|PIC1|Raphael Cheenath, Bishop of Bhubaneshwar, India, has called on the state election commissioner of Orissa to postpone elections to the Lok Sabha of the state assembly, as persecuted Christians may not be able to vote.

A number of days ago the Bishop asked election authorities to guarantee the rights of refugees and displaced people to vote in the elections.

Since anti-Christian violence rocked the state of Orissa last year many Christians have been forced to live in refugee camps in the jungle. Many Christians are unable to go home as they are threatened with death when they go back to their villages unless they convert to Hinduism.

Although large scale violence has subsided, individual acts of violence, intimidation and murder are still being reported in the state.

Bishop Cheenath has said that the continuing violence means that the only way to guarantee voting rights is to postpone the election until the security situation has improved.

The Bishop said, “The first and foremost requirement for holding a free and fair poll is a secure and peaceful environment where the candidates and their supporters… enjoy freedom of movement and speech to go round to every nook and corner of a constituency to meet the voters and canvas votes from them… at the same time, the socio-cultural environment of the constituencies should… enable citizens… to speak out, propagate [their views] and join in any rally or meeting in favour of a party or candidate of his/her choice,” reports AsiaNews.it.

The Bishop said that these conditions had not yet been met in Kandhamal district, the part of Orissa most affected by the violence. He claims that around 3,200 people are still housed in government-run refugee camps.

He claimed that, “the entire nation knows, the situation in Kandhamal greatly disturbed by the continuing communal holocaust since the last week of August 2008, is still very tense and abnormal, completely unsuitable to [. . .] a peaceful electoral process, let alone free and fair polls on the scheduled dates… We consider the Kandhamal situation as exceptionally abnormal and therefore unsuitable to the scheduled holding of Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.”