A Pakistani Muslim NGO said in June that every year between 100 to 700 Christian women, ‘usually between the ages of 12 and 25 are abducted, converted to Islam, and married to the abductor or third party’.
In its investigative report ‘Forced Marriages and Forced Conversions in the Christian Community of Pakistan’ the Movement for Solidarity and Peace (MSP) identified a pattern. In most of the abduction cases the parents of Christian victims file a police report, but in response the abductor’s relatives or friends file another police complaint on behalf of the abducted Christian woman, claiming that she wilfully married and converted to Islam, and that her parents are now ‘harassing’ her unlawfully.
Sexual violence
The report notes that after abduction, Christian women are subjected to ‘sexual violence, rape, forced prostitution, human trafficking and sale, or other domestic abuse’ so when produced before the court and asked to testify if they were abducted, these women (and sometimes children) give a statement in favour of their captors for fear of threats to their life, and those of their family.
MSP says the report is based on field research compiled by legal expert Emad Ansari during the summer of 2012; it includes numerous interviews with local CSOs, national policymakers and diverse stakeholders from amongst the Pakistani judiciary.
Backing up MSP’s research, the respected national Pakistani daily paper Dawn has also presented an investigation of such an incident: a Hindu girl whose parents filed a police complaint about her forced conversion. Hindus also suffer abduction of their women and forcible conversion to Islam. The investigation shows that it is quite difficult to actually say whether the marriage was contracted with complete wilful consent. Christians and Hindus make up just 2% each of the total population in Pakistan.
Pakistani Christians are a struggling and socio-economically marginalised group, of which about 80% lead life in abject poverty. Because of their small number and poor status they ‘are subjected to human trafficking and sale through debt transfers, physical abuse, and economic exploitation’. In this situation, the exploitation of Christian women is much easier and the crimes go unpunished with impunity.
The report does not rule out wilful conversions due to socio-economic reasons. ‘Social and economic disparities and poverty remain a major reason for wilful conversions from Christianity to Islam’, the report says. It notes the role of social pressure for upward mobility by ‘conversion’.
