Christians are facing significant persecution for their faith in Pakistan, with recent incidents reported by the British Asian Christian Association (BACA) including arrests, robbery, rape, forced abortion and murder.
In one incident, 30-year-old Marshal Masih, from Lahore, was shot 16 times in front of his wife and three children, and died of excessive bleeding due to a delayed response from emergency services.
The shopkeeper, who was the sole earner for his family, was shot all over his body in a final escalation of a dispute with his Muslim neighbour, who, with others, had frequently gone up onto Masih’s roof and fired shots.
After receiving assurances that such behaviour would stop at a reconciliatory meeting organised by the police, Masih was murdered by his neighbour and accomplices, who have subsequently been arrested.
In another incident, an 18-year-old Christian girl was abducted, raped and sold to a brothel in Gujranwala, before dying from a high fever and bleeding caused by abortion pills which she had been forced to take.
She was kidnapped from her home village, Ajniawala, near Sheikhupura in January, before being rescued in June when her brother spotted her in a rickshaw with other women. She told her family, who had not initially reported the crime because they live in extreme poverty, of how her Muslim attacker had raped her several times, then allowed his friends to rape her before selling her to a brothel a month later.
After becoming pregnant at the brothel, the owner forced her to take abortion pills. While on her way to hospital due to uncontrollable bleeding, she saw her brother. She died because of her condition and deteriorated physical state two days later.
