The ongoing eruption of mob violence against Christians in northeastern Manipur, India, has met with so little law enforcement resistance that participation rioters post videos of themselves attacking churches online to “show off,” David Curry, the president and CEO of Global Christian Relief, told Breitbart News.
Mob violence against Christians has killed at least 73 people in Manipur as of Monday and displaced 35,000 people, most of them Christians belonging to minority tribal communities in the region. Many of the thousands have been left to live without resources in the forests neighboring the ashes of what was once their homes or attempt to walk to neighboring Myanmar, or south to other Indian communities in the hope of finding shelter.
Manipur is home to over 30 different ethnic tribes. The majority community is the Meitei people, who are mostly Hindu and control local politics. Most of the other, smaller ethnic tribes, the largest among them the Kuki people, have converted to Christianity rapidly in the past four decades, adding a religious element to years of strife surrounding disputes over control of the fertile valley territories, where the Meitei live, and the inland hill regions. The hill areas are reportedly reserved for Kukis and other tribal peoples, while the Meitei control the valley but are limited in their access to the hills.
In response to these limitations, the Meitei, emboldened by the popularity of the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanded they receive the designation of “Scheduled Tribe,” which would grant them a set of new land and political privileges in addition to their dominance of the local government. In response, over 50,000 members of other tribes organized a peaceful protest against the designation in Imphal, Manipur.
Mob attacks on Christian communities followed immediately after the peaceful march and continue to this day with minimal federal government intervention.
Curry – whose organization works to provide humanitarian aid, shelter, and spiritual support to persecuted Christians around the world – told Breitbart News that what many media outlets are describing as a merely sectarian dispute has a marked anti-Christian element to it, as with much mob violence against India’s Christian minorities nationwide.
“Since 2014 when the BJP Party, Prime Minister Modi’s party, took over, there’s been a 300% jump in reported attacks on Christians and Christian churches,” Curry explained during an interview with Breitbart News on Friday. “It’s just been this massive escalation. That’s because he has a nationalistic agenda which is, in very simple terms, suggesting that Christians aren’t real Indians because you have to be Hindu to be a real Indian citizen.”
In Manipur, the growing popularity of Hindu nationalism – the idea that India should be a nation for Hindus, without religious diversity – has manifested in the strife between the Meitei and smaller tribes.
“The last I heard yesterday from our folks in India was 116 churches had been attacked and or destroyed,” Curry told Breitbart News. “I don’t know how many of those have been destroyed. We know 25 had been destroyed ten days ago.”
The riots are ongoing, Curry explained, because the attackers see little to no police pushback and feel emboldened to destroy Christian communities. Attacking Christians, he continued, “is acceptable under this administration.”
“The police, the local police, don’t protect the Christian churches and in some ways aid and abet the rioters,” Curry asserted, “so the bigger systemic problem is, why does the central government allow this to happen? Why do local municipalities and policemen allow these attacks against churches and Christians and facilitate it?”
Global Christian Relief has compiled video footage from the ground in Manipur.
“Many of the videos we get are being posted by the rioters themselves,” Curry explained, who show no concern about potential law enforcement action for engaging in rampant violence and vandalism. “They’re not even afraid to post and call out the attacks on the churches on social media because there are no repercussions.”
Curry said the social media posts are meant “to kind of brag and show off and, I guess, rally the troops.”
Hindu nationalists on social media are sharing videos from Manipur showing alleged Meitei victims of the mob violence, who openly request the government give them weapons to expel the Kuki and other tribes, presumably to Myanmar for allegedly not being truly Indian.
Local BJP officials and Modi-friendly media have begun spreading rumors that the riots are not a product of anti-Christian sentiment, but disputes around drug trafficking. Pro-Meitei opinion columnists have claimed the core of the problem is a decades-old “conspiracy” by foreign Christian missionaries to “harvest the souls” of Manipur’s smaller tribes aided by alleged demographic displacement of the majority Meitei people.
The Deccan Herald reported on Monday, citing an anonymous BJP official, that the government believes the more violent groups in Manipur are alleged “illegal immigrant” Kuki Christians crossing the border from Myanmar to help exterminate Meitei Hindus from their land.
“All these are false and fabricated,” Paotinthang Lupheng, president of All Tribal Students’ Union, Manipur (ATSUM), told the Herald in the same report. “The government is siding with Meiteis and is targeting the Kukis. The clashes are still on in some places and the situation may worsen again.”
Curry predicted that more such violence would occur in the future if police and the Modi government failed to punish participants.
“It’s all going to depend on whether or not the state punishes the rioters and those who are attacking, many of whom are caught on camera and post it on social media,” Curry told Breitbart News. “If there’s nothing done to enforce justice, you will see more of it – either in Manipur or elsewhere, just like we saw in Chhattisgarh – there’s 10,000 people displaced there, dozens of churches destroyed, they’re still not back in their homes.”
Chhattisgarh is a state in central India that experienced a wave of Hindu nationalist mob violence beginning in January. Like in Manipur, mobs burned down churches and went door-to-door attacking the homes of known Christian families.
The federal government in New Delhi has done little to address mob violence generally, and even less regarding mob attacks on Christians. The Manipur situation has attracted international outrage, however, prompting Union Home Minister Amit Shah to hold meetings with regional officials on Monday to address the issue. According to the Hindu, Shah “directed strict action against the perpetrators of violence and assured complete support and help of the central government for ensuring lasting peace.”
Allegedly anonymous sources told the Indian Express that Shah’s conversations with Manipur leaders focused on New Delhi’s frustration with “the shape the tension between the two groups [the Meitei and Kukis] has taken.” The outlet claimed Shah ordered the leaders to restore “normalcy” and “do not do too much politics,” presumably in an attempt to stop embarrassing the country.
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