Christians in Sri Lanka Caught Between Warring Factions

The name sounds exotic and so is the locale: Sri Lanka is a tropical island located in the Indian Ocean, southeast of India. It is noted for the beauty and variety of its vegetation. Dense tropical jungles occupy extensive areas in the southwest, and the upper mountain slopes are thickly forested. Many varieties of palm, including the coconut, flourish in the lowlands along the coast.

Because Sri Lanka is situated near the equator, the physical climate is generally hot - and, in many ways, so is the religious one. Christians on this island nation increasingly face persecution from Hindu groups and pressure to convert to Buddhism.

Approximately 70 percent of the population is Buddhist, with another 12 percent Hindu, 7 percent Muslim, and about 8 percent Christian. The Hindu population is mainly concentrated in the northern part of the country while the Christian segment is primarily in the west. The south is predominantly Buddhist.

Sri Lanka has been caught since 1983 in a vicious civil war between a group of Hindu insurgents known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Buddhist government's armed forces.

According to International Christian Concern (ICC), LTTE is fighting for a separate state for the Hindu (Tamil) minority. The conflict is mainly with the national government, but members of all religious groups have been victims of LTTE violence at one time or another. Christians in the LTTE areas face extortion from the militants and sometimes see their children kidnapped into the Tamil army.

The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) reports that Christian churches in Sri Lanka - especially the smaller Protestant congregations in the countryside - have been under severe persecution and physical attack by both Hindu and Buddhist extremists for years. The most recent attack was on July 20, but was preceded by a string of incidents going back to May.

Godfrey Yogarajah of the Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (EASL) reports that on June 15, some 44 Christian families, numbering 77 persons, were attacked by Hindu extremists. They were forced to spend the night in the jungles, then languished as refugees in a nearby area.

As a month had passed since the incident, the churches decided to resettle the believers in a neighboring area, says Yogarajah. Then on July 20, a mob attacked these believers with clubs and knives. Five were admitted to a hospital with serious stab wounds; several others who were beaten by clubs and poles also were treated.

According to EASL, "the authorities concerned are showing a blind eye to this problem. These Christian refugees need urgent food supplies, medicine and shelter. This is the second attack on them."

In the middle of May, villagers gathered in the Hindu temple and passed a resolution against the Christians, banning them from the village. Following this, says EASL, they took three Christian families to the temple and forcibly put "holy ash" on them. They then summoned a number of illiterate Christian men to come to the temple and sign a document, which the temple authorities read in public. The document stated that these men had agreed to leave the village.

On June 12, EASL filed a written complaint with the LTTE area leader. On the night of June 15, a mob reportedly went to these believer's homes. They were members of two churches - the Foursquare congregation and the Assemblies of God - and assaulted them and chased them from the village. The families had no time to pick up their belongings, nor their clothing, and some were forced to run naked.

They spent the night in the jungles, many with small babies, and crossed over the army border the following day into the government-controlled area.

ICC also reports a number of incidents against Christians in Sri Lanka. On May 10, unknown assailants murdered a Christian priest in the town of Negombo. Father Bernard Costa was found lying in a pool of blood. His body had been cut at least 40 times; the cause of death, however, was strangulation.

On April 29, says ICC, Buddhist extremists in Hasalaka threatened members of The Gospel for Asia Believers Church to leave the area. The church currently rents a building for its worship services and the owner of the building is being pressured to kick them out. The day before, Buddhists in the town of Pandura held an anti-Christian rally and called for evangelical Christians to leave the area.

Radio Australia says Sri Lanka's influential Buddhist clergy have called for laws to ban the Christian conversions now spreading in poverty-stricken rural villages. They have vowed collective action against the practice and adopted an 11-point plan to fight proselytizers active in several districts of the island.

According to Radio Australia, a shortage of Buddhist monks in several temples is also allowing Christian priests to make inroads into the Buddhist heartland by converting farming communities. The monks say about 23,000 Buddhists are being converted to Christianity each year and proselytizers have targeted 5,000 out of the 25,400 villages in the country for their activities.

Monks have called on the authorities to immediately pass laws to prevent conversions taking place under the cover of "helping rural communities to improve their economic standards."

The situation shows no sign of improving. Just this week, a report filed by Reuters said Sri Lankan air force jets bombed Tamil Tiger guerrilla positions on Tuesday. On Monday, the air force pounded a rebel bunker line in the northern peninsula.

Sri Lanka has stepped up air strikes against the LTTE after a rebel suicide squad attacked the country's biggest air base near Colombo, and its only international airport, on July 24.

Reuters said the attack destroyed more than a dozen commercial and military aircraft, and appeared to signal the collapse of a Norwegian-brokered bid to end the LTTE's bloody 18-year campaign for a separate Tamil state in northeastern Sri Lanka.