Hunger strike against Arunachal Pradesh anti-conversion law

The local BJP government wants to implement the contested law that was approved in 1978, but that successive governments had since set aside. On 6 March the discussion in the Legislative Assembly in a state where Christians make up 30% of the population. The Arunachal Christian Forum protests: ‘This law is clearly against us, we demand its withdrawal’.

Delhi (AsiaNews) - Members of the Arunachal Christian Forum (ACF) are staging an eight-hour hunger strike today against the implementation of the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act (APFRA), the local anti-conversion law. In reality, the law had already existed in Itanagar since 1978 but until now it had never been implemented by the local governments that had succeeded one another.

Now, however, the current chief minister Pema Khandu - who is a member of the BJP, Prime Minister Modi's nationalist party - has expressed his intention to launch implementing regulations that will be discussed on 6 March. The occasion was a sentence pronounced by the local High Court that last September, accepting a petition presented by a lawyer of the nationalist front, ordered the state government to intervene on the matter within six months.

Arunachal Pradesh is a north-eastern Indian state with a strong Christian presence: according to the latest census, held in India in 2011, Christians make up 30.26% of the population.

The Arunachal Christian Forum, founded in 1979, is at the forefront of opposition to this law, which it defines as ‘blatantly anti-Christian’. Pema Khandu replied that the state government is ready to hold talks on the issue and reassured that the regulations proposed under the law are not against any religious community but are intended to safeguard ‘indigenous faiths’.

The local Minister of the Interior, Mama Natung, has invited the ACF to a meeting to be held on 21 February. The president of the Arunachal Christian Forum, Tarh Miri, said he would accept the invitation, but confirmed all the protest initiatives: ‘We demand the total withdrawal of this law’, he commented, anticipating that if this does not happen there will be a large demonstration in front of the National Assembly on 6 March, the day the discussion is scheduled to take place.

‘We are protesting against the return of this law that has been inactive for four decades,’ added Miri. ’Although its title speaks of freedom, it was conceived to limit the possibility of practising one's religion. And the State is practically indifferent to our concerns and objections.’