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********** INDIAN CHRISTIAN FAMILY DEPORTED BY QATAR Government Refuses Explanation, Diplomatic Appeals by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, January 29 (Compass) — Indian Christian Stanislas Chellappa and his family were deported from Qatar yesterday by order of the Qatari Interior Ministry, which still refuses any explanation for his arrest and expulsion.

Chellappa left from Doha International Airport on Gulf Air at 7 p.m. last night with his wife Esther and 12-year-old son Gnayna, flying back to their home near Madras in India’s Tamil Nadu state.

“They are not saying what is the reason,” Chellappa told Compass two days ago, as he was loading his family’s personal effects into a container. “I am a Christian, and that is why they don’t want to say why.” A practicing Christian who says he spoke openly about his faith, Chellappa pastored a small congregation of Tamil-speaking Christians in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

After working for the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) in Qatar for 22 years, Chellappa was arrested without warning in early December and sent to the Gulf state’s deportation center. Two weeks later, the Interior Ministry granted him a one-month “temporary bail,” which expired on January 22.

The government refused to implement any due process of law for Chellappa to appeal the unilateral deportation order. Last week, however, Qatari authorities allowed Chellappa a one-week extension on his deportation, since his packing container had not arrived to ship his personal goods back to India.

According to inquiries made by the Christian advocacy group Middle East Concern (MEC), it has not been possible to confirm the role which Chellappa’s faith had in his arrest and unilateral ouster from Qatar.

When Indian Ambassador to Qatar Ranjan Mathya asked his Qatari counterparts the reason for the Indian’s forced deportation, he was told, “His company didn’t want him any more.” Chellappa, 51, was working as a technician in the hospital’s engineering department.

But if his employers wanted to fire him, Chellappa said, this was not the proper or legal way to do it. “This is not the way, after I worked for this company for almost 23 years,” Chellappa said. “I did not expect that I would ever have any treatment like this in Qatar.”

According to a consul officer at the Indian Embassy in Qatar, the Qatari Foreign Ministry declined to give the embassy a reason for Chellappa’s deportation. “We took it up with the authorities, and asked for the reason,” the consul said, “but we got no answer.” He admitted, however, that an “informal” reason had been suggested by Chellappa’s wife and colleagues, that the action was caused by the lay preacher’s Christian activities.

The hospital’s director of personnel told Compass last week that HMC policy follows the local laws, which require a minimum two months’ notice to any employee whose contract is to be terminated. “Even if we don’t want him, we have to give him that notice,” he told Compass.

“But if he has been arrested, then this is something to do with the Ministry of Interior,” said the hospital representative, who identified himself as Mr. Khalid. However, he said he had no direct information on Chellappa’s case, since he had been away on leave recently.

One Western diplomatic source who inquired into the reason for Chellappa’s arrest was told it was linked to a publicized corruption investigation involving employees at Hamad Hospital, Qatar Petroleum and the local municipality. Ten days ago the English daily “Peninsula” newspaper reported that a HMC employee was among three individuals arrested on bribery charges. “No one else has raised religion as a motive for these arrests,” the diplomat concluded.

Chellappa told Compass he was shocked at these new claims that he had been accused of corruption. Surely if that was the case, he said, his ambassador would have been told that was the reason for his arrest.

“I personally met my ambassador three times,” Chellappa said, “and he told me that each time he asked why I was being deported, they said, ‘His sponsor does not want him.'”

Chellappa said that during the past seven weeks since his ordeal began, neither the Qatari authorities nor representatives at his workplace had made any mention of corruption charges against him. “Every time when I asked what is the reason, they told me, ‘We don’t know the reason,'” Chellappa said. “The police asked me several times if I was a Christian,” he noted, “but they said nothing about corruption.”

The unanswered question, according to one of Chelleppa’s local friends, was why a foreign national working in Qatar could be “dumped first in jail, and then advised later that his services were no longer needed?”

“This is an illegal detention,” the friend declared, “and inhumane treatment on the part of Hamad Medical Corporation, one of the finest and most modern medical institutions in the Gulf.”

Known as one of the more moderate Gulf states, Qatar has expanded its democratic freedoms in recent years by allowing expatriate Christians to meet freely for private worship.

END

********** Copyright 2003 Compass Direct

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