Sadly it's a common theme, but over the last couple of months there have been several more cases of abuse of Christians. In one, a young Christian couple were abducted on October 26th by Islamic clerics and influential Muslim landlords and forcibly converted to Islam. The couple's names are Shahzed Masih and Rhuckhshana Bibi (whose father was falsely accused of blasphemy in 2007). According to sources there have been at least 24 cases of such forced conversions over the previous three months. Many incidents go unreported because Christians fear Islamic militant groups.
In anther case, two Christian farm workers were abducted by their Muslim landlords / employers. The brothers, Asif and Khadim Masih went missing on September 14th. No news as to their whereabouts or whether they are still alive has been received. They worked for about £20 a month for three Dogar brothers, one of whom is a policeman. They had borrowed about £160 and were paying it off by deductions from their pay. However the Dogars, though Muslims, were getting drunk and then beating the Masih brothers for no reason. The boys parents, when they found out, suggesting paying off the loan and quitting. At this the Dogar brothers flew into a rage and stormed the home, beating up the brothers father who has a heart problem, and then kidnapped the two brothers, demanding a ransom of around £5600 plus the outstanding debt, a figure which is of course totally out of the reach of this impoverished family. Nor do the family have money to pursue legal action against the land owners. The police refused to allow the family to file an FIR because one of the perpetrators was a police officer.
There have also been reports that Muslim extremists beat up and threatened a Christian family in Sargodha. A dozen armed Muslims rushed the house, beating up Parvez Masih and his whole family, trashing their house and stealing all valuable belongings, stating their justification as the need to make Pakistan a purely Muslim state. This is typical, where such Muslim extremists use their religion as an excuse to steal what they covet and attack honest people.
