Story number 1 for 21 Nov 2000

Our newscast today begins with a look at a recent study by The Center for Religious Freedom. The report reveals that 36 percent of people have their religious rights violated in some way and 39 percent worship under some form of constraint. India’s Christians have felt weight of the persecution. Medical Ambassadors International’s Gordon Claassen says it’s not always outright violence. “It’s a general attitude in Northern India. In the communities we’re working in, it’s not the villagers themselves who are creating the problems, it’s the other Hindu radicals groups coming out into the communities where we’re working and harassing the people saying: “why are you listening to them? Why are you sending your children to their daycare centers?”…those kinds of things. It makes it a little unhandy for our people, let’s put it that way.” Claassen asks that Christians pray for the believers in India. Specifically: “For their personal relationship with Christ, that it becomes really lit alive and meaningful, and then also for freedom of expression: “how do they express their faith?””