Forced conversion of minority girls in Pakistan

rdf:langString Forced conversion of minority girls in Pakistan

rdf:langString In Pakistan, on average around over a 1000 underage girls belonging to the minority Hindu, Christian and Sikh communities are kidnapped and forcefully converted to Islam every year and forcibly married and subjected to rape. According to human rights organisations hundreds of Hindu, Sikh, Christian girls are abducted and converted every year. The National Council of Churches in Pakistan (NCCP) said that the number of abductions of Christian girls is increasing every year. Alleged forced conversions of girls belonging to the Kalash community were also reported in media. Most of the targets are Hindu and Christian girls from lower Castes and poor families. Such cases of forced conversions are being reported increasingly in the Southern Sindh districts of Tharparkar, Umerkot and Mirpur Khas and in the South Punjab, particularly the Rahim Yar Khan District and adjacent areas. Some of these victims are allegedly as young as 12 years old. A Pakistani journalist, writing in an Indian newspaper, The Hindu, alleged that "Wealthy Muslim farmers see [Hindu girls] as fair game for abductions, rape, and prolonged sexual exploitation in captivity. Some notorious religious establishments proudly validate these alleged crimes. State institutions, the police and politicians have encouraged the trend by looking the other way." Harris Khalique claimed that "madrassas provide an institutional backing and that cannot happen if the state does not allow that. I rest the responsibility of such incidents squarely on the state, which fails its citizens." Many Hindu girls living in Pakistan are kidnapped, forcibly converted and married to Muslims. According to the Pakistan Hindu Council, religious persecution, especially forced conversions, remains the foremost reason for migration of Hindus from Pakistan. Religious institutions like Bharchundi Sharif and Sarhandi Pir support forced conversions and are known to have support and protection of ruling political parties of Sindh. According to the National Commission of Justice and Peace and the Pakistan Hindu Council around 1000 Christian and Hindu minority women are converted to Islam and then forcibly married off to their abductors or rapists. This practice is being reported increasingly in the districts of Tharparkar, Umerkot and Mirpur Khas in Sindh. According to another report from the Movement for Solidarity and Peace, about 1,000 non-Muslim girls are converted to Islam each year in Pakistan. According to the Amarnath Motumal, the vice chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, every month, an estimated 20 or more Hindu girls are abducted and converted, although exact figures are impossible to gather. In 2014 alone, 265 legal cases of forced conversion were reported mostly involving Hindu girls. According to the Pakistan's 2017 Universal Periodic Review to the UN Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), an average 20 of Hindu girls are abducted every month in Pakistan, converted by force to Islam, and then married off to their abductors. Within Pakistan, the southern province of Sindh had over 1,000 forced conversions of Christian and Hindu girls according to the annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in 2018. According to victims' families and activists, Mian Abdul Haq, who is a local political and religious leader in Sindh, has been accused of being responsible for forced conversions of girls within the province. More than 100 Hindus in Sindh converted to Islam in June 2020 to escape discrimination and economic pressures. Islamic charities and clerics offer incentives of jobs or land to impoverished minorities on the condition that they convert. New York Times summarised the view of Hindu groups that these seemingly voluntary conversions "take place under such economic duress that they are tantamount to a forced conversion anyway." Forbes reported that the Human rights organizations estimates that every year 1,000 such girls are forcibly converted to Islam. This estimate could be even higher than 1,000 as many cases remain unreported. The 2020 US media report also estimates the number of forcibly converted girls to be around 1,000 per year. However the Pakistan government rejected it and termed the report as "rubbish and baseless". The Catholic news site Aleteia reported that in 2020, the number of forced conversion cases rose to more than 2000.