Unified Information appeal

So often with relation to the Christian community in Pakistan, we only get piecemeal news. Partly this is because many of the incidents happen in remote areas, and only a select few come out into the open. Partly it is because with so many charities operating among different communities, they only tend to publicise incidents that are in their direct sphere of influence.

Given that according to knowledgeable sources there are 2 incidents a day on average, of Christian girls being kidnapped, raped, forced into marriage and conversion, it is clear that the details of only a very small number of incidents reach general knowledge, even among concerned bodies. This needs to change if we are to highlight the true plight and situation of Christians in Pakistan.

As a first stage BPCA proposes attempting to set up an almanac including all incidents in the previous month that we can find out about. To this end we are calling all supporters and groups that share our concern to work with us and supply information. We realize that often these cases are sensitive and cannot be publicised, at least not in any detail. It would still be useful for us to know, to see which areas are worse, what the trends are, etc.

We will try and establish a smooth system for reporting, but for the time being, please can you email us if you have a case to report. Can emails be sent with the heading 'Incident report' along with the month the incident happened in. If you are confident of your English, please send to bpcajumble@hotmail.co.uk. If you feel it is better to send in Urdu or Punjabi, please send to Wilson@aasecurity.co.uk. Initially we are looking to try and collate all incidents in October, and for practical purposes, the deadline for receiving reports is the 16th after the month has ended, but the sooner the better. Any suggestions or offers of help from NGO's and charities involved in supporting Christians in Pakistan would be welcome.

For ease of collating reports, can emails be sent with the following structure;

1) Name and contact details of the report sender

2) Date and time of the incident, and as precise an indication of where the incident happened as possible (a pointer using google maps and or longitude / latitude would be useful as often rural villages have very similar names). If it is an ongoing incident, please supply here the information of when and where it started, and in the next section detail when and where later parts of the incident happened.

3) Your relationship to the people involved / how you found out about it. Obviously we would prefer reports from victims or people who have first hand contact with those involved, rather than second or third hand accounts.

4) Tell us who was involved, what happened, as much details as possible. Also please try and distinguish how certain each part of the information is. (For instance, you could have only heard it in a garbled conversation over the phone with people involved, or you could have been there and seen all or part of the incident. Also, some information - eg about the perpetrators - could be arrived at by inference or assumption. If that is the case, please tell us what is certain and what is conjecture, however reasonable.)

5) If you have any more contacts who are likely to know more and willing to be contacted, please let us know.

6) Please give as much information about the perpetrators and the background factors in the case (and credibility issues if applicable). Please take care here especially to specify what is fully known, and what is reasonable conjecture or assumption. This will help us build intelligence of what is happening in each region and groups methods etc.

Also, if there are images related to the incidence (even if they shouldn't be made public), or links to web-pages that report on the incident, please supply them.

Finally, we realize that there will be often security reasons why information or details cannot be released. Please specify at the end of the email VERY CLEARLY what material is appropriate for publication. For instance, if there are only a few particular details that need to be withheld, detail these. If only the vaguest details can be released (eg girl abducted and raped in x region of province) please state what can be made public.

So, just to recap, send English reports to bpcajumble@hotmail.co.uk, and Urdu / Punjabi reports to Wilson@aasecurity.co.uk. Alternatively, you can leave a reply with details on any post on this blog - start them with the words 'Not to be published - incident report' along with the month of the incident.