Christian minority women face unknown world in Pakistan

Current dangers facing Christian minority women and girls

Under-reported cases of rape against Christian women have occurred. In 2000, the rape of seven Christian women on a bus to Lahore was viewed by the larger Pakistani (Muslim) public as a “deplorable act.” In August 2007, Christian Bishop Arif Khan and his wife were murdered in Islamabad. That same month seven churches and five Christian settlements received threatening letters.

The intimidation of abduction, rape or violence of women and girls from minority religious families adds greatly to their vulnerability. Any legal recourse with police or courts, in working Pakistani law in their favor, is often very limited.

“In the weeks after the Islamabad (March 17, 2002) attack (on the Protestant International Church), I talked to many Pakistani Christians—Catholics, Protestants and Anglicans—in private homes and at dinners and church socials. Several discerned what they described as a larger pattern of violence directed not only at Christians, but at other religious minorities throughout the country,” said David Penault, associate professor at Santa Clara University, California, US.

There have been a number of reported cases of forced marriages of girls from religious minority communities who are under the age of 15. After separation from their family, abductions are framed with the pretext that their conversion to Islam was the reason for their kidnapping. In some cases, there may be a possibility that these are unidentified sex-trafficking kidnappings, but no study to date has been done to confirm this belief yet.

The list of abuse against poor Christian minority women and girls is long.

“Law enforcement personnel abused religious minorities in custody,” said the 2008 International Religious Freedom Report by the US Department of State. “Security forces and other government agencies did not adequately prevent or address societal abuse against minorities,” continued the report. “Discriminatory legislation and the Government’s failure to take action against societal forces hostile to those who practice a different religious belief fostered religious intolerance, acts of violence, and intimidation against religious minorities.”

Legislative tightening, Blasphemy Laws and Hadood Ordinances

In a reversal of restrictions under laws covering accusations by a husband against his wife in adultery, the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act, had the intention to free 2,500 women from Pakistan jails in 2006. Unfortunately, this was not completed. Following this improvement,  a more conservative interpretation of the law, through Shar’ia based legislation, was given more emphasis, causing greater restrictions in the courts.

As legal doors closed again more tightly, Christian women suffering from extreme poverty were left dangling in a forgotten field of legal ambiguity, no protection and “non-personhood.”

Even with the measured 2006 attempt to ease the 1979 Hadood Ordinances, which now allow women to report domestic violence and rape with one instead of the previously required three male witnesses, women still do not feel safe stepping forward to press their case. Blasphemy laws, that sanction anyone criticizing Islam also inflicts intimidation under the sentence of death by stoning. Stoning as a sentence in Pakistan’s courts has been used as punitive measures in quarrels against neighbors and against religious minorities.

For protection, minority women and their families, whether poor or middle class, often try to hide or mask their religious beliefs for safety at work and in public.

“Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are so vaguely formulated that they encourage, and in fact invite, the persecution of religious minorities or non-conforming members of [the] Muslim majority,” said human rights advocates, Amnesty International.

Under reported cases of rape and torture of religious minority women and girls presents an ever present human rights crisis. Police corruption, along with abysmal Pakistani prison and jail conditions, creates an atmosphere of intimidation and non-accountability.

“Religious minorities need more than just fair treatment under the law, they also require visible cooperation from the police and authorities, to prevent mob justice taking over,” said Settlement Director, Nasir Saeed of (CLAAS) Center for Legal Aid Assistance, which has an office in Lahore and London.

In Oct 2007, Dr. Ms. Asma Jahangir, the now UN Special Rapporteur for UN Commission on Human Rights said, “The NWFP (North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan) presents a disturbing picture of religious militancy that is increasingly manifesting itself in vigilante actions against the population and creating widespread fear… The government has continuously refused to heed complaints and warnings from both the public and civil society organizations and has adopted a policy of appeasement of militants.”

“The government has chosen to look the other way when the militants have blown up girls’ schools and video shops, threatened teachers, students, doctors, nurses, NGO workers and barbers,” added Jahangir.

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[YouTube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSvZYxlFzhQ"]

In Pakistan, there’s a very high price to pay for poor Christian women and their families - all part of the minority. This video shows unliveable conditions in Islamabad’s French Quarter, a sordid slum where Dalit Christians try to survive. See this 11:16 min April 16, 2009, France24 News video.

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 For more information on this topic go to:

 Annual Report – Pakistan, 2009 – International States Commission on International Religious Freedom

 Religious Minorities in Pakistan by Dr. Iftikhar H. Malik – Minority Rights Group International, 2002

 State of the World’s Minorities 2008 – Pakistan  – UNHCR, RefWorld

How wealth/poverty affects the treatment of Christian women in Pakistan by Anna-Joy Alves  - International Development Department, School of Public Policy, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, United Kingdom, 2006

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2007 Pushcart prize nominee, Lys Anzia, is a humanitarian journalist working on women’s rights and advocacy issues worldwide. She is also Editor-At-Large for Women News Network – WNN and current executive director for World Voice International.

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Sources for this article include ReliefWeb, UNESCO, USAID, BBC News, UN Girls Education Initiative, Asian Human Rights Commission, Emory University, In These Times, The World Bank, CNS – Catholic News Service, USCIS, WLUML, UNHCR, Sindh Today, PILDAT, Aljazeera News, USCIRF, ActionAid, CLAAS, US Department of State, The Catholic Voice, Minority Rights Group International, The Malaysian Insider, Riz Khan – Aljazeera TV, AFP news

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©Women News Network – WNN 2009

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