Accusative Persecution

A bull at the Bible school near the edge of a field.

I just heard a surprising story of accusations coming from one of the Bible schools.  The two Bible schools near us both have a pretty open plan with classrooms and living quarters in the center and then fields for the students and teachers to farm surrounding.  And there’s a delicate relationship in these types of places, like any village has as well, between the herders who travel across the land and the more sedentary farmers who claim it.  So, there are herders coming through this Bible school property all the time for their animals to glean from the fields in the off season.  But this year one of those herders came back to the Bible school with a serious complaint.  The day after he had been on their land, more than twenty cattle abruptly died.  The herder and his group accused the Bible school students or staff of poisoning their cattle!  When a teacher from the Bible school came out to talk to them and assure them that this hadn’t happened, they beat him up and took him to the local branch of the national police.  These police held him in their cell and ruled that the Bible school needed to pay the herder for his lost cattle.  

In general, Muslims and Christians have a very good relationship in our country and live together well.  The only time that we’ve visibly seen persecution of Christians is when new believers have to make a break from their family of origin.  Or on the rare occasion, there has been a mass public stirring up of anger at Christians, but always with heavy political undercurrents.  As we live here longer, we do see more of the subtle persecution that often falls to minorities through being excluded from opportunities or quickly blamed for problems.  

Houses and classrooms on campus.

While some of the tension here is due to herder/farmer relations, I think it was also easy to scapegoat the “Christians” in this case and see them quickly condemned.  Fortunately, the Bible school was able to talk to some officials in the capital about what had happened, and they sent out someone to investigate.  Even more amazingly, someone from the government department of agriculture came forward to say that they had long ago documented that this Bible school property has a certain plant native to it which is known to be toxic for cattle.  With this information, the fine for the Bible school was dropped and the teacher let go!  But the sense that the Bible school is picked on because it is a Christian place is still apparent.  The teachers of this Bible school also shared how every week they have one of their sheep or goats stolen from their land.  Either stolen out of their pens at night or when they are let out into the fields during the day.  It makes a difficult climate to live even harder for when you’re continually losing resources and yet you’re trying to build a sufficient base to sustain your family and be a leader in helping others.

-- El Padre