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********** QATAR ORDERS INDIAN CHRISTIAN DEPORTED Officials Refuse to Give Reason for Pending Ouster by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, January 16 (Compass) — An Indian Christian employed in Qatar for the past 22 years has been arrested and ordered deported back to India by next week. To date, officials of the tiny Gulf state have refused to state any reason for his pending ouster.

Arokiyasamy Stanislas Chellappa, 51, was arrested on December 9 by officers of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Doha, the capital. A technician in the engineering department of a hospital managed by Hamad Medical Corporation, Chellappa had been requested by his acting director to report that afternoon for CID questioning.

But instead of being questioned, he was put under arrest by the police, who drove him to his house, collected his passport from his wife and dropped him at the deportation jail.

“What did I do?” Chellappa asked them. “We don’t know,” they replied. “It is just written that you have to go back home.” He got the same answer, he said, from cell guards and officials at the deportation center, where he was fingerprinted and photographed the following day and locked up in Cell Five. His arresting officer admitted he had just been informed that it was an order “from higher authorities.”

“One official even came to me in my cell and asked me, ‘Why are you here?'” Chellappa said. “I just laughed at him, saying, ‘Don’t YOU know why I’m here?'” The man remarked that his case file did not explain the reason he was to be deported, so he was hoping Chellappa himself knew why.

“I was not cuffed, I was not beaten, nothing like that,” Chellappa told Compass in a telephone interview today from his home in Doha. “They took me there like to a guest house. And I was never interrogated.” Initially, he said, he was asked several times, “Are you a Christian?” But it was just one of the routine questions concerning his family and job, he said, nothing more.

According to Middle East Concern, a Christian advocacy group closely monitoring Chellappa’s case over the past five weeks, the Indian’s wife and Christian friends in Qatar have concluded, “It must be because of his religion.”

A practicing Christian, Chellappa has for years pastored a fellowship of Tamil-speaking Indian Christians who meet in his home for Bible study, prayer and worship. “Yes, I witness about what the Lord has done in my life, and in the lives of people in my congregation,” Chellappa said. “Jesus Christ has done so many wonders and miracles for us, in answers to our prayers.” But he has never been accused of trying to “push his beliefs” on Muslim colleagues, he said.

When Chellappa’s wife first appealed for his bail from the deportation center, she learned through representatives of their embassy and his employer that according to an order in his file, her husband was ineligible for bail.

But after two weeks, the Ministry of Interior ordered Chellappa released on “temporary bail” until January 22, when he must either fly with his family back to Chennai, Madras, in Tamil Nadu state, or face re-arrest.

Qatari authorities have consistently refused to give either Chellappa or the Indian Embassy a reason for his forced deportation, despite personal intervention by Indian Ambassador Ranjan Mathya.

Last week, Chellappa was advised by Hamad Hospital’s accounting staff to clear his financial accounts, so that he could leave the country. “Somebody is pressuring him to leave Qatar as soon as possible,” a friend in Qatar commented.

Chellappa has booked air tickets for his family on the January 22 deadline, he said, pending a final appeal through his employer and embassy to cancel his deportation orders. If the family is forced to leave Qatar next week, their youngest son, 12-year-old Gnayna, will be unable to take his March public school exams in Doha, and too late to enter them in India. Chellappa and his wife Esther have three teenage daughters now studying in India.

Ironically, Chellappa’s arrest came just three weeks after Qatar announced the establishment of official diplomatic relations with the Vatican. The Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox churches have enjoyed de facto official recognition since 1999, when government land was set aside for their communities. But with certain conservative Muslim circles opposed to the construction of permanent Christian churches, the government has not issued building permits.

A leader for democratic change in the Arab Gulf states, Qatar has allowed considerable visibility for its expatriate Christian community of Indians, Filipinos, Europeans, Arabs and Americans from Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and other Protestant denominations. Although non-Muslims may not proselytize or meet for public worship, private services are permitted.

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