Holy God Television in Paris attacked

By Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST Ministries, October 29, 2008

Uthayakumar Gerard pictured in Seoul, Korea

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (ANS) -- A former homeless man who lived on the streets of Paris for more than three years after fleeing the violence in his native Sri Lanka, has revealed that Holy God Television, which he began on July 7, 2005, has been attacked. Uthayakumar Gerard who, after he became a Christian and left the streets of Paris, eventually started Holy God Television, the first twenty-four Christian TV station in France broadcasting in both Tamil, French and English. He told me that on July 21st 2008, armed men entered the studios of his TV channel, and severely beat up those present and smashed all of the equipment.

"We had held a celebration of our third anniversary on July 7th and then on July 21st, masked men who were armed came in, beat up our staff and totally destroyed all our equipment including the computers and cameras," said Gerard during an interview in Seoul, Korea at the 26th Anniversary of the Manmin Central Church, which he was attending. "The cameras were each worth more than 16,000 Euros ($21,094.57 USD). The attack was well planned and they destroyed everything in our studios."

I asked him if he knew who there attackers were and he replied, "We know who the people are but I can't say publically their names or backgrounds. One man has been arrested so far, while the others have escaped, but we have forgiven them and we have to forget this matter.

"The police are looking into this and, after the French government got this information about the attack, the interior minister has been giving security to us.

"God, is so good and so great after some reorganization, we managed to start our programs up again after three days."

Uthayakumar Gerard added, "We need a lot of prayer support as France is a very tough country we have a lot of work to do in France with evangelism. We also need financial support and material support to help us get back on our feet. We have to find another big place to broadcast from for security reasons and the police have asked us to us to move as soon as possible from our present facility."

Holy God Television has a satellite channel and their videos are also being broadcast by to 110 countries in Europe, Middle East, West Asia and North Africa.

The website is http://holygodtv.net/english.