Prime Minister apologises for crackdown

The Indian Prime Minister apologised on 12 December to church leaders for the beating up by police of protesters including priests and nuns on a march to parliament in the capital Delhi, writes Anto Akkara.

The marchers were demanding an end to discrimination against Dalit (low caste) Christians and Muslims. More than 400 protesters, including Delhi’s Archbishop Anil Couto along with 20 bishops of different denominations – half a dozen of them Catholics – were detained when the protesters broke through police barricades and marched to the parliament shouting “we want justice”. Police baton-charged and assaulted several marchers. Catholic priests in cassocks with crosses in hand and others knelt on the road as police trucks mounted with water cannon repeatedly sprayed them with muddy water.

“I apologise for what has happened,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh admitted when a 10-member delegation led by Archbishop Couto called on him the next day to reiterate the decades-old Christian demand for an end to discrimination against Christian Dalits.