October 2023 Persecution Magazine

ICC Newsroom
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A Buddhist temple at Lumbini, Nepal, the birth place of Buddha/iStock
Two Nepalese Churches Attacked in Growing Trend
An attack on a church in Nepal’s Lumbini Province was just
the latest in a string of recent violence against Christians
in the country. The church is in the southern Nawalparasi
district of Lumbini along the border with India’s Uttar Pradesh
state and was one of two churches in the same town that were
vandalized over one weekend last month.
Photos and videos reviewed by International Christian Concern
(ICC) showed broken windows and other signs of violence
around the property, including damage to fencing and a broken
motorbike. Another photo shared on social media showed
two men, identified as pastors, being assaulted on the street.
Gathered locals appear to have smeared the pastors’ faces with
a sticky black substance in an act described by ICC contacts as a
cultural sign of hatred and disrespect.
ICC has learned that the attacks in Lumbini are the sixth and
seventh such attacks against churches in Nepal in the last two
weeks. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” a Nepalese civil society
leader said about the recent spate of attacks. Perpetrators,
seeing little to no response from the authorities in recent weeks,
“are encouraged to act more,” he told ICC.
News of another incident of men assaulting Christians, this time
in Janakpur, emerged on Tuesday as word of Monday’s attack on
the two pastors spread.
In Kathmandu, the country’s capital city, two men were
apparently arrested and taken to court for street preaching.
Though the country’s constitution ostensibly protects religious
freedom, it does so in vague enough terms to allow a law today
that criminalizes proselytization.
Chapter 19 of the Muluki Ain, or general code of Nepal, states
that “no one shall propagate any religion in such manner as to
undermine the religion of other nor shall cause other to convert
his or her religion.”
Religious minorities are regularly arrested and charged under
this law, which goes beyond its neighbor India’s bans on forced
conversions to criminalizing participation in the act of conversion
in any form. In Nepal, proselytization carries with it the threat of
up to six years in prison and subsequent deportation in the case
of foreigners.
The U.S. Department of State highlighted its concerns with
Nepal’s anti-conversion and anti-proselytization laws in a report
published earlier this year. “Multiple religious groups in the
country,” the report stated, “[continue] to reiterate that the
constitutional and criminal code provisions governing religious
conversion and proselytism [are] vague and contradictory and
[open] the door for prosecution for actions carried out in the
normal course of practicing one’s religion.
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Persecution | OCTOBER 2023