Karachi: Neha loved hymns playing in the church. But last year she was taken away by the opportunity to sing, 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. Neha’s husband is in jail now facing charges of rape for the underage marriage, but she is in hiding, afraid after security guards seized a pistol from his brother in court.
Neha said, “He brought the gun to shoot me.” From the security point of view, Neha’s surname is not being mentioned here. Neha is one of the 1000 religious minorities who are forced to convert to Islam every year in Pakistan. In most cases this is done to marry girls that are under the legal age and non-consensual.
Human rights activists say that during the Corona virus lockdown, such crimes have gained momentum as girls are out of school and more visible. Traffickers of girls are more active on the Internet and poor families are 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. Most of the girls who have been converted are from poor Hindu families in Sindh province.
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.
Child protection activists says cases of forced conversions are executed on the basis of money, including Islamic clerics, magistrates legitimizing nikahs, and corrupt policemen. Jibran Nasir, an activist, calls the network a mafia, saying that non-Islamic girls fall prey to them.
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 can be targeted with charges of blasphemy.
13-year-old Hindu girl 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.”
A Hindu activist, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of repercussions 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.