in the introduction to his yet unpublished report.

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.

Report from Compass Direct News 

India Finally Allows EU to Visit Orissa – But No Fact-Finding

After months of asking, delegation wins clearance to enter Kandhamal district.

NEW DELHI, January 29 (CDN) — Weary of international scrutiny of troubled Kandhamal district in Orissa state, officials yesterday finally allowed delegates from the European Union (EU) to visit affected areas – as long as they do no fact-finding.

A team of 13 diplomats from the EU was to begin its four-day tour of Kandhamal district yesterday, but the federal government had refused to give the required clearance to visit the area, which was wracked by anti-Christian violence in 2008. A facilitator of the delegation said that authorities then reversed themselves and yesterday gave approval to the team.

The team plans to visit Kandhamal early next month to assess the state government’s efforts in rehabilitating victims and prosecuting attackers in the district, where a spate of anti-Christian violence in August-September 2008 killed over 100 people and burned 4,640 houses, 252 churches and 13 educational institutions.

When the federal government recommended that Orissa state officials allow the delegation to visit the area, the state government agreed under the condition that the diplomats undertake no fact-finding, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency. The government stipulated to the EU team, led by the deputy chief of mission of the Spanish embassy, Ramon Moreno, that they are only to interact with local residents. The delegation consented.

Delegates from the EU had also sought a visit to Kandhamal in November 2009, but the government denied permission. The diplomats from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland were able to make it only to the Orissa state capital, Bhubaneswar, at that time.

Ironically, three days before the government initially denied permission to the EU team, the head of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Mohan Bhagwat, visited Orissa and addressed a huge rally of its cadres in Bhubaneswar, reported PTI on Tuesday (Jan. 26).

While Bhagwat was not reported to have made an inflammatory speech, many Christians frowned on his visit. It is believed that his organization was behind the violence in Kandhamal, which began after a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, was killed by Maoists (extreme Marxists) on Aug. 23, 2008. Hindu extremist groups wrongly blamed it on local Christians in order to stir up anti-Christian violence.

On Nov. 11, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik told the state assembly House that 85 people from the RSS, 321 members of the VHP and 118 workers of the Bajrang Dal, youth wing of the VHP, were rounded up by the police for the attacks in Kandhamal.

EU’s Indictments

It is believed that New Delhi was hesitant to allow EU’s teams into Kandhamal because it has indicted India on several occasions for human rights violations. Soon after violence broke out in Kandhamal, the European Commission, EU’s executive wing, called it a “massacre of minorities.”

Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, who was attending the ninth India-EU summit in France at the time of the violence, called the anti-Christian attacks a “national shame.” French President Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the European Council, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, took up the issue “strongly with Singh,” reported The Times of India on Sept. 30, 2008.

On Aug. 17, 2009, the EU asked its citizens not to visit Kandhamal in an advisory stating that religious tensions were not yet over. “We therefore advise against travel within the state and in rural areas, particularly in the districts of Kandhamal and Bargarh,” it stated.

The EU’s advisory came at a time when the state government was targeting the visit of 200,000 foreign tourists to Orissa, noted PTI.

Kandhamal Superintendent of Police Praveen Kumar suggested that the advisory was not based on truth.

“There is no violence in Kandhamal since October 2008,” he told PTI. “The people celebrated Christmas and New Year’s Day as peace returned to the tribal dominated district.”

Before denying permission to the EU, the Indian government had restricted members of a U.S. panel from coming to the country. In June 2009, the government refused to issue visas for members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to visit Orissa. The panel then put India on its “Watch List” for the country’s violations of religious freedom.

Tensions Remain

Local human rights activist Ajay Singh said that while the state government had made some efforts to rehabilitate the victims, a lot more needed to be done.

An estimated 300 families are still living in private relief camps in Kandhamal, and at least 1,200 families have left Kandhamal following the violence, he said. These families have not gone back to their villages, fearing that if they returned without converting to Hinduism they would be attacked, he added.

Singh also said that authorities have asked more than 100 survivors of communal violence living in an abandoned market complex known as NAC, in G. Udayagiri area of Kandhamal, to move out. He said it is possible they were asked to leave because of the intended visit of the EU team.

Of the more than 50,000 people displaced by the violence, around 1,100 have received some compensation either from the government or from Christian and other organizations, he added.

Additionally, the state administration has to do much more in bringing the attackers to justice, said a representative of the Christian Legal Association. Of the total 831 police cases registered, charges have been filed in around 300 cases; 133 of these have been dropped due to “lack of evidence,” said the source.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Pakistani Muslims Gun Down Christian Friend

They order him to convert to Islam or die, after accusing him of murder.

MUREEDKAY, Pakistan, December 21 (CDN) — A group of Muslims shot their Christian friend dead this month on the outskirts of this town after saying they would spare his life only if he recanted his faith, according to the young man’s father.

The friends of Patras Masih, who died from gunshot wounds on Dec. 3 in Karol village, Punjab Province, issued the ultimatum to him after accusing him of the murder of their friend Anees Mahammad. An autopsy reported showed Mahammad died from toxic alcohol earlier that day.

Patras Masih’s father, Gulzar Masih, said his son was at home on that day, had no contact with Mahammad, and that his friends accused him of the murder only because he refused to recant Christianity and embrace Islam.

On Dec. 1, Mahammad and three other Muslim friends of Patras Masih – Sohail Muhammad, Imran Muhammad and Amir Muhammad – had arrived with unknown Muslim men and asked Masih to help them find liquor, Gulzar Masih told Compass. Pakistani law forbids Muslims from buying or consuming alcohol. Locally brewed liquor in rural areas of Pakistan can be fatally toxic; this month 14 people died from locally brewed, toxic liquor in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, news website Express India reported today.

“On that night,” Gulzar Masih said, “I also heard them saying in a commanding way in the drawing room of our house, ‘You [Patras Masih] ought to accept Islam and recant your faith, otherwise you and your family will be responsible for the dire consequences.’”   

Patras Masih held fast to his faith, his father said; leaving with his Muslim friends, he bought them a couple of bottles of liquor and returned home.

His voice full of grief, Gulzar Masih said that on Dec. 3, his son’s three Muslim friends arrived at their doorway yelling that he had killed Mahammad, and that they would spare his life only if he converted to Islam. They accused Patras Masih of serving Mahammad a toxic drink in their home the previous day.

When Patras Masih refused to recite the Islamic conversion creed, his father said, Sohail Muhammad, Imran Muhammad and Amir Muhammad sprayed bullets at his chest, killing him instantly.

“My son bravely refused to recant Christianity and clung to Christ,” Gulzar Masih said, dejected but with a small smile on his face. “He bravely embraced martyrdom.”

He said these same three friends on several occasions had pressured Patras Masih to convert to Islam, “but my son never accepted their invitation and always turned down their request to recant Christianity in a healthy and polite manner.”

When his father asked him about his friends’ Dec. 1 threats, Patras Masih told him that they often insisted that he become a Muslim. Though the young men had been friends since childhood, Gulzar Masih told his son to stop seeing them, he said. 

Sternly denying that his son was capable of killing a human being., he pointed out that Patras Masih’s friends accused him of serving Mahammad a toxic drink at Masih’s home on Dec. 2, but that Mahammad died on Dec. 3.

“Surely it is a conspiracy against him because he refused to meet their unreasonable demands,” the frail, bereaved father said. “They were ready to spare him only if he converted to Islam by reciting the holy Kalima [Islamic affirmation of faith], an emblem that one has become a Muslim.” 

He said that all four Muslim men had been friends of Patras Masih since childhood.

Gulzar Masih said that Ferozewala police have registered a murder case against the three suspects, but that they are all still at large and his family is vulnerable to further attacks.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Recent Incidents of Persecution

Chhattisgarh, India, November 17 (CDN) — Police on Nov. 8 detained Christians based on false allegations of “allurement to conversion” in Yadunandan Nagar, near Bilaspur. The Global Council of Indian Christians reported that at 8:45 p.m., nearly 150 locals stormed the house where a prayer service led by Kesboram Bhagel and his sister-in-law, Sangeetha Daniel, was taking place for a sick boy. Led by Hindu extremists from the Dharam Sena and Bajrang Dal shouting “Jai Shri Ram [Hail Lord Ram],” area Hindus dragged Bhagel out of the house as they slapped and kicked him. Police came to the site but remained mute spectators as the extremists continued beating Bhagel. Officers took Bhagel and other Christians to the Civil Lines Police Station at 10:10 p.m., followed by nearly 70 Hindu extremists, and released them at 3:30 a.m. without being charged. Police officials told Compass that they could not arrest any of the Hindu aggressors because Bhagel stated that he could not identify any of them. 

Karnataka – Police along with Hindu nationalist extremists on Nov. 6 disrupted a house church service in Bhadravathi, Shimoga district, falsely accused a physically challenged pastor of forcible conversion and verbally abused him. The Global Council of Indian Christians reported that around 12:30 p.m. nearly 20 intolerant Hindus barged into the Faith in Christ house church as three families assembled for their weekly service. Pastor Kannan Ramesh, owner of a small tailoring shop out of the same house, told Compass that the extremists angrily questioned two Christians identified only as Thrimurthi and Kumar about “conversion activities” at the church. They also tried to coerce Kumar into falsely testifying that Pastor Ramesh was forcibly converting local villagers, which Kumar refused to do in spite of threats. The extremists took Pastor Ramesh by auto-rickshaw to Old Town Rural Police Station in Bhadravathi, along with Kumar and Thrimurthi. Police questioned Pastor Ramesh about his tailoring business and warned him against using the place as a church, and then released the Christians without charges at about 11 p.m.

Karnataka – Nearly 20 Hindu nationalist extremists from the Bajrang Dal on Nov. 3 attacked a Christian identified only as Manjunath on the pretext of “forcible conversions” near an apartment complex in Attavar, Mangalore. The Daijiworld Media Network reported that the extremists struck Manjunath, a construction worker, with their hands at the BG Court Apartments as he stood outside his rental unit. They entered Manjunath’s apartment and found Christian literature. Neighbors said they had no knowledge of any conversion activity at his apartment; local sources confirmed this to Compass, and police arrived at the same conclusion after an investigation. Occasionally Manjunath’s friends assembled for prayer at his house, sources said, and Hindu extremists noticed and mobilized a mob, bringing along local television crew that filmed the attack.

Chhattisgarh – Nearly 100 Hindu nationalist extremists on Nov. 1 stormed a Sunday service, attacking a pastor, his family and the congregation and spewing baseless accusations of forceful conversion in Fukagirola, 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Kondagaon, Bastar district. The Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) reported that at 11 a.m. the mob barged into Milan Prarthana Mandir church, accused Pastor Angel Natham of forcible conversion and started beating him. They snatched his 1-year-old son, Akush Raj, from his wife and threw him to the ground, then beat her and 10 others. EFI reported that Kondagaon police arrived at 1 p.m. and took the pastor to the police station, and only afterward was he sent to a hospital where he underwent treatment. His son’s left ear was reportedly injured, and the infant was having difficulty hearing. A police official told Compass a complaint of forcible conversion against the pastor was filed by a person identified only as Shuklal, and that an investigation into the assault was in progress.

Chhattisgarh – Suspected Hindu extremists attacked a Sunday worship service on Oct. 25 at Masturi, 17 kilometers (10 miles) from Bilaspur district, injuring the backbone, arms and chest of Pastor Pavitra Kumar Beshra. The 27-year-old pastor of Beersheba Church of God, who works with Indian Evangelical Team (IET), was attacked by masked men dressed in cricket uniforms at 1:30 p.m. They arrived on motorcycles and called Pastor Beshra out of the church, then started to beat him with a cricket bat and stumps, Anish Charan told Compass. The pastor managed to escape and shut himself into the church building. The attackers also injured another church member, Triveni Basanti, 34, according to IET, and damaged a church member’s motorcycle. The unidentified men left the place shouting “Jai Shri Ram [Hail Lord Ram].” Pastor Beshra has filed a First Information Report with local police.

Karnataka – Hindu extremists attacked a school for street children in Hubli district on Oct. 22. Some 25 members of the Sri Ram Sene (Army of Lord Ram) forcefully entered the school building of the Adarsha Children’s Education Centre, which belongs to the minority Christian community, and damaged school property, Bibles and other books, reported the Global Council of Indian Christians. After vandalizing the school, the extremists went to a police station and pressed charges against school authorities for allegedly “forcefully converting” students to Christianity. This educational center, managed by Daniel Lingaraju, was started in July and is dedicated to training and teaching poor street children.

Report from Compass Direct News