           The 11-member delegation, with serving ambassadors among its members, was led by EU political affairs secretary Christophe Manet.
           On February 3, angry protestors, said to be Hindu extremists, greeted the delegation with shouts of “go back”, as it landed at Bhubaneswar airport in the capital of Orissa state. Christians said the protestors were backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has a reputation for being a Hindu nationalist group.
           The EU team on February 2 met with top state officials as well as Roman Catholic Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, whose diocese includes the Kandhamal jungles. The team then travelled about 350 kilometers by road from the state capital to Kandhamal. They were accompanied by a police escort.
           “We hope there will now be greater attention paid to Kandhamal victims after this visit,” Archbishop Cheenath told Ecumenical News International on 6 February at the end of the EU team’s visit. “I told them that it is not enough that they just visit Kandhamal. They have to tell the world and take up with the Indian government what they have seen and heard.”
           Cheenath said he was happy that the EU delegation had not participated in the, “grand receptions” of drum beatings and garlands that officials had prepared for the delegation wherever they were due to be taken.
           Instead, the delegation chose to make unscheduled visits to makeshift shelters for Christians who are still homeless after anti-Christian violence that flared up in August 2008. The EU team visited several pockets of Christians and key church centers devastated in the 2008 conflict.
           The anti-Christian violence flared up in Kandhamal and continued for some weeks after the August 23, 2008, murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati in Kandhamal, where the slain Hindu leader had been leading a vociferous campaign against conversions to Christianity.
           Though Maoist rebels claimed responsibility for the killing, Hindu extremists insisted that the assignation was a Christian conspiracy. Legal documents show that the extremists targeted Christians, who account for nearly 20 percent of the half-million population in the area.
           In the violence, more than 90 Christians were killed, and over 5300 Christian houses and 250 churches and Christian institutions were looted and torched. Around 54 000 Christians were left homeless.
           “We are not surprised by the protests [against the EU delegation], ” the Rev. Ajay Kumar Singh, social services director of the Catholic Church, told ENI.
           Archbishop Cheenath told journalists on 6 February of his, “deep concern at the slow pace of reconstruction and rehabilitation,” and accused government officials of not paying attention to the “human dignity of survivors of anti- Christian violence.”
