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Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

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Home / From the World / News Global

Pakistan: 12-Year Old Christian Girl Kidnapped, “Converted” to Islam, and “Married”

12/10/2020Rosita Šorytė |

After the Farah Shaheen case, NGOs call for Human Rights Day to become “Black Day” for 2020.

by Rosita Šorytė

Farah Shaheen (from Twitter)
Farah Shaheen (from Twitter)

Last week, Pakistani police appeared at the District Court of Allahabad with a 12-year old girl whose whereabouts the Court had ordered to ascertain. The girl had deep signs on her ankles, indicating she had been attached to a rope or perhaps a metal chain for several days or weeks. Her name is Farah Shaheen, and she was too shocked to be able to tell her story. But her father did.

Farah is the second among six siblings of a Christian family in Gulistan Colony, Faisalabad. Her mother died five years ago, and Farah spent most of her time at home, taking care of her younger brothers and sisters. On June 25, 2020, the owner of a tent service business, Muhammad Zahid, and his friend Khizar Ahmad Ali came to Farah’s home (according to some accounts, with a third man), seized her, and put her in a van. Farah’s brother Afzaal Masih and her uncle Kashif heard the girl screaming and crying, and rushed to the scene, but the van was already leaving.

Farah’s father, Asif Masih, rushed to the police, but found the agents singularly uncooperative. Three days after the kidnapping, Asif learned that his daughter had “converted” to Islam and “married” one of her captors, 45-year-old Khizar Ahmad Ali. He kept visiting the police station, where, as he later reported, he was told that her daughter had freely converted to Islam and married Khizar; raising doubts about Farah’s conversion might be regarded as blasphemy, and expose him to the severe penalties of the anti-blasphemy law.

Asif then went to the Central Police Office in Faisalabad, but was not taken seriously there either. It took him four months to find a lawyer and file a case with the District Court of Allahabad.

Farah’s case is not unique. While it would be unfair to blame the whole Islamic community of Pakistan for these incidents, there are radicals who believe that kidnapping non-Muslim girls and “convert” them “back to” Islam is both acceptable and virtuous. To his credit, Prime Minister Imran Khan ordered last month an investigation on forced conversions of minor girls from the Christian and Hindu communities, believed to be around 1,000 per year in Pakistan.

This climate led the District Court to act, and reluctant police caused Farah to “reappear.” The police, however, told the Court that this was the result of a “negotiation” with her so-called husband. Farah’s father and Christian NGOs are skeptical about the possibility that the kidnappers may really be punished.

Many Christians in Pakistan believe that, notwithstanding the promises of the government, kidnapping young girls will continue, as a significant number of law enforcement officers sympathize with the perpetrators rather than the victims. Some NGOs have proposed to “celebrate” a “Black Day” on December 10, Human Rights Day, to call the attention of the international human rights community on the plague of kidnappings and forced conversions in Pakistan.

Tagged With: Forced conversion, Forced marriage, Pakistan

Rosita-ŠORYTĖ
Rosita Šorytė

Rosita Šorytė was born on September 2, 1965 in Lithuania. In 1988, she graduated from the University of Vilnius in French Language and Literature. In 1994, she got her diploma in international relations from the Institut International d’Administration Publique in Paris.

In 1992, Rosita Šorytė joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania. She has been posted to the Permanent Mission of Lithuania to UNESCO (Paris, 1994-1996), to the Permanent Mission of Lithuania to the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, 1996-1998), and was Minister Counselor at the Permanent Mission of Lithuania to the United Nations in 2014-2017, where she had already worked in 2003-2006. In 2011, she worked as the representative of the Lithuanian Chairmanship of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) at the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (Warsaw). In 2013, she chaired the European Union Working Group on Humanitarian Aid on behalf of the Lithuanian pro tempore presidency of the European Union. As a diplomat, she specialized in disarmament, humanitarian aid and peacekeeping issues, with a special interest in the Middle East and religious persecution and discrimination in the area.  She also served in elections observation missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Belarus, Burundi, and Senegal.

Her personal interests, outside of international relations and humanitarian aid, include spirituality, world religions, and art. She takes a special interest in refugees escaping their countries due to religious persecution and is co-founder and President of ORLIR, the International Observatory of Religious Liberty of Refugees. She is the author, inter alia, of “Religious Persecution, Refugees, and Right of Asylum,” The Journal of CESNUR, 2(1), 2018, 78–99.

Languages (fluent): Lithuanian, English, French, Russian.

orlir.org

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