Christian student kidnapped, tortured in conversion attempt

BPCA has seen reports from another Christian group - Barnabas Fund - that a 20 year old Christian student has been kidnapped by a radical Islamic group in Pakistan.  The group had apparently been trying to convert him to Islam, and on August 29th they kidnapped him.  They chained him up, severely beat him and threatened to kill him.  They may also have given him mind-altering drugs, and although the police found and rescued him and returned him to his family, he has been seriously psychologically affected by his ordeal.  These are all the details given, no doubt to protect the young man and his family.

Source

Killings and kidnappings near and far

Sindh Christian MPA Saleem Khokhar - 

received death threats for standing up for Hindu women

As we come up next month to the anniversary of the start of Asia Bibi's incarceration on false charges of blasphemy, we start by focusing on the place where it all started, her home village of Ittan Wali.  This article from nearly 18 months ago tells of the attitude among Bibi's fellow villagers, and provides a stark reminder of the environment in which her ordeal was born, and from which her family sought escape.  


Under the heading 'Villagers issue their own verdict' the article conveys the fury the villagers feel.  One old man says 'If she returned I would beat her to death with anything I could get my hands on', with a crowd of onlookers, young and old, agreeing she should die.  After her arrest, local clerics began announcing that 'Christians are dogs', and the village of Ittan Wali's' cleric Maqsood Ahmed Masoomi suggested that if anyone in the village commits blasphemy, they may not make it to the courtroom.


"They should be killed on the spot," he said. 


The BPCA has always acknowledged that other minorities and groups also suffer in Pakistan.  One Pakistani newspaper article asks the question 'How much killing is too much?'  We will refrain from the rather obvious answer, because the sentiment of the article is ours.  The article notes a number of killings of various sects over the last month or two, and continues 'The treatment of Pakistan’s minorities has never been good, but, in the last few years, things have gone from hostile to absolutely intolerant.'   It even goes so far as to say that the level of persecution against minorities in Pakistan is edging closer to the definition of genocide.  It notes that in one Pakistani province alone, an estimated 3000 Hindu girls have been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam.  


It also cites an old but very pertinent case - that of Nazir Bhatti, editor of the Paksitani Christian Post, who after a 1997 peaceful protest that ended in murder and bloodshed perpetrated by the police, was targeted as an alleged ringleader, and in two hours had 21 serious charges falsely brought against him, including murder and blasphemy.  He had to flee the country.  


The same newspaper also carried an article concerning death threats against a Christian MPA (Member of a Pakistani Provincial Assembly).  Saleem Khursheed Khokhar, from the Sindh assembly, has been vocal in opposing the abduction and forced conversion of Hindu women and girls to Islam, in particular in the light of a recent case where Hindu women were kidnapped and forced to marry and convert according to their families.


The MPA Khokhar is concerned that the security guards he has been given are too few and haven't been vetted, considering they are Muslim - a pertinent point, given governer Taseers murder by one of his bodyguards over similar controversial areas.  He has been receiving death threats by text such as 'Only Muslims will be allowed to live peacefully in this country. No one else will be allowed to live here with dignity' and 'You should learn from the remarks of Chief Justice, and High Court, only Muslims are allowed to live here. You should leave the country or you would be responsible for what happens.'


Finally, like many of you, we have followed the case concerning the murder of British-Pakistani teenager 8 years ago.  Her parents have been put on trial for what prosecutors maintain is a case of honour (or better a shameful dishonour) killing - after her father drugged her to take her to Pakistan, which she drank bleach after fearing she was facing a forced marriage.  According to her sister, she was killed by suffocation for failing to follow her parents wishes over various matters, including boyfriends.  All we can say is, if a culture produces such fruit where they are in a minority, how much worse must it be (and as we know, is in fact) when they are in a majority in their home country against minority citizens. 

URGENT LIFE AND DEATH PRAYER NEEDED!

+++++++++++++ UPDATE. We put this up in good faith based on an article in a newspaper. However, it turns out that the newspaper was fooled. The story was a scam, certainly in regard to the daughters' kidnap, and we have been told the father is now under arrest for fraud. We would like to apologize for this, but as I said, it did come from a reputable source. We should like to remind readers that although this incident turns out to be faked, Christians (and other minority groups) do live under fear of the frequent cases of kidnappings and other abuses. We, along with many other people, were caught up in the apparent urgency of this situation, a deliberately faked urgency, probably to raise cash. ++++++++++

We exist to fight for the rights of Pakistani Christians, but there are some stories that are so horrific that we must highlight them, even though they are outside our area of focus. This is one of them, with the additional reason that there is something we as Christians can do to try and intervene before it is too late, and that is PRAY.

The city : Rawalpindi

The prayer need - that the life of a 16 year old Muslim teenager be saved. To wreak vengeance on her father, a terrorist group has kidnapped her in May last year and has said that they will kill her if he doesn't come with a huge ransom he cannot afford.

When is the deadline? Tomorrow.

Why are they doing this? 11 years ago, the retired Muslim army officer, Shamsul Anwar, arrived late at mosque for prayers, went down to the basement to do the ritual washing and found a terrorist about to detonate a huge bomb that would have killed 100's of worshippers. He managed to stop him (especially as he had formerly been in the bomb disposal squad) and detain him despite the terrorist shooting him 3 times in the leg. As a result, 17 of the terrorist group responsible were arrested.

A number of years later, in May 2006 for revenge, they kidnapped two of his teenage sons from their school and threatened to kill them unless he paid a huge ransom. The police wouldn't believe him and ridiculed him for making the story up. Nor were the army able or willing to help. 6 months later, the kidnappers contacted him and demanded over £1 million in ransom, and said not to go to the police or else they would kill his sons. He went to the army, who couldn't help, so he started trying to raise the funds. A few weeks later, the terrorists said he had 'got smart' on him, and so they told him where to find his oldest sons' body parts, along with a DVD showing them cutting him to pieces alive using a saw mill, all in front of the younger son. They then repeated their demand. He managed to find the money by selling his house, his vehicles etc, and borrowing from relatives, and paid the ransom. His son was released to him, but in the year they held him they had injected him with toxic drugs that caused blood cancer.

5 years later, almost to the day, they kidnapped one of his now 14 year old daughters, in May 2011, again from school, and demanded an even greater amount (nearly £1.3 million pounds) for her release. Of course, his resources were exhausted paying the last ransom, and he cannot afford it at all. He has gone to the newspaper, even though the gang has said they would kill her in the same manner if he did so, because he is desperate, there is nothing else he can do as the army and police cannot or will not help, as they are so weak, and the terrorist gangs so powerful.

He has even given his mobile phone number for anyone who can help in anyway. Which we can provide to anyone who can help!

PRAY for his daughters safe return, and for the destruction of the groups of wickedness that do these kinds of things. They will be the same kind of groups who attack and rape and murder Christians and other minorities.

PRAY for forces of law and order to be strengthened, and gain the resolution and the intelligence to act quickly to find and save her.

PRAY for the family who have suffered and are suffering so much.

Source

Christian teenager martyred in kidnap attempt

A Catholic girl has been martyred, and her mother beaten in a failed kidnap / rape attempt.

 The girl, Amariah Masih (aka Mariah Manisha) was martyred on 27th November. She and her mother were riding on a motor bike to pick up drinking water, (unavailable in their village of Tehsil Samundari, near Faisalabad) when a Muslim man grabbed the motorbike and tried to drag the girl off at gunpoint, and when she resisted he shot her twice killing her in the process.

The culprit was Arif Gujjar, and surprise surprise, he was the son of a local wealthy landowner. The local Catholic church, with some justification, are calling her a martyr, on the grounds that she did not want to convert to Islam or marry the man, and this was why she was killed.

 The local priest, Father Zafal Iqbal, stated 'Wealthy and influential landowners often take aim at those who are marginalized and vulnerable, for their dirty interests'. 

In Pakistan, rape victims are often imprisoned for 'fornication' and then forced to marry their rapists. Muslims are not allowed to marry Christians, so the victims are forced to convert to Islam. The perpetrators deliberately use this factor to both gratify their wicked lusts and claim a 'victory' for their religion - a new convert, aided and abetted by the courts, the police and society. Christian women are incredibly vulnerable legally, because a Christian's testimony is worth half that of a Muslim in Sharia courts, and a Christian women's word is worth even less.

Please pray for the mother, Razia Bibi, and for all the family.

Also pray that justice would be done in this case against the vile perpetrator, Arif Gujjar, that local Imams or his family would fail in the usual attempts to let the perpetrators cheat justice.

We are collecting funds to assist the family with legal costs, if you would like to donate please use the pay pal link at the top right hand corner of our blog.  Alternatively send cheques to the address included in the header.  Any donations should be referenced BPCA/Amaria Masih.  Thank you.

On December 6th 2011 The Express Tribune wrote:

Samundri Sadar police have arrested a man from an influential family for the murder of a Christian girl found shot and killed on November 27.

The family of deceased Amariah Masih, 18, had accused Arif Gujjar, 28, who belongs to an influential landowning family of the village, and his accomplices of killing the girl after sexually assault.

Sub Inspector Abdul Ghani, who is investigating the case, told The Express Tribune that Gujjar had denied the allegations during interrogation. “He said the girl must have committed suicide,” he said.

Ghani said Gujjar had been arrested under Section 302 of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) but added that the police had yet to produce the suspect before the court. The law requires that a suspect be produced before the court within 48 hours of arrest.

Also, he said, the police had to ascertain the identity and number of Gujjar’s accomplices and recover the weapon allegedly used to kill the girl.

SI Ghani said the sexual assault charge would be added to the FIR only if it was established in the report of the medical samples sent to a laboratory in Lahore.

The SI said according to the post mortem examination report two bullet wounds were found in the body, one in the chest and the other in the abdomen.

According to the complaint filed by the girl’s father, Mansha Masih, Amariah was kidnapped by Gujjar in Chak No475-GB on her way to a well to fetch water. It said the deceased was accompanied by her mother, Razia Bibi. She told the police that Gujjar and an unidentified man intercepted them and took her daughter away. She said the two beat her up on putting up resistance. The body of the girl was found lying in the fields the next day.

Mansha told to the Tribune that the family of the suspect was pressuring him to withdraw the FIR. “They’re influential people but I won’t settle for compensation,” he said.

He alleged that Gujjar and his friends were notorious for misbehaving with girls from poor households.

He said a Muslim delegation had visited him after his daughter’s funeral. “They assured me of their support in prosecuting the suspect,” he said. Father Zafal Iqbal, who led the funeral services, said there were a large number of Christian households in the village and that they would all assist the bereaved family and ensure that justice was done in the case.

Kidnap and forced conversion reaches 1 a day!

From Watson Gill, in Holland, we have news of another kidnap at gunpoint from the street in broad daylight of a Christian girl. The report names the victim as Mehak Masih, 14 years old, and the chief perpetrator is Tayeb Butt, who lead four friends in the attack.

The report mentions that not a single one of the increasing number of murders of Christians have been resolved, and that abducting and selling Christian girls is like a legal business for the perpetrators. Over the last month the rate of kidnap and forced conversions of Christian girls has reached one a day! It happens especially in Punjab due to the influence of the Taliban and other wicked groups, and the government - as ever - does precisely nothing!

Good news.... sort of

A few months ago we reported on the case of a Christian woman who was kidnapped and raped for 4 days by a man who claimed to be a Major in the ISI.

A retired Brigadier General in the Pakistani armed forces has posted in a human rights group on facebook the following :

'I got this news through the PMRO [the human rights group on FB] and took up the case. I took up the case on 30th April 2011. I have just been informed that the impersonator has since been caught and is in intelligence custody. He is guilty of many other crimes. Praise be to You Oh Lord'

It is good that the perpetrator was arrested, which is very unusual when the victims are Christian. It begs the question as to why the arrest now. Obviously the Brigadier-General's intervention had a role to play, but I suspected that the fact that he had impersonated an ISI officer was significant.

One of the BPCA members had the opportunity to talk to Samson Sharaf, the brigadier-general in question, and he confirmed that the arrest was made because the man falsely claimed to be ISI and brought the ISI into disrepute. The man potentially faces the death penalty if someone presses charges over the rape, but it is unclear if that will happen or not.

For more details of the case as it originally arose, please see this link (bearing in mind it is from well before the man's arrest)

Where it's even worse.....

In the last post we talked about the latest case of the kidnap of Christian girls and their rape, forced conversion and marriage in Pakistan, and noted that it was happening at the rate of (at least) one a week. Spare a thought for our brothers and sisters, the Copts of Egypt. After the 'Arab Spring' Wahhabi and Salafist movements have mushroomed with funding from Saudi Arabia. These groups are paying Muslims per convert. Unsurprisingly, the rate of abduction has shot up in past while. In one city alone the rate is 2-3 per day. Muslim University students are encouraged to get close to and sexually violate Coptic girls in the age range of 9 to 15. The tactic is to sexually blackmail them and shame them in front of their parents (photographs etc) to coerce them to run away and thus be more vulnerable. They are coerced into converting and marrying.

Salafist groups, police and state security combine to provide a strong infrastructure. The girls are held in houses procured especially for the purpose, the police refuse to pay attention to the girls families. And the Salafi groups have set up a group to deliberately counter and smear the efforts of the Coptic community to get the girls back. The Orwellian titled 'Alliance for the Support of New Muslim Females' has staged against the Coptic church, accusing it of kidnapping girls who have converted to Islam.

This new tactic explains why by far the highest proportion of 'converts' to Islam are from young and underage Coptic women. It can't even be (fully) blamed on normal Islamic practice, since it is deemed alright for the husband, the head of the house, to be a Muslim while his wife isn't. It is only deemed detestable if the 'subservient' wife is a Muslim and the husband is not. Thus these events cannot be about some kind of Romeo-Juliet romances across the religious divide. The goal is not the marriage of in love couples but the open promotion of sexual coercion and blackmail to induce conversion to Islam.

Elements of the security forces, courts, police, University officials and Muslim clergy are openly promoting and facilitating this policy. The supposedly 'pious' Muslims are engaging in mass rape and paedophilia and teaching their followers to do the same.

Even before the Revolution such practices were widespread, with tactics used including telling Christian women that their fathers were seriously ill in hospital and asking for them, and then snatching them off the street as they rushed to the hospital, or straight grabbing them from the street and aneasthatising them, marrying them in this condition, gang raping them for weeks, and then divorcing them. Fathers who protest have been accused of 'promoting sectarian strife' by the police and had their homes stolen from them.

Even where such girls are taken into state care homes (in one recent case it seems the girls claimed that they had freely converted to Islam because they feared retribution from their own families) there is intense intimidation, often with no Christian presence in such institutions, and the machinations of Sharia associations and threatening by Hijab encloaked social workers.

For more information see here, here and here.

Yet another kidnap and forced conversion and marriage

It's become a tired, tired old story, because Pakistani culture and corruption and religious discrimination has not changed - at least not for the better. Young Christian girl is kidnapped by a Muslim(s), is forced to convert and to marry her kidnapper - in effect being triply raped - in will and freedom as well as in body. This follows the reports recently about another case which we reported - that of Farah Hatim.

In the latest case, just 20 miles from the capital, Islamabad, a young Christian girl named Mariam Gill went out to the market and never came back. Witnesses saw a local man, an important local businessman, Muhammed Junaid, physically snatching her from the market. He had asked her to marry him and had been refused, so he took the woman he lusted after anyway, by force, and typically, cloaked his rape by claiming he had been a pious Muslim and converted her to Islam. Again, typically, the police prevaricated, refused the application of the distraught family, and treated the Christian family with disdain by showing no interest in the matter. A local police officer, Amir Mirza, praised the culprit as 'a respectable Muslim businessman' and claimed, against all evidence, that the girl had converted and married 'of her own free will'.

Again, typically, the local Muslim religious leader, Maulana Hafeez Aziz, praised the perpetrator of this wickedness as a 'pious Muslim' and a 'true follower of Muhammed' who has 'fulfilled Sharia', who had done an act that 'only a true Muslim could do'. He stated he had 'converted Mariam to Islam' and then 'celebrated' her 'marriage'.

The lies of both the religious and secular authorities became apparent when local officials questioned Mariam. She forthrightly stated that she had been abducted and forced to convert and would not renounce her faith in Christ. The officials ordered that the girl should be returned to her family and the two 'sides' should reach an 'agreement'. However, again typically, Muhammad Junaid showed his approach - he demanded the girl he had violated thrice over be returned to him for his pleasure and continued abuse, or there would be 'terrible consequences'.

Yet again, those who abuse Christian women (and indeed those of other minorities - Hindu girls are fleeing to India in increasing numbers to escape this cadre of sadistic rapists) indulge in a culture of impunity where these perpetrators of serious crimes are praised and lauded as model citizens and religionists while the victims and their families are threatened and intimidated.

The local bishop is quoted as saying 'the cases of forced conversion are rising at an alarming rate. The matter needs to be checked, kidnapping of Christian girls is becoming a common practice in Punjab. Law enforcement agencies need to enforce the law'

Amen to that.

He also says 'It is time to take concrete action to guarantee the safety of minorities in Pakistan'.

Amen to that too.

Thank you to the people at Asia News for bringing this to our attention.