group from house arrest Monday, May 2, but a Christian couple remained detained for allegedly evangelizing among Hindu orphans, news reports said.
The General Secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal Madhav Kumar Nepal and official Amrit Kumar Bohara had reportedly been prevented from going out, communicating with the outside world or receiving anything other than government-sanctioned news stories.
The decision to free the men came two days after King Gyanendra formally lifted a state of
emergency imposed when he took over power, backed by the military, on February 1. However authorities did not release an Indian Christian couple, who were apparently arrested last week in southern Nepal on charges "of forcible conversion of Hindu orphans" to Christianity, reported the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS).
Babu Varghese, an Indian citizen, and his wife Savitri were running a school for orphans in Birgunj city in southern Nepal, the commercial capital of the world’s only Hindu kingdom, said the IANS. Most of the 80 students of the ‘Grace English Boarding School’ were allegedly "coerced into conversion" by the two believers, the report claimed.
The constitution of Nepal, a small country situated between the world’s most populated nations India and China, provides religious freedom for the people of non-Hindu faiths, but "forcible conversion" is a penal offence punishable with a three-year jail term, BosNewsLife learned.
CHRISTIAN GROUPS
In addition Christian religious groups do not have a right to register as a church or a society, despite the fact that Nepal signed United Nations’ human rights treaties, conventions and protocols, human rights watchers say.
A state-run newspaper, the Rising Nepal, said the district administrative authorities received "complaints that the couple had been converting the students" and stressed that a "police investigation" is underway.
"The arrest of the Indian couple is to be seen in the light of the deteriorating situation in Nepal," Amelia Andrews, Associate Executive Secretary of Communication of the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI), told BosNewsLife. "The once vibrant media of Nepal is under strict censorship. The civil liberties of the people have been suspended. There have been gross violations of human rights," Andrews added.
EXTRA POWERS
Although King Gyanendra lifted the three-month state of emergency in the kingdom, he made no mention of giving up some of the extra powers he assumed when he dismissed the government, arrested scores of officials and activists and censored the media. The king said the measures were part of a plan to "end a Maoist revolt" that killed more than 11,000 people since 1996.
King Gyanendra, brother of the slain king of Nepal, was sworn in following the deaths of nine members of the royal family in 2001. In a statement obtained by the BosNewsLife New Delhi Bureau, the Commission on Policy and National Governance (COP) and the NCCI said they "would pray for the people of Nepal" and work with like-minded organizations to take up the issue of violation of human rights in the country along with other National Council of Churches in South Asia.
The COP met with ecumenists in Delhi last week to deliberate on the emerging situation in Nepal and to evolve an understanding on the whole issue on April 28, 2005, officials said. Although Christians comprise less than two percent of the almost 24 million-strong population of Nepal, Christianity is seen by sections of the Hindu community as "a foreign, cow-eating religion," and conversion is viewed as "destroying Nepalese culture."
JESUIT MISSIONARIES
Jesuit missionaries from the Catholic Church were the first to enter Nepal in the 18th century as they found varying routes through the Himalayas to Tibet. However, King Prithvi Narayan Shah expelled the Catholic priests in 1760. Since then, the policy of the Nepali government has focused "on preventing Christians from entering the country" and to "mistreat those who managed to do so," human rights watchers claim.
In 1961, King Mahendra exercised autocratic control of the country and introduced Panchayat, a traditional Hindu form of local governing councils, under which Christian persecution reached a new high compelling Nepali Christians to operate underground, according to human rights watchdogs. At least 300 pastors and Christians were reportedly jailed by various Panchayats.
Although democracy and religious freedom improved somewhat since 1990, experts say Christian persecution continues in the Asian nation. (Based in New Delhi, Journalist Vishal Arora has covered persecution and other hard hitting news stories for a variety of international and national publications. He has traveled around the country on invitation by NGOs for seminars and talks on human rights, communalism, and religious persecution. Vishal Arora can be contacted at e-mail address vishalarora_in@hotmail.com or visit his website http://www40.brinkster.com/vishalarora/ )
