Washington: About 100 people, holding
placards staged a
protest in front of the White House on Thursday to get the attention of
visiting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the issue of attacks on
Christians in India.
Indians and Americans clustered under a forest of
umbrellas,
several of those standing in Lafayette Park waved signs such as "Stop
the Gang Rape of Nuns" and "Shame on India."
"The government is taking no action," said Christy
John, an
Indian pharmacologist with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, who
clutched a sign saying: "Stop the Killing of Priests and Nuns."
"The police know beforehand of the attacks, but
they show up after the fact," he said.
At least 26 people have died and 3,000 Christian
homes have been
destroyed along with 134 houses of worship, according to the US
Commission on International Religious Freedom, which on Monday asked
President Bush to press Dr Singh to stop the month-long killing spree.
Bernard Malik, the president of the Federation of
Indian Christian Organisations of North America, put the number of dead
at 58.
Several Catholic clergy attended the
demonstrations, and retired
Washington Auxiliary Bishop Leonard Olivier denounced the killings as
"unbelievable carnage."
The Indian Embassy and the Hindu American
Foundation did not immediately return calls asking for comment.
The violence began August 23, when Swami
Laxmananda Saraswati, a
member of the Hindu fundamentalist organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
was killed along with four disciples.
Although the Indian Government claimed that
revolutionary
Maoists were the killers, many Hindus blamed Christians, saying it was
a revenge attack for widespread religious violence against Christians
last December.
At least 35 Christian sites were attacked in
Orissa.
The violence then spread to the neighbouring state
of Madhya
Pradesh, where a convent of Carmelite nuns was attacked and the
cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Jabalpur was set on fire.
Pope Benedict XVI condemned the attacks on August
27 and on
August 29, the Catholic Bishops Conference of India closed all 25,000
Catholic schools across the country to protest the government's seeming
inability to stop the violence.
