A gathering of a hundred Christians in Huddersfield shared a night of prayer and reflection as they learnt about the millions of Christians being persecuted
in Pakistan.
The evening was organised by Pastor Lewis Allen of Hope Church, located at Brian Jackson House, 2 New North Parade.
Moved by increasing reports of persecution in Pakistan he invited Wilson Chowdhry, Chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association to come
and share more about the plight of Pakistani Christians, in order that the church might pray for a change to the current climate of hatred, that threatens
to annhilate Christians from Pakistan.
The night began when Leighton Medley (an evangelist who attends hope church) describe his recent visit to Pakistan, where he met first hand hundreds
of Pakistani Christians.
Leighton travelled to Pakistan in November where he is discipling a new set of Christian leaders for Pakistan. His work in Pakistan was partly funded
by the BPCA who also printed over 100 bibles and helped build the first ever audio Urdu bible to spread God's word to rural communities in Pakistan.
Leighton saw the extreme deprivation of Christians who are amongst the poorest citizens of Pakistan. He travelled to brick kiln communities and met
with hundreds of modern day slaves whose brutal and spartan lives would be unbearable to citizens of the west.
Leighton spoke of how when preaching to many communities illiteracy was a great barrier. However at one outreach event 'a little girl of 6 years old,
came and sang a song, of how she was bad, how she was evil, and yet Jesus saved her, of how she said sorry and she was forgiven.' Apparently she summed
up the entirety of his sermon in those few words proving that despite their inability to learn by modern convention, their simple faith, was extremely
powerful.
Wilson Chowdhry reflected on the same principle when he explained that unlike Christians in the West going to church can be life threatening and in
many rural villages the only learning, worship and fellowship that Christians have access to, can be the visit of a priest once a month with a gathering
under a tree.
Mr Chowdhry, highlighted the recently released ‘World Watch List 2017', produced by Open Doors which now places Pakistan in fourth place for how badly
Christians are treated.
In 2015 Pakistan had ranked at number 8 and last year they rose to 6th. Now. Currently, only North Korea, Somalia and Afghanistan, were worse for
Christians, but Pakistan is considered to have the most incidents against Christians overall of any of the nations listed.
"This gives an idea of the increasing severity of the situation in Pakistan for Christians, and why the UK government should give far more consideration to the reality in both funding aid and dealing with Christian asylum seekers who manage to escape, or who do not want to return because of the threat after studying here and so on.
"In addition, it shows the reality on the ground is still worsening, despite some tentative and fragile actions by the authorities that are sometimes claimed as small signs of hope."
'Movement of Solidarity and Peace', a Muslim NGO, shocked the world with their estimations of 1000 minority girls being kidnapped every year and forced
into Islamic marriage. Sadly their report released on 17th April 2014 estimated 700 of those abducted girls where Christian and aged between 12 and
25, that is almost two a day and the world stays silent.
"Christians are thought to make up the majority of bonded labour (modern day slaves) in Pakistan with a figure in excess of a million and 86% of Christians are known to be working as domestic labourers, cleaners and sewage workers, with some government and local government adverts asserting only Christians should apply.
"15% of all blasphemy allegations in the country are lodged against Christians despite being only 1.6% of the population and two severe bomb attacks on Christian communities in the last two years, evidences the need for better protection of our vulnerable minority.' he added. Christians whose quality of life has reached its lowest ebb."
He described the work the BPCA are doing in raising awareness by petitioning, protesting, speaking at parliamentary function
Mr Chowdhry also described how four terrorist attacks targeting Christian communities in four years had led to a huge human capital loss of in excess
of 250 people and resulted in nearly a thousand serious casualties. These attacks have only served to ignite fear amongst in the UK and abroad.
Their work with the Dutch Parliament and Canadian Parliament has improved the status of Pakistani Christian asylum seekers. Yet Britain still fails
to recognize persecution of Christians in Pakistan despite a growing weight of evidence.
Mr Chowdhry believes that Britain and the US have allowed their desire for a base in the middle-east especially in the 'war against terror' to blind
them from the truth about Pakistan who have proven to be a limp ally. The need for a covert operation to assassinate Bin Ladin should have been evidence
enough of Pakistan's duplicity.
Western nations all have intrinsic trade agreements with Pakistan and they are averse to terminating foreign aid to Pakistan, for fear instability
will allow extremists to gain control of the country's nuclear arsenal which would create a global threat.
Pakistan is the largest recipient of UK Foreign Aid and the BPCA challenged parishioners to call for the budget to be utilzed to lever changes to
the poor human rights record in Pakistan, or to be relinquished.
£225m of Britain's budget for Pakistan is earmarked for holistic educational reform yet a report by the United States Commission for International
Religious Freedom in 2015, described how the national curriculum demonized and caricatured Christians even labelling them as spies for the west.
At the end of his talk Mr Chowdhry invited parishioners to join him for a protest outside the Pakistani Consulate in Manchester on 17th February 2017 (click here),
to call for freed for Asia Bibi. Pakistan's most famous blasphemy law victim. Her only crime was to drink water from the same well as Muslims
a crime in her neighbourhood where Christiand are deemed ritually impure and it is believed their mere touch can contaminate the soul. He also
invited people to sign the BPCA's electronic petition calling for her freedom (click here)
Here are some further accounts from 2016:
In 2016 alone we have already seen attempts to demolish four old churches (click here)(click here) and (here)(click here). A sixteen year old accused of blasphemy for posting an offensive image (click here), A couple accused of sending blasphemous texts to an Imam (click here), a 14 year old boy was sodomized and hung to death (click here), A Christian father was killed after trying to retrieve his daughter who was raped and forcibly married (click here), to list but a few…