Buddhist Extremists in Bangladesh Beat, Take Christians Captive

Dhaka, Bangladesh: April 23, 2010, (PCTV Newsdesk)

Buddhist members of an armed rebel group and their sympathizers are holding three tribal Christians captive in a pagoda in southeastern Bangladesh after severely beating them in an attempt to force them to return to Buddhism, Christian sources said.

Held captive since April 16 are Pastor Shushil Jibon Talukder, 55; Bimol Kanti Chakma, 50; and Laksmi Bilas Chakma, 40, of Maddha Lemuchari Baptist Church in Lemuchari village, in Mohalchari sub-district of the mountainous Khagrachari district, some 300 kilometers (186 miles) southeast of Dhaka. They are to be kept in the pagoda for 15 to 20 days as punishment for having left the Buddhist religion, the sources said.

Local Buddhists are considered powerful as they have ties with the United Peoples Democratic Front (UPDF), an armed group in the hill districts.

After taking the Christians captive on April 16, the sources said, the next day the armed Buddhist extremists forced other Christians of Maddha Lemuchari Baptist Church to demolish their church building by their own hands. The extremists first seized all blankets, Bibles and song books from the church building.

The sources said two UPDF members went to Pastor Talukder’s house at 7 a.m. on April 16, telling him to go to a Buddhist community leader’s house in a nearby village. The Buddhist leader also ordered all members of the Baptist church to come to his house, and about 15 Christians did so.

After a brief dispute, the Buddhists chose the pastor and the two other Christians and began beating them, seriously injuring the pastor. They then took them to a nearby pagoda for Buddhist baptism, shaving their heads and dressing them in saffron robes as part of a conversion ritual.

The sources said Pastor Talukder was bludgeoned nearly to death.

“The pastor was beaten so seriously that he could not walk to the nearby pagoda,” said one source. “Buddhist people took him on a wooden stretcher, which is used for carrying a dead body for burial or cremation.”

Pastor Talukder was treated in the pagoda with intravenous, hypodermic injections thatsaved his life, the source said.

The Buddhist extremists were said to be forcing other Christians to undergo Buddhist baptism in the pagoda and to embrace Buddhism.

A source in Khagrachari district told Compass that local UPDF Buddhists had been mounting pressure on the Christians since their church began in the area in early 2007.

“They gave vent to their anger on Christians in a violent outburst by beating the pastor and two others after failing several attempts in the past to stop their evangelical activities,” the source said. “They took them into a pagoda to convert them forcibly to Buddhism.”

In June the Buddhists had threatened to harm Pastor Talukder if he did not give up his Christian faith. The pastor escaped and hid in different churches for two months. Later he came back in the area and began his pastoral and evangelical activities anew.

“They also made threats and gave ultimatums to three or four other churches in the locality to try to force them to come back to Buddhism,” the source said.

‘Social Deviation’

Regional Sub-district Chairman Sona Ratan Chakma told Compass that the “three renegade Buddhists” are being kept in the pagoda for religious indoctrination.

“They became Christian, and they were breaking the rules and customs of the Buddhist society, so elders of the society were angry with them,” Chakma said. “That is why they were sent to a pagoda for 15 to 20 days for their spiritual enlightenment, so that they can come back to their previous place [Buddhism].”

Chakma said the Christians have not been tortured but given punishment proportionate to the gravity of their “social deviation.”

“They were punished so that they can come to their senses,” he said.

Under Siege

The Rev. Leor P. Sarkar, general secretary of Bangladesh Baptist Church Fellowship, told Compass that the UPDF’s ultimatum was of grave concern.

“This armed group issued an ultimatum that by April 30 all Christians should come back to Buddhism, otherwise all of them will face the same consequences,” said Sarkar.

Christians are virtually in a state of siege by the UPDF, he said. None of them go to church buildings on the traditional worship days of Friday or Sunday, instead worshipping in their own houses.

Sarkar added that the tribal Christians do not have any political conflict with the UPDF.

“They simply persecute them for their faith in Christ,” he said. “Their only demand to us is to go back to Buddhism.”

The UPDF’s order to give up their faith is a matter of life and death, Sarkar said.

“A ripple of unknown fear gripped the entire Christian community there,” he said. “Everybody took fright from that menacing cruelty. The everyday life of Christians is hampered, beset with threats, hatred and ostracism. So it is a social catastrophe.”

The church leader urgently appealed to local government officials to come to the aid of the kidnapped Christians.

The UPDF is one of two main tribal organizations in the hill districts, the other being the United People’s Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti, or PCJSS). The PCJSS, formed in 1973, had fought for autonomy in the region for 25 years, leaving nearly 8,500 troops, rebels and civilians killed. After signing a peace accord in 1997 with the Bangladesh government, the PCJSS laid down arms. But the UPDF, a political party founded in 1998 based in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, has strong and serious reservations against the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord signed 1997. Claiming that the agreement failed to address fundamental demands of the indigenous Jumma people, the UPDF has pledged to fight for their full autonomy.

Last year the PCJSS demanded that the government ban the UPDF for their terrorist activities in the hill districts.

The Chittagong Hill Tracts region comprises three districts: Bandarban, Khagrachuri and Rangamati. The region is surrounded by the Indian states of Tripura on the north and Mizoram on the east, Myanmar on the south and east.

http://pakistanchristian.tv/news/2010-04- 23_Buddhist_Extremists_in_Bangladesh_Beat_Take_Christians_Captive.cfm

By Marcus Rowntree*

INDIA—A baby girl, only a few hours old, is carried to her execution.
 
The woman who holds her calls herself a midwife, but everyone in this 
Indian slum knows who she really is: the bringer of death.
 
As the woman approaches the pressure cooker, the baby’s mother does nothing.
She has already paid, after all, about 30 cents for her newborn 
daughter to be boiled alive.
 
The woman lowers the squirming infant into the water. The lid snaps shut.
The flames rise. Then the infant’s scalded corpse is tossed to the 
dogs for them to devour.
 
Grace2Even more common, a mother refuses to nurse her starving baby 
until the “midwife” arrives to silence her infant daughter’s pleading 
cries with a bottle of poison and cold indifference.

If the mother cannot find help, she kills the child herself. Then she 
unceremoniously buries her baby beneath her house, perhaps beside 
other daughters discarded before this baby.
 
How could a mother murder her own child, and why was Baby Grace 
spared? Such questions probe the depths of human depravity - and the 
passionate efforts of Christians who, at least in their small corner 
of India, may finally be turning the tide.

Sati Alva,* an Indian Christian, lives a short walk from one of her 
city’s slums. A squalid expanse of grimy one-room houses and 
trash-strewn alleys, it is a place teeming with misery. The men 
savagely beat their wives in nightly rages fueled by the alcohol they spend all their earnings to buy.

The traumatized women turn to prostitution or menial labor to survive, 
leaving their children to gamble, drink and steal.
 
“That’s the condition in the slum,” Sati said. “Even the mothers don’t 
really care for the children.”

 
The children are Sati’s main concern. With help from the Southern 
Baptist World Hunger Fund, she and her husband Ravindra Alva* run an 
after-school feeding and education program where more than 200 slum 
children come to escape their abusive homes, get help with homework, 
eat perhaps their only meal of the day - and learn about Jesus.
 
For years, as Sati and Ravindra listened to these children sing to 
God, they were unaware of the blood of unborn sisters, sisters who 
should have been there singing beside their brothers.
 
“The people used to come and go, but we did not know the secret that 
they were killing their children,” Ravindra said.

 
Eventually he and Sati learned the truth, which the mothers themselves 
confirmed.

“I can tell about 80 percent of the ladies have already [killed a baby 
girl],” Sati said. “All the kids’ mothers have done it, and they are 
still doing it.”
 
It comes down to money.

“[The parents] cannot afford to bring [the girls] up,” she explained. 
“They have to give them in marriage, which costs a lot, and they have 
to pay a dowry.”
 
The dowry, a payment in cash or goods from the bride’s family to the 
groom, is illegal in India but still widely practiced in villages and urban slums.
Combined with other wedding expenses, it amounts to a fortune for a 
family struggling to survive. As a result, families in many poor areas 
of India allow one daughter to live but kill the rest.
 
“They say it’s very hard for them,” Sati said. “They say, ‘If we 
cannot feed ourselves, how can we raise this girl and give her in marriage?’”
 
As Sati and Ravindra began to plead unsuccessfully with the slum women 
to spare their baby girls, they never imagined what God had in store 
for their lives. He revealed it in a village one day during an 
encounter that still haunts them.
 
“That day, a man brought us a baby that his wife and mother were about 
to kill,” Sati recounted. “He said, ‘You Christian people will take 
care of my baby, I know, so please take her.’ He just put her in my 
hands and was ready to go.”

Shocked and completely unprepared to care for an infant, they called 
the man back.
 
“We were not sure what we were going to do,” Sati recalled. “We told 
him, ‘Take the baby. We will go look for some orphanage or some 
organization that can take her, then we will let you know so you can give her back to us.’”

It was a mistake she mourns with tears.

“That evening when we came back to the village, they had already 
killed the baby,” she said. “We felt like we were the reason that child died.”

In that moment, their excuses died as well. Determined that not one 
more baby should perish, Ravindra and Sati prayed and worked for three 
years to build an orphanage in a town about 70 miles from the city. 
They dedicated the building in October 2009.

“We announced in the slum that we were ready to take the infants,” 
Sati said. “We said, ‘Please don’t kill the babies. Come and leave them here.’”

The response was heartbreaking.
 
“They said they would rather kill the babies than give them up,” Sati said.

The women, who already feared being discovered as child-killers, 
worried their daughters would eventually find out who their parents 
were and tell others about their abandonment. Sati promised the women 
that the girls would be raised in the orphanage far from the city.

Then very early one morning in November 2009, Sati’s dog began barking 
furiously. Her housekeeper went outside to investigate.

“She opened the door,” Sati said, “and then saw the baby on the doormat.”

Sati’s heart flooded with emotion. They had announced the opening of 
their orphanage a month earlier, yet at that point, its cribs were 
empty. Now a newborn was at their door.
 
“I didn’t know what to do,” Sati recalled. “I couldn’t even talk. I 
was really shocked.”

 
Only three days old, Grace (as Sati soon named her) needed immediate care.
Her feet were turned inward from a birth defect, and a medical checkup 
revealed the possibility of hepatitis, a virulent liver disease.
 
God’s people swung into action. Sati and Ravindra’s Christian friends 
provided clothing, diapers, formula and funds for hospital visits. 
Some contacted relatives in the United States, where four families 
asked to adopt Grace.

“God has provided everything,” Sati said. “I believe He will continue 
to provide. We don’t have [everything she needs], but I trust the Lord 
that He will provide for her, because He has brought her here.”
 
When news spread in the slum that a woman left her baby with Ravindra 
and Sati instead of killing her, people came to see for themselves. As 
Sati explained how she would have Grace’s feet fixed and then take her 
to the orphanage, the people praised Grace’s mother for making “a very 
good decision.” It was a change in heart Sati could hardly believe.


“The ladies were saying that from now on, people will start bringing 
more [babies] and stop killing,” she recalled. “It just came out from the ladies’
mouths.”
 
For Sati, Grace is not only comfort for the baby she and Ravindra 
could not save years ago, but also hope that the unseen holocaust 
around her may finally be slowing.
 
“When [Grace] came, I thought God has answered our prayers and saved 
this girl,” she said. “He will save more lives through Grace, because 
people are seeing [how we care for her].”
 
Ravindra has plenty of doubts. Although Grace was spared, he suspects 
most of the women will continue to murder their children, even though 
they now know of a safe place to leave them.

“They still think killing [the baby] is better than giving it to 
others,” he lamented. “They think if their babies are living somewhere 
else, society will find out these babies belong to them, and then 
people will talk. They think if they kill them, people will talk for a 
week or a month, but after that, no problem.”

 
But he and Sati will still be there, working tirelessly to snatch life 
from the jaws of death and, they pray, to change the culture of female 
infanticide that still pervades the slum.
 
“I was just telling Ravindra that unless we have all these babies in 
our home, I will not be satisfied,” Sati said.
 
The road ahead is difficult; running an orphanage is expensive, and 
even now they do not know from where the funds will come. 
Nevertheless, this couple, who once did not have enough money to buy a 
bicycle but can now feed hundreds of children, trusts the Lord to provide.

“I know God has a purpose for whoever He is bringing here,” Sati said. 
“He has a special plan for their lives, so I just leave it all in His 
hands. He will take care of everything.”

Additional medical tests confirmed that Grace does have hepatitis. She 
has been undergoing a series of castings that go all the way up to her 
hips to help straighten the curvatures of her legs, and she will later 
have corrective surgeries.

“Grace is at a healthy weight and smiles a lot,” Southern Baptist 
representative Bryson Holtson* said.

The story of baby Grace shows how seemingly insignificant acts of love 
can change the world in profound ways. Most Christians who donated to 
the World Hunger Fund probably never imagined they would be helping 
save a little girl destined for a pressure cooker. Those unforeseen 
blessings are what Holtson wants Christians to see.

“In South Asia, there are a billion people with these huge needs, and 
a lot of Christians feel overwhelmed, so they don’t do anything,” Holtson said.
“But my experience from Africa to here is the things that seem so 
small to us could be something people never forget.”

Jesus never spoke in grey. It was always solid, whether black or white. He was clear and concise with everything he said. When he talked of loving our enemies, he did not put stipulations on the statement, but just told us to love our enemies. He was that blunt. When he spoke of himself being the way, it was what he meant. When he talked of the end times, it was a promise that he would one day return. There was never grey in anything he said.

Something has been troubling me lately over the idea of theology. Not that theology is necessarily a bad thing. In fact I have my own set of beliefs and theology. The problem however is that theology does not save, only Christ does. Yet some people seem to think that one’s salvation is dependent upon their theology. As if choosing between predestination/free will, pre/mid/post tribulation, speaking in tongues, or any of these ideas are what grant salvation. 

Please understand that I am not knocking any of these beliefs, because as I have already mentioned I have my own thoughts on all of these. Yet I realize however that God has called us to follow him, rather than to study him. Sometimes I think we have a way of learning about God instead of looking like Christ.

Many theologians would argue against me, saying that you must have a set theology in order to understand God. That you must believe a certain way. Yet Christ never taught this. Had some of the major arguments in theology been as important as we make them out to be, it is my belief that Jesus would have made them black or white rather than grey areas. How do I know that most theology is grey? Because often times people can argue over it and never come to the same conclusion, meaning that Jesus never gave an absolute answer on it. Yeah I would have loved for Jesus just to have come out and said “You who believe, were all predestined to eternity.” That would have put that argument to rest (for the most part, trust me, I understand that some people would just argue about anything). 

However the two things that Jesus taught us and they go well with 1 John 3, is that all that matters is that we believe in his claims to who he is and to love one another. He did not say you had to believe in free will, pre-tribulation, gift of the tongues, etc. It was to believe on him and to love others the way that he loved. 

Now I know that some of you are going to argue that much of Paul’s writings and Jesus’ teachings in collaboration teach us certain theologies and truth’s about God. This is true. However we must remember the first century believers. They did not have the compilation of the scriptures (this did not come until centuries later). So the church of Galatia did not have the letter to the church of Ephesus. What I am trying to get at is that they did not have the letters to compare to one another to come to the conclusion of certain theological truths. Why did God make it this way? Well partly because he is mysterious in nature, but also because these things were not as important as we make them out to be. So what am I saying?

That a person does not have to have the right theological beliefs or agree on these beliefs, but has to believe in Christ and love others. This is what is important. This is black and white. 

The first Eve, a lady of great beauty, crafted by the very hand of God in His image. Taken from the side of her soon to be husband, she was formed as his helper. One to offer strength and encouragement, not to just be a mere slave or unequal of her spouse, but to be apart of him. To share in his life. To live, love, and journey alongside of him. The completion of perfect humanity. No longer was the first Adam alone. Now he was complete in every way.

Generations of Adams have passed since then and that Eve has passed on, but those types of Eve still exist. Those that seem perfect in spite of the fall of humanity. Brought to life by God’s breath. Made for a particular man, like his equal, feeling incomplete until one day he finds her. Or maybe it’s that she finds him. And they start their journey together. The one where nothing is perfect. Yet Eve makes it perfect. She is his strength, the one that God formed from a rib, some dirt, and the breath of the Spirit. To be there through thick and thin. The one that complete’s him. Although she is not perfect, she seems to be so. She makes life complete. I am that Adam. And my love is that Eve. The one who offers me strength in spite of life’s difficult situations. Who loves me in spite of me and loves Christ even more than me. This is what makes her perfect.