CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Christian Missionaries
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/mission.html
Missionaries had always held a heroic and romantic place
within the Christian imagination. Even today churches
regularly collect contributions for the mission field.
The reality, of course, is very different. From its very
beginnings, Christian missionaries had inflicted
tremendous harm on the peoples they "witness" to.
In the past, the damage done by missionaries were shared
equally between the Protestant and Catholic churches.
Today, most of the damage is done by fundamentalist,
pentacostal and evangelical protestant sects, mostly from
the US, Canada and Europe. Numbering about 80,000 strong
[1] these fundamentalist missionaries spread like locusts
throughout the world. Their destruction of native
cultures, and in some cases actually causing the deaths
of these natives, can only be described as a modern
cultural and genocidal holocaust.
We will look at missionary activities in all the major
"mission fields" of the world
o The South Pacific
o Africa
o Asia
o South America
The South Pacific
One of the earliest accounts of the evils committed by
Christian missionaries in their conversion of native
tribes is that of the conversion of the Tahitians. In
1797, thirty years after the discovery of Tahiti by
Wallis, the first missionaries landed on the island. The
missionaries, sent by the London Missionary Society,
tried for seven years to convert the natives but were
unable to make any headway.
It was then that they discovered, as if by miracle, the
proper method of converting the Tahitians. They
discovered that the local chief, Pomare, liked alcohol
(distilled by the missionaries) so much that he became an
alcoholic. Addicted to the distilled spirit (perhaps the
holy spirit), Pomare agreed to back the missionaries in
their work of conversion. Pomare, supplied with western
firearms, easily subdued his native opponents. Upon his
victory over his rivals, the whole island was forcibly
converted in one day.
Then the process of inculcating "Christian virtues"
began. Persistent unbelievers, those who refused to be
converted, were executed. Singing was banned (except for
hymns) and all forms of adornment, flowers or tattoo were
disallowed. Of course, surfing and dancing were not
permitted as well. The punishment for breaking any of
these rules included, among others, being sentenced to
hard labour.
Within thirty years of missionary control, the population
of Tahiti fell from an inital estimate of 20,000 to
6,000.
From Tahiti, the missionaries moved on to the
neighbouring islands. Employing the same tactic that had
served them so well. The local chief would be introduced
to alcohol, made into an alcoholic, converted and then
left to convert the locals. After converting the
majority, the oppression of the ones who held on to their
tradition began. On the island of Raratonga, men were
conscripted into the missionary police to help eliminate
the remaining idolators. On another island, Raiatea, a
man who was able to forecast the weather by studying the
behaviour of fish was executed for witchcraft.
This was how the South Pacific was Christianized. [2]
Africa
Africa is widely considered to be a missionary success
story. Sub-Saharan Africa is widely considered to be the
most Christianized place on earth. Kenya, for instance,
has 65% of its population claiming to be active
Christians. [active meaning church-going]. In Malawi, 68%
of the populace made the same claim. The Democratic
Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) has nearly 200 times
as many evangelical Christians as it former colonial
master, Belgium.[3]
Perhaps the most famous missionary to Africa was David
Livingstone (1813-1873). Livingstone spoke of "the white
man's burden" to evangelize and civilize the peoples of
Africa. (Nobody bothered the ask the Africans what they
thought of this!). A rarely know fact about Livingstone
is that, as a missionary, his mission to Africa was a
complete failure. Throughout his many years in Africa he
made only one known convert. Even this convert, Sechele,
eventually lapsed from his faith. Yet it was Livingstone,
through his book Missionary Travels and Researches in
South Africa (1857) and through his lectures in England,
who introduced a whole new group of Europeans to the
"romance" of missionary activities.[4]
Yet, in reality missionary activities were anything but
romantic. Many of the missionaries' attempts to free
slaves and teach them Christianity amounted to no more
than changing one form of slavery to another. Given below
is an account of how the Holy Ghost Fathers, a missionary
group in the second half of the ninenteenth century, go
about "freeing" and Christianizing the slaves:
In 1868 the Holy Ghost Fathers chose Bagamoyo as the
site of the first mission station on the East African
mainland...Their ambition was to build a Christian
community of freed slaves. Ransoms were paid to slave
traders for the freedom of thousands to slaves. Most
of those released were placed in "Freedom Village" on
the mission compound, but they soon discovered that
their freedom was not absolute. The disciplinary code
enforced by the missionaries were severe, with a
rigorous timetable of work, Christian education and
prayers. As the baptised ex-slaves grew up, they were
married off in batches and resettled under the
authority of a missionary priest in a Christian
village somewhere inland. [5]
The anthropologist Jaques Maquet had called missionary
activities in Africa a "religious commando attack, aimed
at extirpating 'superstitious and idolatrous' practices
and converting whole groups." [6]
The missionaries in general have little regard for
African cultures and regard their peoples as ignorant
savages. One early twentieth century methodist missionary
in Umtali, Zimbabwe, wrote of the people he had set out
to evangelize: "Heathen and naked as new born babies, and
as ignorant as beetles." The solution was simple, educate
the children away from their parents and give them
western clothing to wear to cover their naked bodies. As
another missionary from Umtali wrote in a letter to the
US in 1916: "Heathen mothers do not know much, but many
boys and girls go to our schools now and are begging to
read God's word and write and to take care of their
bodies and be clean and dress like the people of
America." These "heathen" boys and girls were also given
"Christian" names like Kitchen, Tobacco, Sixpence or
Bottle. [7]
The missionaries were, of course, part of the oppressive
colonial forces in Africa. In an effort to set up a
successful mission in what is now Zimbabwe, Catholic
Jesuits entered into an alliance with the British South
Africa Company (BSAC). Ran by Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902),
the collaboration between the Jesuits and the BSCA would
have made any imperialist proud. BSAC needed labor for
their gold mines but the native South Africans were self
sufficient farmers and thus had no need for the salaries
offered for work there. The imperialists hit upon a
brilliant idea, the "hut tax", a form of property tax
imposed on Africans that must be paid in cash. [It is
important to note that white farmers did not have to pay
these taxes.] Thus to pay for the tax, the Africans are
now forced to work. If they failed to pay, they were
imprisoned and then sent to work as prison laborers
anyway! In return for donation of land and protection
from Rhodes, the Jesuit took the role of collecting the
hated taxes for the BSAC![8]
Today the number of missionaries from liberal churches
are dwindling, their numbers being taken over by the
fundamentalist, pentacostal and evangelical churches.
However much like their ecclesiastical forefathers of the
previous centuries, these missionaries do not believe the
Africans, now largely Christians, are smart enough to
keep the faith and churches going. Thus the rallying
cries of the new missionaries involve "making Africa born
again" or "fighting the forces of secularism" or
"battling AIDS". Yet is it obvious that it is not the
social or physical well being of Africans that concerns
these modern day missionaries.
Armed with US$250,000 from the Southern Baptish
Convention, Dr. John Goodgame, an American missionary in
Uganda, launched a most unusual campaign against AIDS.
Rather than using the money to provide healthcare or
medicine, the money was used to purchase and distribute
100,000 Bibles with sheets pasted onto them giving
selected Biblical passages to read. Some of these
passages are predictable exhortations against adultery
and other such "carnal" pleasures. [9]
Yet, just as 150 years of Christian missionary activities
failed to prevent poverty, under-development, famine,
apartheid and civil wars in Africa, it is unlikely that
these new evangelical missionaries will be a force for
any good there.
Asia
With the exception of the Phillipines and South Korea,
Asia has been quite resistant to Christian evangelism.
The missionaries found resistance from an entrenched
Islam in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and
Brunei. In countries with deep cultures such as India,
China and Japan, the locals saw little need to replace
their prevailing myths with foreign ones. Yet this lack
of success had not stopped Christian missionaries from
trying and causing much suffering among native peoples.
Our first story concerns the Mois, a native tribe of
Vietnam of Malayo-Polynesian stock related to many of the
native peoples of Southeast Asia such as the Dayaks of
Borneo islands and the Aetas of the Philippines. From an
initial estimate of one million populating the
mountainous regions of South Vietnam, their numbers began
to dwindle in the 1950's. This was partly due to these
people being forced into hard labour by the French
colonialists and partly due to the activities of the
missionaries.
If you should ask how missionary activity could lead to
the destruction of a people, a perfect example would be
what happened to the Bihs, a subtribe of the Mois. In the
1940's one of the eleven evangelists who came with the
returned French troops after the defeat of the Japanese,
went to Boun Choah, the main village of the Bihs. Other
missionaries had unsuccessfully tried to covert the Bihs
before. One Catholic missionary managed a total of only
ten conversions in five years. However the new
missionary, a Mr. Jones, was not to be detered. Upon
studying the Bihs, he found that one of the principle
acts of their beliefs was the custom of burial. Their
dead was not buried at first, but left in open coffins on
trees. After a couple of years, the bones are thoroughly
cleaned. The bones are then carried round the fields by a
female elder. Offerings are then made. Finally the bones
are buried.
Mr. Jones used his political influence to force the
French acting resident to suppress this custom. When the
police arrived to protect him , Mr. Jones went personally
to the trees, pulled down all the coffins on the trees
and threw the contents, be they bones or decomposing
corpses, into a common grave. The Bihs were then
converted. Convinced that their ancestors have deserted
them due to the desecration of their burial customs, the
Bihs stopped producing offsprings. One local Bih
explained that his people had resigned themselves to
extinction. [10]
Next on our list is Thailand. The success of the
Christian mission there has been abysmal. 170 years after
the arrival of the first Protestant missionaries , there
are today no more than 300,000 Christians there in a
population of 55 million. Buddhism here (as in Japan) had
proven to be a bulwark against Christianity. The
missionaries have thus turned to the hill tribes who are
neither Buddhist nor ethnic Thai. One such tribe is the
Akha.
There are nearly 70,000 Akha tribes people in Thailand,
with many more in the neighboring countries of Myanma,
Loas, Vietnam and China. The Akhas are the poorest of the
nine hill tribes of Thailand. They live in conditions of
poverty and are generally ignorant of the outside world.
Some Akhas had taken to growing opium while some women
have turned to prostitution. That the Akhas need help is
not doubted, that they need missionaries is highly
unlikely.
Matthew McDaniel of the Akha Heritage Foundation had
chronicled the abuse missionaries had inflicted in the
Akhas and their culture. Given below is a summary of his
findings. [11]
Many of these Christian missionaries to the Akhas come
from the US with some coming from other Asian countries.
The missions have been at work with the Akha for more
than eighty years. Obviously their objective is not to
alleviate the social conditions of the Akha but rather to
use the Akha's poverty and lack of political clout as a
wedge to force Christianity upon them. The methods are
brutal. Honing in on the "weakest point" in a village,
such as a family with problems with the elders, the
missionaries would increase their converts. Upon reaching
a "critical mass" of converts, the missionaries would
claim the village as "Christian" and forbid all practice
of the Akha religion. The net effect is clear, even Akhas
who have not converted can no longer practice what has
been an important part of their culture. Some churches
have gone even further. They forbid the Akhas to practice
any aspect of their culture. This includes songs, dances
and traditional ceremonies associated with the harvest.
In doing this the missionaries are depriving the Akhas of
a basic right of indigenous people as defined by the
United Nations. [12]
The missionaries have little respect for the Akhas, their
cultures and even their well being. One Baptist Mission,
run by an American Chinese lady, resorted to broadcasting
it's religious message over the public announcement
system (loudspeakers) to the entire village, no
consideration was given to whether the villagers like it
or not! [To get an idea of how unpalatable this would be
to the Akhas, imagine being bombarded by Osama bin
Laden's preaching over the loudspeaker condemning the
"crusaders" and proclaiming Allah's will]. This mission,
well funded, had added another building on its location
as well as two satellite dishes on its roof. Yet they are
unwilling to provide economic help to the Akhas. Unable
to provide for his children, one Akha man drank herbicide
and committed suicide. He lived no more than 20 meters
away from the mission compound. When asked why they
didn't help in cases of such desperation, the mission
replied simply that they "cannot help everybody, we are
here to teach the Bible."
Like many cases throughout history, Christianity looks
set to play a prominent role in the cultural extinction
of the Akhas.
Papua New Guinea is an island situated at the edge of the
Southeast Asian archipelago, just north of Australia. It
has a modest population of 3.3 million. With 2,300
missionaries, or roughly 1 missionary for every 1430
Papua New Guineans, the country has the highest
proportion of missionaries in the world. Has this
proliferation of Christian proselytization lead to any
spiritual revival? No, only more cultural genocide.
One example of the missionary attitude is that of
Reverend Paul Freyburg, an American Lutheran, who said "I
rejoice in the memories of what I have done and pray that
it will continue. I don't believe that our mission
destroyed much of any value." Rev. Freyburg came to New
Guinea in the 1930's and, except for a brief interval
during world war II, had remained there ever since. What
did Rev. Freyburg destroy in his long missionary carreer?
He held "renunciation festivals" at which he was called
in to destroy "things of darkness". This of course
includes, "magical objects" and also what he ignorantly
described as "vegetable items". The former are
irreplaceble works of arts and crafts by the natives. The
latter are priceless herbal remedies and are important
heritage of folk medicine. The natives were forbidden to
perform any cultural dances and to observe their native
festivals. [13]
Fundamentalists missionaries are today at the forefront
of such activities. One such mission, the Pioneers, works
among the Ningram people. Sal Lo Foso, a missionary
there, has no qualms about his activities. These include
destroying the "haus tamburan", a "spirit house" which is
the normal focal point of village life for the Ningram,
and building in its place, a church. All forms of
traditional songs and dancing were forbidden. Such
destruction of the Ningram culture has no meaning to Lo
Foso, for he believed that for the Ningrams to be "born
again", they must make a clean break with their past.[14]
The missionaries lack of understanding and unwillingness
to try and understand native cultures have left much
suffering in their trail. Australian administrators
reported a case in which missionaries refused to baptised
men because they were polygamous. The men started
divorcing their "excess" wives, leaving the women and
their children without much visible support in their
society. Another man, with three wives, on being told
that he can only have one, simply killed two of them, so
that he could then-being a monogamous Christian-"go to
heaven"![15]
This rush by the natives to get converted has little to
do with the Christian message but everything to do with
the "cargo" they carry.
[I]t was the possessions, the cargo, which the
missionaries had in abundance that mainly impressed
the tribal people. Inevitable they assumed that since
the Christian God blessed his followers with cargo,
they they too would be rewarded for following the
"Gutnuis Bilong Jisas Kraist." (New Guinean pidgin for
the gospel) [16]
Papua New Guinea is now 94% Christian. Yet missionaries
still arrive in droves. Why? For the simple reason that
they are now importing their denominational bickering
into the country. Thus an Anglican missionary reported
finding leaflets circulated among his congregation by
missionaries from the Seventh-Day Adventist church
telling them that worshipping of Sunday is a sure fire
step to Hell! In a similar manner, the New Tribes Mission
(or NTM-for more info on this group see the section on
South America below), tells the confused Papua New
Guinean that the papacy is the antichrist. In fact some
fundamentalists have taken to distributing the tracts by
Christian publisher Jack T Chick, with cartoons showing,
among other things, Catholic monks going through a secret
passage way for an orgy with nuns![17]
Pettifer and Bradley summarised the situation in Papua
New Guinea thus:
The future alone will reveal the cultural cost and the
political consequences of importing the theological
bickering of Western Christianity into an already
divided society.[18]
In India too, the success of Christian missions have been
limited to the marginal groups, the untouchables, the
hill tribes and "Anglo-Indians" (Indians with mixed
parentage).[19] Some missions in India had tend to
concentrate on proselytizing through the provision of
social services to the poor and needy. While this is
certainly a better method than the ethnocidal methods of
the fundamentalists, it should not be forgotten that
these social services in general play a subserviant role
to theology. The mission once headed by Mother Teresa
(1910-1997) is a case in point.
Born in Albania in 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, became a
nun and a missionary to India. She subsequently changed
her name to Teresa. Her work among the poor in Calcutta
attracted the world wide attention culminating with a
Nobel Peace Price in 1979. [20] Yet her work has been
criticised as not one based on the alleviation of
suffering but on the morbid theological celebration of
pain and suffering. Christopher Hitchens outlined these
rather disturbing facts in his book The Missionary
Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995):
o Dr. Robin Fox, editor of the medical journal The
Lancet, visited Mother Teresa's operation in Calcutta in
1994. He reported that he was very "disturbed" by what he
saw. There was little anesthesia to be seen and a near
total neglect of medically sound diagnosis. Why were not
the sisters given proper training in simple diagnosis as
well as in managing pain? Because according to Dr. Fox,
Mother Teresa "preferred providence to planning; her
rules are designed to prevent any drift towards
materialism."[21]
o Mary Loudon, a volunteer in Calcutta, had even worse
things to say about Mother Teresa's operation. She
reported seeing in the Home for the Dying more than a
hundred men and women all dying and not been given much
medical care. Pain killers used do not go beyond
aspirins. The nuns were rinsing the needles used for
drips with plain tap water. When Loudon asked them why
they were not sterilizing the needles, the reply was
simply they had no time and that there was "no point".
She also recounted the case of a fifteen year old boy who
was dying because of a treatable kidney complaint. All
that was needed was a cab fare to take the boy to a
proper hospital. But Mother Teresa's peons refused to do
so, for "if they do it for one, they had to do it for
everybody."[22]
o Susan Sheilds, who worked for almost ten years as a
member of Mother Teresa's order, subsequently left the
movement because of the atrocious negligence she
witnessed there. The order's obsession with poverty means
that the nuns and volunteers works under conditions of
austerity, rigidity and harshness. Due to Mother Teresa's
fame, Ms. Sheilds reported that the charity had around
US$50 million in their bank account in the US. The
donations kept pouring in, yet little of these were used
to procure medicine or to provide better health care for
the suffering. The nuns were rarely allowed to spend
money on the poor they are trying to help. [23]
o To Mother Teresa, like all other missionaries,
spiritual well being over-rides everything else. As Ms.
Sheilds reported, "Mother Teresa taught her nuns how to
secretly baptised those who were dying. Sisters were to
ask each person in danger of death if he wanted a 'ticket
to heaven'. An affirmative reply was to mean consent to
baptism. The sister was then to pretend she was just
cooling the person's forehead with a wet cloth, while in
fact she was baptizing him, saying quietly the necessary
words. Secrecy was important so that it would not come to
be known that Mother Teresa's sisters were baptising
Hindus and Muslims."[24]
Perhaps a poignant summary of Mother Teresa's mission can
be seen in a story recounted by herself. A dying man was
in terrible pain. She told him "You are suffering like
Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you." To
which the man replied: "Then please tell Jesus to stop
kissing me." [25]
South America
It is in South America that the missionaries are at their
most destructive. During the conquest of the "New World",
beginning in the 15th century, Catholic priests and
friars, accompanied the invading armies of Spain and
Portugal. All kinds of coercive methods were used to
subjugate and evangelize the Indians. The Indians were
exploited, enslaved and made to work for the settlers in
return for protection and religious instructions. A total
of up to 15 million Indians were reported to have died
due to such brutality. [26]
The major damage done in modern times are by
fundamentalists evangelical groups. The two main sects
that have major activities in South America are the
Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and the New Tribes
Mission (NTM).
The very name, Summer Institute of Linguistics, suggests
an attempt at deception, of concealing their missionary
activities. To the South American governments, the SIL
presents itself as lingusitic investigators of the many
languages of the native tribes of the continent. Under
this cover, its 3,500 missionaries conduct their goal of
converting the natives. It's founder William Townsend
defends this patently dishonest method by asking the
rhetorical question: "Was it honest for the Son of God to
come down to earth without revealing who he was?" [27]
Founded by Paul Fleming, the NTM today boasts of 2,500
missionaries in 24 countries worldwide. More conservative
and ardently fundamentalist than the SIL, the NTM has a
pronounced policy of recruiting young evangelists of
limited education. Their lack of sensitivity for these
native tribes can be seen in some of their descriptions
of them. The natives are referred to as "naked savages"
by Jean Johnson, the widow of a young NTM missionary, in
her book God Planted Five Seeds . In one instance, Les
Pederson, the NTM Field Co-ordinator for Latin America
was reported to have said "those Indians all look pretty
much the same". [28]
How do these sects, and others, spread the word of God?
Do they learn the language and then preach? Do the
natives then, by virtue of hearing the "Truth" with a
capital "T", automatically become Christians? No. The
methods employed are devious.
One method, as explained by Victor Halterman, of the SIL,
involves cutting off the natives from their source of
livelihood. This involve a few distinct steps; in the
words of Halterman himself:
When we learn of the presence of an uncontacted group,
we move into the area, build a strong shelter-say of
logs-and cut paths radiating from it into the forest.
We leave gifts along these paths-knives, axes,
mirrors, the kind of things the Indians can't resist-
and sometimes they leave gifts in exchange. After a
while the relationship develops. Maybe they are
mistrustful at first but in the end they stop running
when we show, and we get together and make friends.
As the author and journalist, Norman Lewis, explained in
his book The Missionaries: God against the Indians
(1988), the gifts are placed in such a way that at the
end the Indians become far removed from their sources of
food and game. It is then that the gifts are stopped.
Halterman continues:
We have to break their dependency on us next.
Naturally they want to go on receiving all these
desirable things we've been giving them, and sometimes
it comes as a surprise when we explain that from now
on if they want to possess them they must work for
money. We don't employ them but we usually fix them up
with something to do on the local farms. They settle
down at it when they realise there's no going back.
That work at the "local farm" oftentimes amounts to
slavery was (indirectly)admitted by Halterman when he
mentioned that "abuses" sometimes occur. [29]
Another method, aptly called "manhunt" by Lewis, involves
the missionaries going out, sometimes in motorized
vehicles, hunting for natives to integrate them into
reservtions set up for missionary work. The NTM, for
instance, went on such a manhunt in Paraguay. Five
missionized natives were killed in one such manhunt.
Those unconverted natives were taken to the NTM camp in
Campo Loro. Within a short while, according to Survival
International, all had died of new diseases they had no
immunity to. Stung by criticism, the best reply the NTM
's Director in Paraguay could muster was: "We don't go
after people anymore. We just provide transport." [30]
A final element needs to be added. As Lewis wrote:
The unimportance of a comfortable earthly life,
weighed in the balance against the threat of eternal
punishment in the next, inspires many missionaries to
gather the souls at all costs, often with disregards
for the welfare of the converts' in this world.[31]
These elements make for a militant fundamentalist
missionary campaign. One that we would expect to cause
harm to the natives. And we would be right. Below are
some examples of the evil committed in the name of
Christian evangelism.
The contact work, done in conjunction with the "manhunt"
are sometimes done by Christianized natives who are
trained by the missionaries to carry guns. The "newly
contacted" natives are then rounded off to the mission
camp. One American organization, Cultural Survival,
reported in 1986 that natives in the NTM camp in Paraguay
were held there against will. In short, they had been
kidnapped.
In another such "manhunt" in 1979, also in Paraguay, one
of the freightened natives fell down from a tree and
broke her leg. (Her right breast had already been shot
off by a previous encounter with the missionaries.) She
was compelled, with her broken leg, to walk back to the
mission camp. She subsequently died. [32]
If the process of rounding up the natives to be converted
were bad, their lives within the mission camp were even
worse. Some examples.
Once in the mission camp, many of the natives either die
from starvation or from diseases transmitted by the
missionaries with which the former had no immunity
against. In one such mission camp in Paraguay, the German
anthropologist, Dr. Mark Munzel, reported that food and
medicine were deliberately withheld by the missionaries.
From a total of 277 natives in April 1972 only 202
survivors were left three months later. A US
congressional report confirmed that 49% of the camp
population had vanished! [33]
Surely the (uninformed) believer may assert: these
natives would be allowed to leave if they do not accept
the preachings of the missionaries. Surely that would be
the Christian thing to do. But that is not the case. Take
the following eye witness account by Norman Lewis in a
missionary camp in Paraguay:
I followed him [Donald McCullin-the photographer from
The Sunday Times] into the hut and saw two old ladies
lying on some rags on the ground in the last stages of
emaciation and clearly on the verge of death. One was
unconscious, the second in what was evidently a state
of catalepsy...In the second hut lay another woman,
also in a desperate condition and with untreated
wounds on her legs. A small, naked, tearful boy, sat
at her side...The three women and the boy had been
taken in a recent forest roundup, the third woman
having being shot in the side while attempting to
escape.[emphasis mine][34]
Of course Paraguay is not the only place where the
defenceless natives were subjected to Christian genocide.
In Bolivia, William Pencille, of the South American
Missionary Society, was called in to help when white
ranchers moving into the tribal areas came upon the
Ayoreos. Pencille persuaded these natives to stop
resisting the encroachment of the cattlemen and to settle
on a patch of barren land beside a railroad tract. The
natives, having no resistance to common diseases of the
"modern" man, began to die. Throughout all this Pencille
had the means to save the lives of these people. He had
access to many modes of transport, including an
aeroplane, and to funds which could easily have been used
to buy medicines for them. Yet this is what he said:
"It's better they should die. Then I baptize them (on the
point of death) and they go straight to heaven." [Extract
from a conversation between William Pencille and Father
Elmar Klinger, OFM , quoted by Luis A. Pereira in The
Bolivian Instance] A total of three hundred natives died
in his "care" within a matter of weeks.[35] [a]
But the worst of the mission linked atrocities happenned
in Brazil. Granted that the main culprits of the genocide
were functionaries of the grossly misnamed Indian
Protection Service, the missionaries were at least partly
responsible for these. In the 1980's the Brazilian
attorney general's office began an investigation into the
atrocities committed by the agency over a period of
thirty years. It's findings were shocking.
Many native tribes were hunted, murdered and some to the
point of extinction. Some of these include:
o Munducurus tribe: reduced from 19,000 strong in the
1930's to 1,200
o Guaranis tribe: reduced from 5,000 to 200
o Cajaras tribe: from 4,000 to 400
o Cintas Largas: from 10,000 to possibly 500
o Tapaiunas: completely extirpated
o Other tribes were reduced to only a few (one or
two!)individuals and some by only a single family.
These peoples were culled by various means by greedy
landrobbers who wanted to developed the untapped natural
wealth of the Brazilian rainforest. Some of the methods
include:
o The Cintas Largas were attacked by dropping dynamites
from aeroplanes.
o The Maxacalis were given alcohol and then shot down
when they became drunk.
o The Nhambiquera were killed in huge numbers by
machine gun fire.
o Two Patachos tribes were exterminated by giving the
unsuspecting Idnians smallpox injections.
o Some of the Indians were murdered by presenting them
with food laced with arsenic and formicides.
The above does not exhaust the creativity of the
murderers but should suffice to show the almost
unparalleled cruelty that were visited on the Indian
tribes.
What have all these got to do with the missionaries? The
Brazilian newpaper, O Jornal do Brazil had this to say:
In reality those in control of these Indian Protection
Service posts [where the majority of the atrocities
had taken place] are North American Missionaries...
This was confirmed by the Brazilian ministry of Indians.
Thus, in essence, the missionaries allowed the atrocities
to happen. As Lewis remarked:
Despite the law of every civilized country...that
those who witness...a crime without denouncing it to
the authorities are held to be accessories to the
crime, there is no record to be found of any such
denunciation [by the missionaries].
As the newspaper O Globo reported: "it was missionary
policy to ignore what was going on."
Of course the missionaries were not only passively
supporting the genocide of the Brazilian natives. They
played active roles in many of the atrocities. One
missionary persuaded 600 Ticuna indians that the end of
the world is taking place and they will only be safe on a
ranch. On that ranch the Indians were made slaves and
tortured.
The Bororos, a tribe studied by the reknowned
anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, fell prey to the
missionaries as well. They were banned by the
missionaries, who were aided by the local police, from
performing their customary burial rites on their dead.
That left the Bororos without a cultural identity and,
one by one, they committed suicide. As the O Jornal do
Brazil explained:
It is sad to see the plight in which these people have
been left. The missionaries have deprived them of
their power to resist. That is why they have been so
easily plundered. A great emptiness and aimlessness
had been left in their eyes.
Thus was the power of Christian love in the Brazilian
jungles. [36]
Notes
a. If stories such as this sounds appaling, remember that
it is still happening at this very moment. If you want to
help, or find out more about the plight of native peoples
such as the Ayoreos, visit the Friends of Peoples Close
to Nature website.
http://www.fpcn-global.org/
References
1. Pettifer & Bradley, Missionaries: p15
2. Lewis, The Missionaries: p9-15
3. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p125
4. ibid: p72-82
5. ibid: p82
6. Maquet, Africanity: p38
7. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p88-89
8. Davidson, Africa in Modern History: p110
Harrison, The White Tribe of Africa: p69
Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p96
9. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p129-131
10. Lewis, op cit: p36-43
11. Akha.org: Just say "No" to Missionaries.
12. Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
13. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p53-55
14. ibid: p63-64
15. ibid: p56
16. ibid: p55
17. ibid: p60-63
18. ibid: p60-63
19. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p175
20. Feldman, The Nobel Prize: p310
21. Hitchens, The Missionary Position: p38-39
22. ibid: p39-41
23. ibid: p43-48
24. ibid: p48
25. ibid: p41-42
26. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p133
27. Lewis, op cit: p99-100
28. ibid: p115-119
29. ibid: p105
30. ibid: p117
31. ibid: p104
32. ibid: p117-118
33. ibid: p126
34. ibid: p159
35. ibid: p114
36. inid: p92-98
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End of forwarded message
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
Panchaang for 13 Ashadh 5104, Friday, July 11, 2003:
Shubhanu Nama Samvatsare Dakshinaya Nartana Ritau
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Dr. Jai Maharaj
Agent of MRS LOI C ESTRADA
EMAIL:lest...@rediffmail.com
Dear Sir
My name is LOI C.ESTRADA,The wife of Mr. JOSEPH ESTRADA, the former
President of Philippines located in the South East Asia.
My husband was recently impeached from office by a backed uprising of mass
demonstrators and the Senate.
My husband is presently in jail and facing trial on charges of corruption,
embezzlement, and the mysterious charge of plunder which might lead to death
sentence. The present government is forcing my husband out of Manila to
avoid demonstration by his supporter.
During my husband's regime as president of Philippine, I realized some
reasonable amount of money from various deals that I successfully executed.
I have plans to invest this money for my children's future on real estate
and industrial production. My husband is not aware of this because I wish to
do it secretly for now.
before my husband was impeached, I secretly siphoned the sum of $30,000,000
million USD (Thirty million United states dollars) out of Philippines and
deposited the money with a security firm that transports valuable goods and
consignments through diplomatic means.
I am contacting you because I want you to go to the security company and
claim the money on my behalf since I have declared that the consignment
belong to my foreign business partner. You shall also be required to assist
me in investment in your country.
I hope to trust you as a God fearing person who will not sit on this money
when you claim it, rather assist me properly, I expect you to declare what
percentage of the total money you will take for your assistance.
When I receive your positive response I will let you know where the security
company is and the payment pin code to claim the money which is very
important.
For now, let all our communication is by e-mail because my line are right
now connected to the Philippines Telecommunication Network services. Please
also send me your telephone and fax number.
I will ask my son contact you to give you more details on after i have
received a responce from you.
Thank you and God bless you and family.
MRS LOI C ESTRADA
Snoopy
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2003 12:20:13 AM ]
AHMEDABAD: A case of sodomy was registered against a swami of the
Swaminarayan Gurukul in Botad taluka of Bhavnagar district following a
complaint by a young boy.
The boy, Sukhram Naran who was admitted to the government hospital in
Bhavnagar on Tuesday alleged that a swami of the gurukul in Samadhiyara
village of Botad had molested him "sexually" after which the boy was
treated at private hospitals in Ranpur and other towns, before being
brought to Bhavnagar.
The accused has been identified as Madhvanand swami who is now underground.
According to Bhavnagar district SP Anupamsinh Gehlot, "the incident
occurred on June 18 at the gurukul premises."
Soon after the incident, the boy fled from the campus and was treated at
several private hospitals.
The boy who is around 15 years old, has been in the gurukul since a year
and was studying in Class IX.
Police inspector Narendrasinh Jadeja who is investigating the case said
that "the fact that the swami is absconding, might point at his guilt."
A case has been registered under section 377 of the IPC against the swami.
gh
news:Xtian-062...@news.mantra.com...
wonder what kind of a "Dr." you are.. must be a pashu doctor....