Concern grows for Pak-Christian girl kidnapped, raped and forced into Islamic marriage!



Family of Fouzia desperate for help.

Mehwish prays with the family for Fouzia’s protection and safe return


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The kidnap of a Christian mother of three who was raped and then forcibly married by her Muslim landlord, has again highlighted the dangers faced by young
women followers of Christ.  

The incident occurred July 23rd 2015 when the young woman Fouzia Sadiq was abducted from a field located at at Burj Mahalam, Chak No.35, Pattoki, where she
worked on as a bonded labourer.  Details of the abduction have not yet been made public.  Muslim landlord Muhammed Nazir (60 years) employed
the whole family, including the children in a form of modern day slavery, paying very little money and providing squalid shelter.  The husband signed
a contract with a thumbprint, unable to read it due to only 7% of Christians attaining an adequate level of literacy.

This family have been oppressed for generations and when they discovered their daughter had been abducted they approached the landlord’s house and were
told by his brother that she would be returned shortly.  The family simply waited prayerfully for the return of their daughter and told no-one of
the incident.  The next day when they returned for their daughter they were threatened with violence and warned not to say anything as the girl was
now property of Muhammed Nazir who had married her after she had allegedly accepted Islam.

Our officer Mehwish Bhatti has travelled to the location to speak with the family and has offered help, which the family have accepted.  We will be placing the family in our BPCA safe house and have already coordinated a solicitor who will challenge the local police station to register an FIR.


Iqra Sadiq,  Fouzia’s sister, said:

“My sister has been missing for five days and police are refusing to register an FIR, my heart is broken.  Our landlord is a cruel man and we have been starving since he stopped the little payment that was due to us. We have no power and have to face such injustice, please help us!”

Mehwish left enough money for the family to survive and travel to our secret safe house. The family consist of Father Sadiq Masih (60) who is paralysed
and cannot work, his wife Bashira (55) and seven children.  Mehwish left enough money for the family to feed themselves and to travel to our safe
house.

We are desperately going to need donations to help them further.

Tragedies such as these sadly are not rare, but commonplace, and in their April 2014 report “Movement of Solidarity and Peace in Pakistan” stated that
1000 girls are abducted, raped and forced into Islamic marriage every year, 700 of which are estimated to be Christian girls.  They cited:

“….cases of forced marriages/conversions follow a distinctive pattern: Christian girls — usually between the ages of 12 and 25 — are abducted, converted to Islam, and married to the abductor or third party. The victim’s family usually files a First Information Report (FIR) for abduction or rape with the local police station. The abductor, on behalf of the victim girl, files a counter FIR, accusing the Christian family of harassing the willfully converted and married girl, and for conspiring to convert the girl back to Christianity. Upon production in the courts or before the magistrate, the victim girl is asked to testify whether she converted and married of her own free will or if she was abducted. (In most cases, the girl remains in custody of the abductor while judicial proceedings are carried out). Upon the girl’s pronouncement that she willfully converted and consented to the marriage, the case is settled without relief for the family. Once in the custody of the abductor, the victim girl may be subjected to sexual violence, rape, forced prostitution, human trafficking and sale, or other domestic abuse.”


In Jan 2012, The News reported on a Muslim brothel that had been created with Christian rape and forced conversion victims, in a place called Ayub Goth,
near the town of Essa Nagri in Karachi, only metres away from a Catholic Church.  Moreover Muslim men gather in the very same Christian area every
evening armed with guns and pick which houses they will loot and which girls will be raped.  In one incident an elderly mother had to bear the screaming
of her two daughters while she was behind a locked door in another room crying and praying. She has been quoted as saying:


“I saw two of my daughters being raped in front of me,” an old lady from Essa Nagri told The News. “It is considered that Chooras have no integrity.” She says that around midnight, men from other areas start gathering in their neighbourhood. “They are usually drunk. They choose which home they will plunder.”



Read article (click here)

The BPCA is currently providing shelter for the family of Sherish and Farzana and free legal aid, after the two sisters were abducted at gunpoint, brutalised
and  gang-raped for more than 12 hours.  These sisters were then dumped naked and unconscious in the same field they were kidnapped from and
found by their father and a friend who had been up all night searching for them.  The girls were left vulnerable as their annual earnings were £592
per year, meaning they could not afford a toilet at their home and had to use a local field to relieve themselves.  When the sisters’ family took
the case to the local police they were ignored till humanitarian pressure resulted in an FIR being laid and arrests being made.  

Learn more about Sherish and Farzana (click here)

“The pain felt by our sisters in Pakistan wounds the heart of our community.  Latest victim Fouzia Bibi was a mother of three yet she may still be forced to remain in the forced Islamic marriage despite existing legal precedents from Lahore High court which clearly state that a “married Christian woman cannot be remarried to a Muslim even if converted.  Sexual abuse against religious minority women is covered under Hadu’d law – which does not distinguish rape from adultery and gives the same punishment in both cases. Moreover, these cases are trialled in Islamic Shari’a courts which are permitted to give punishments to non-Muslims but forbid the appearance of non-Muslim lawyers in court or to be a presiding officer. Non-Muslims are also not considered equal witnesses to Muslims in Shari’a courts.  Worse still, radical clerics and imams in their mosques and madrassas preach that if you rape non-Muslim minority women then you will obtain a special status in heaven.”

He added:

” I fear for Fouzia and will pray endlessly for our sister as she has to fight a system set up to undermine Christians. When courts make judgements in these cases more often than not, they forgo the age limit allowing forcible marriages of girls under the legal age of 14, discounting family objections and basing decisions on the testimonies of weeping victims.  Victims who claim to be consenting to the marriage and having adopted Islam, when the girls have never been removed from the custody of the assailants and are threatened with violence to them and their families if they dare to speak the truth. In such cases the authority of a Muslim man’s words significantly outweighs that of Christians, so they have little hope of ever retrieving Fouzia from a life of pain, brutality and debauchery”


He further added:

“These injustices have been allowed to continue unchecked by a government insouciant  to the concerns of their largest minority.  While the west continues to fund Pakistan through large foreign aid subsidies, they make themselves more complicit in the ongoing genocide of minorities living there.  The BPCA has so often called for a cessation of Britain’s foreign aid budget to Pakistan or use of the budget as a lever for change in the poor human rights record of Pakistan.  But realpolitick based on intrinsic trade agreements and ostensible ally status of Pakistan in the war against terror have created little appetite in our heartless politicians for such action”.

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Please also pray about helping us by giving financially, that we might continue our work for the innocents.  Any donations can be sent using these bank details:

Payee: BPCA

Sort Code: 20-44-22
Account number: 43163318
Bank: Barclays

Ref:  Love for Pak-Christian rape victims

For international donations please use these details:

IBAN:  GB62 BARC 20442243163318

SWIFTBIC: BARCGB22


Alternatively if you would like to send a one off donation please use the PayPal facility on the top right hand corner of our blog, our PayPal email address is info@britishpakistanichristians.org.



Any cheques should be made payable to the BPCA
to our address: 57 Green Lane, Ilford, Essex, IG1 1XG.





With your support we hope to change the lives of millions of Christians in Pakistan.


Sherish and Farzana now protected by BPCA revisit site of abduction and gang-rape.