By CatholicVote | Created at 2024-10-29 18:31:57 | Updated at 2024-10-30 21:35:08
1 day ago
CV NEWS FEED // Christian girls in Pakistan are continuing to be terrorized, abducted, and raped by Muslim activists without much intervention from the government, according to a new report from Lucerna Lux Media.
According to the report, one of the most recent incidents occurred on October 7 when 13-year-old Elishbah Javed was abducted. She has not been returned to her family, and local police have done nothing to recover her. Lucerna Lux Media reported that the police and government will generally be indifferent to the Christian girls’ situations unless they are sufficiently pressured.
“In Pakistan, Muslim men regularly target Christian teenage girls for abduction. They threaten the girl and her family with death if they don’t comply,” Lucerna Lux Media reported, adding:
Once the girl is in hand, they are forcibly converted to Islam and marry their abductor. False documents are created to claim the underage girls are the legal age to marry. Once conversion takes place, government officials are slow to act.
In the case of 16-year-old Muskan Munawar, who was abducted on September 10, a Christian activist was able to pressure the local government to bring the teen back home. She was returned nine days later after being subjected to death threats and traumatized by threats to kill her family.
Now that she is home, however, she is still in danger. The local Muslim community wants her returned to her abductor, and false claims that she converted to Islam mean that she could be killed for “reverting” to Christianity.
Lucerna Lux Media also reported on the case of Huma Younus, who was reunited with her family in July 2024 after four years. She was abducted in October 2019 at 14 years old, and subjected to repeated rape, beatings, and isolation, leaving her emotionally and mentally traumatized.
According to Open Doors, an organization monitoring global Christian persecution, Pakistan is the seventh-most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian. The current Christian population in the Muslim-dominated country is just over 4 million, or 1.8%.
