Another Christian girl in Pakistan, this one 14 years old, has fallen victim to forced conversion and marriage by a Muslim kidnapper, sources said.
Khalid Masih, a 48-year-old Catholic sanitation employee in Islamabad, said that a butcher in his neighborhood, Haider Ali, took his daughter Alina Khalid from their home within the Khanna Pul area of Islamabad on June 24.
“Some neighbors told us that they’d seen an unidentified girl outside our house on the day Alina went missing,” Masih told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “When we began trying to find her, I got here to know that Haider Ali, a 27-year-old butcher in our neighborhood, had planned Alina’s abduction.”
He filed a grievance with Khanna Police that day, but they took no motion, he said.
“The FIR [First Information Report] was finally registered late on June 25, giving the accused sufficient time to enter hiding,” Masih said.
The Masih family learned on June 27 that their daughter had been forcibly converted to Islam and married to Ali, he said.
“We got here to find out about Alina’s conversion and marriage after she recorded her statement in court wherein she purportedly claimed that she had modified her faith and married Ali by selection,” said Masih.
The Nikah Nama (Islamic marriage certificate) states that Alina’s age was 19, but it surely lacks her required national identity card number, he said.
Typically kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of such Islamic “marriages” and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the abductors, rights advocates say. Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the youngsters’s ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their “legal” wives.
Masih said his daughter couldn’t have gone with Ali willingly.
“Alina didn’t have a phone and never went out of the home alone, so I do not think she had any direct contact with Ali,” he said. “He has abducted her with the only objective of exploiting her sexually. Like all other victims, Alina too was forced to do what her abductor said.”
Police have did not get better Alina and present the suspect in court, he added.
Masih faces a frightening challenge in his struggle to get better her.
“My wife is affected by Hepatitis C and can also be a diabetic,” he said. “Her health has began to deteriorate attributable to the trauma of Alina’s abduction. The pain of losing our child and the thoughts of her suffering in captivity keep each of us awake all night. May God have mercy on us and save our child!”
Safdar Chaudhry, chairman of the Islamabad-based Raah-e-Nijaat Ministry, said that police were slow to act.
“The FIR was registered on our intervention after nearly 26 hours of the incident,” Chaudhry said. “Had the police acted on time, the accused might have been arrested, but inaction allowed him to vanish.”
The social activist called for legislative reforms to stop the exploitation of underage minority girls.
“The police must also realize its responsibility and may stop aiding the perpetrators. The same goes for Pakistani courts that are granting legal cover to such sham marriages,” he said.
New Bill
In a bid to criminalize underage marriages in Punjab province, the Punjab provincial government on April 25 submitted the Punjab Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2024 within the Punjab Provincial Assembly, which might raise the legal age for marriage for each women and men to 18 years. Previously the legal age for marriage for women in Punjab was 16.
Under the proposed bill, anyone who marries a woman or boy under 18 or arranges such a wedding – including parents or guardians – would face two to 3 years in prison and a superb of between 100,000 Pakistani rupees (US$360) and 200,000 rupees (US$720).
At the time of marriage registration, the wedding solemnizer, secretary of the union council and marriage registrar would check the Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC) of the girl or boy, passport, educational certificate or other documents proving each are no less than 18 years old. Attested copies of those documents could be required to be attached with the applying of marriage certificate.
Rights activists say that, though raising the legal marriage age to 18 years for each girls and boys will assist in stopping child marriages, certain amendments are required to be certain that minority girls also get due coverage of the law. Such amendments would override all “special” laws and maxims related to determining a woman’s age of maturity, they are saying, including sharia (Islamic law) that permits girls attaining puberty to be considered adults.
A Christian lawmaker recently appointed because the chairman of the Standing Committee on Minorities Affairs and Human Rights lauded the government-moved bill but said it didn’t contain any provision related to minority girls who “change their faith” for marriage.
“We are working on an amendment to deal with this issue, and we hope that every one parties within the Punjab Assembly will endorse our stance,” said Ejaz Alam Augustine. “Our objective is to be certain that minority girls are protected in the identical way as Muslim girls.”
Augustine, a former minister for Minorities Affairs and Human Rights in Punjab through the 2018-2022 government of Prime Minister Imran Khan, said he had submitted a bill looking for to forestall forced conversion and compelled marriages of minority girls in 2021, but that it was not taken up for discussion under pressure from hardline Muslims.
“There’s some hope now, and I feel it’s the most effective time to make a laws that protects the girl child regardless of her faith affiliation,” he told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News.
Pakistan ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of probably the most difficult places to be a Christian, because it was the previous 12 months.
