Pointing to the increase in alleged persecution cases of Christians in India, the United Kingdom government on Tuesday said that it would take up the issue.
The UK Foreign Office Minister Mark Field, during a scheduled session of oral questions for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the House of Commons, said the British government would raise all specific cases of such alleged religious persecution in India with its counterparts.
“India, of course, is one of many countries where there has been an increased worsening in recent years and we will obviously at a consular level take up all the cases (of Christian persecution),” Field told the Commons.
He was responding to a specific intervention by Scottish National Party Member of Parliament David Linden, who raised the case of a group of Christians allegedly being beaten during a prayer meeting in India in early May and urged for action from government over the intensifying cases in the country.
Earlier, UK foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt spoke of a roundtable of faith leaders he had attended at the British High Commissioner’s residence in Nigeria over the issue.
“What emerged is the immensely important role that politicians have in developing countries in not fanning populism and hatred between religions in election campaigns, which is a very easy route to go down with extremely damaging consequences,” he said.
Hunt also pointed to a report he had commissioned to review the persecution of Christians around the world and consider befitting measures to counter the problem.
“The reason we commissioned this report was a sense that whilst we have called out the persecution of people of other religions we have been more reticent in doing that when it’s Christians. When actually 80 percent of all the religious persecution is against Christians, he said.
The interim report was submitted by the Bishop of Truro earlier this month describing a truly sobering look at the persecution of Christians across the world, in addition, quoted figures from Persecution Relief to highlight 736 such attacks in India in 2017, an increase from 348 in 2016.
