Christian group in India documents 327 acts of persecution in 2020 alone
According to the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), Indian Christians endured at least 327 acts of persecution in 2020. These figures are all the more alarming becaude most of India’s population lived under locked down conditions for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
EFI noted twenty-six incidents of social boycotts where Christian communities were shunned by their non-Christian neighbours due to their religious identity.
EFI’s report documents the continuation of an ongoing trend of growing religious intolerance and violence in India. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took political power in 2014, incidents of Christian persecution documented by EFI have more than doubled.
In 2014, the year the BJP rose to political power, EFI recorded 147 violent attacks on Indian Christians. In 2019, after five years of BJP rule, EFI recorded 366 violent attacks.
The incidents documented by EFI likely represent only a portion of the violence experienced by India’s Christian community. Most incidents go unreported due to fear of reprisal and lack of confidence in India’s justice system.
Source: persecution.org
