Parents of Christian and Hindu children in the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab live in constant fear as kidnappings and forced conversions to Islam of young girls are increasing unabated.
Hard hitting @BBCUrdu report about #forcedconversions of #Hindus in #Sindh. #Pakistan & islamist groups have been using tactics to create fear so that the real owners of land leave Sindh & they can change the demographics of the area. A must watch! High time #Sindhustan becomes a… pic.twitter.com/usykT1sYsH
— Rishi Suri (@rishi_suri) March 29, 2023
This crime in the eyes of the civilized world has the sanction of the Mullahs and their followers and that is why no protests of civil society and reports of human rights organizations whether national or international stir the government, its agencies and even courts. Such reports come out at least once a year to be dumped in raddi.
This month (December) on Human Rights Day, a report by Voice of Justice (VoJ) tabulated a hundred cases of abduction, rape and forced conversion to Islam of Christian girls between 2019 and 2022. This report does not mention the cases of Hindu and Sikh girls which are reported almost every month. In Sindh, even the parents of young boys fear their kidnapping for forced conversion.
The report entitled “Conversion Without Consent” talks about increase in violence against non-Muslim women while the state remains indifferent and the judicial system denies timely justice in most cases.
The highest number of such cases (86 percent) according to this report, occurred in Punjab, 11 percent in Sindh, 2 percent in Islamabad, 1 percent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and none in Baluchistan.
Chairperson of VoJ Joseph Jansen said forced conversions were linked to the State’s abject failure to implement and enforce existing laws against abduction, child marriage and forced marriages.
The VoJ report took note of mob violence against minorities in the name of religion. Most terrorizing among them is the use of Blasphemy Laws against them. Leaders of human rights organizations protest misuse of these Laws and demand their review.
On the International Human Rights Day (December 10) reports the VoJ, human rights activists took out street processions and made some basic demands. They included elimination of biased material from education curricula. This is a difficult demand. This biased material in the curricula was inserted by Gen. Ziaul Haq purposely.
Now Mullahs won’t allow it to be changed. Similarly, the Nawaz Sharif government made the National Action Plan (NAP) in 2015 after terrorists attacked Army Public School in Peshawar and killed students and others on December 16, 2014. The NAP seeks to control Islamic militancy. This plan also seeks to cleanse school and madrasa curriculum but Islamist won’t allow that.
The VoJ report was released on Human Rights Day on December 10 when, as an annual event, civil rights and human rights activists are on roads protesting treatment of minorities and poor Pakistanis.
The tragic irony about Pakistani case is that it is an Islamic republic populated by a people who are an anti-thesis of Islam if we look at its society and style of governess in the light of the Prophet’s emphasis on equal justice to all whether Muslims, Christians or Jews in Medina.
In Pakistan, those who are called Muslims are divided in most un-Islamic way in bradri system, sects, caste, classes, low and high and people with or without connections. With politicians, police and Islamic militants’ terrorists, the last-mentioned category of no connections accounts for majority of Pakistani population.
They are practically the only sufferers when the country is lashed by economic crisis or floods. Minorities are in this category plus they are untouchable and voiceless.
Any allegation made against members of a minority community is believed without questioning and at once acted upon. For example, about two years ago in Kasur (Punjab) a Christian couple was hurled into a burning kiln to die by their fellow-workers when the kiln owner accused the two of blasphemy when they asked for their salary.
That the Pakistani society is anti-thesis of Islam has uncountable examples. This is on: a low caste Muslim boy falls in love with a high caste Muslim woman in Punjab. Muslim members of a panchayat thought it was a grievous sin. They ordered his sister Mukhtara Mai to be ganged raped and walk home naked. Just think of chaddar-char diwari boast!
Can minorities expect justice in a society which is neither here nor there, its claims notwithstanding?
