Each year 1,000 Pakistani girls forcibly converted to Islam: Religious Persecution
Neha loved the hymns that filled her church with music. But she lost
the chance to sing them last year when, at the age of 14, she was
forcibly converted from Christianity to Islam and married to a 45-year-old man with children twice her age.
She
tells her story in a voice so low it occasionally fades away. She all
but disappears as she wraps a blue scarf tightly around her face and
head. Neha's husband is in jail now facing charges of rape for the
underage marriage, but she is in hiding, afraid after security guards
confiscated a pistol from his brother in court.
"He brought the gun to shoot me," said Neha, whose last name The Associated Press is not using for her safety.
Neha is one of nearly 1,000 girls from religious minorities who are forced to convert to Islam in Pakistan
each year, largely to pave the way for marriages that are under the
legal age and non-consensual. Human rights activists say the practice
has accelerated during lockdowns against the coronavirus, when girls are
out of school and more visible, bride traffickers are more active on
the Internet and families are more in debt.
The US state
department this month declared Pakistan "a country of particular
concern" for violations of religious freedoms - a designation the
Pakistani government rejects. The declaration was based in part on an
appraisal by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom that
underage girls in the minority Hindu, Christian, and Sikh communities
were "kidnapped for forced conversion to Islam, forcibly married and subjected to rape."
While
most of the converted girls are impoverished Hindus from southern Sindh
province, two new cases involving Christians, including Neha's, have
roiled the country in recent months.
The girls generally are
kidnapped by complicit acquaintances and relatives or men looking for
brides. Sometimes they are taken by powerful landlords as payment for
outstanding debts by their farmhand parents, and police often look the
other way. Once converted, the girls are quickly married off, often to
older men or to their abductors, according to the independent Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Forced conversions thrive unchecked
on a money-making web that involves Islamic clerics who solemnize the
marriages, magistrates who legalize the unions and corrupt local police
who aid the culprits by refusing to investigate or sabotaging
investigations, say child protection activists.
One activist, Jibran
Nasir, called the network a "mafia" that preys on non-Muslim girls
because they are the most vulnerable and the easiest targets "for older
men with pedophilia urges."
The goal is to secure virginal brides
rather than to seek new converts to Islam. Minorities make up just 3.6
per cent of Pakistan's 220 million people and often are the target of
discrimination. Those who report forced conversions, for example, can be
targeted with charges of blasphemy.
In the feudal Kashmore region
of southern Sindh province, 13-year-old Sonia Kumari was kidnapped, and a
day later police told her parents she had converted from Hinduism to
Islam. Her mother pleaded for her return in a video widely viewed on the
internet: ``For the sake of God, the Quran, whatever you believe,
please return my daughter, she was forcibly taken from our home.''
But
a Hindu activist, who didn't want to be identified for fear of
repercussions from powerful landlords, said she received a letter that
the family was forced to write. The letter claimed the 13-year-old had
willingly converted and wed a 36-year-old who was already married with
two children.
The parents have given up.
Arzoo Raja was 13 when
she disappeared from her home in central Karachi. The Christian girl's
parents reported her missing and pleaded with police to find her. Two
days later, officers reported back that she had been converted to Islam
and was married to their 40-year-old Muslim neighbor.
In Sindh province, the age of consent for marriage is 18 years old. Arzoo's marriage certificate said she was 19.
The
cleric who performed Arzoo's marriage, Qasi Ahmed Mufti Jaan Raheemi,
was later implicated in at least three other underage marriages. Despite
facing an outstanding arrest warrant for solemnizing Arzoo's marriage,
he continued his practice in his ramshackle office above a wholesale
rice market in downtown Karachi.
When an Associated Press reporter
arrived at his office, Raheemi fled down a side stair, according to a
fellow cleric, Mullah Kaifat Ullah, one of a half-dozen clerics who also
performs marriages in the complex. He said another cleric is already in
jail for marrying children.
While Ullah said he only marries girls
18 and above, he argued that "under Islamic law a girl's wedding at the
age of 14 or 15 is fine."
Arzoo's mother, Rita Raja, said police
ignored the family's appeals until one day she was videotaped outside
the court sobbing and pleading for her daughter to be returned. The
video went viral, creating a social media storm in Pakistan and
prompting the authorities to step in.
"For 10 days, the parents were
languishing between the police station and government authorities and
different political parties,'' Nasir, the activist, said. "They were not
being given any time. until it went viral. That is the real unfortunate
thing over here."
Authorities have stepped in and arrested Arzoo's
husband, but her mother said her daughter still refuses to come home.
Raja said she is afraid of her husband's family.
The girl who loved
hymns, Neha, said she was tricked into the marriage by a favorite aunt,
who told Neha to accompany her to the hospital to see her sick son. Her
aunt, Sandas Baloch, had converted to Islam years before and lived with
her husband in the same apartment building as Neha's family.
"All Mama asked when we left was 'when will you be back?'" remembered Neha.
Instead
of going to the hospital, she was taken to the home of her aunt's
in-laws and told she would marry her aunt's 45-year-old brother-in-law.
"I told her I can't, I am too young and I don't want to. He is old," Neha said. "She slapped me and locked me up in a room."
Neha
told of being taken before two men, one who was to be her husband and
the other who recorded her marriage. They said she was 19. She said she
was too frightened to speak because her aunt threatened to harm her
two-year-old brother if she refused to marry.
She learned of her conversion only when she was told to sign the marriage certificate with her new name - Fatima.
For
a week she was locked in one room. Her new husband came to her on the
first night. Tears stained her blue scarf as she remembered it:
"I screamed and cried all night. I have images in my mind I can't scratch out," said Neha. "I hate him."
His
elder daughter brought her food each day, and Neha begged for help to
escape. Although the woman was frightened of her father, she relented a
week after the marriage, bringing the underage bride a burqa _ the
all-covering garment worn by some Muslim women _ and 500 rupees (about
$3). Neha fled.
But when she arrived home, Neha found her family had turned against her.
"I went home and I cried to my Mama about my aunt, what she said and the threats. But she didn't want me anymore," said Neha.
Her
parents feared what her new husband might do to them, Neha said.
Further, the prospects of marriage for a girl in conservative Pakistan
who has been raped or married before are slim, and human rights
activists say they often are seen as a burden.
Neha's family,
including her aunt, all refused to talk to the AP. Her husband's lawyer,
Mohammad Saleem, insisted that she married and converted voluntarily.
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