Minorities becoming increasingly vulnerable in Pakistan; Balochis, Hindus, Christians targeted

According to studies, Christian girls suffer acid attacks from Muslim suitors in retaliation for rejection. In February 2023, Kamran Allahbux disfigured Sunita, his 19-year-old Christian neighbour, with acid after she declined a marriage proposal. Sunita's family tried for months to report Kamran to the police prior to the incident, but the authorities ignored them.

The Christians in Pakistan are paying for being a minority in Pakistan. Incidents of minorities being assaulted and tortured keep coming from across Pakistan. Apart from Balochis and Hindus, incidents of targeted killings of Christians have also surfaced. Several Christian organizations, including the Action Committee for Christian Rights, the Overseas Pakistan Christian Alliance, and the Global Human Rights Defence (GHRD), held vigils in Europe in response to the recent murder of a Christian priest in Peshawar and the kidnapping of Anita Masih, a 24-year-old Christian from Sindh. She was kidnapped from home in February 2023 by twenty Muslim men and was molested for hours. They were "punishing" the actions of her cousin who allegedly eloped with a Muslim girl, the Baltimore Post Examiner reported.

Recently, on International Women's Day, the Aurat March brought together Pakistani minorities to raise awareness about crimes against non-Muslim women. Pakistan's rulers use religion for national cohesion and claim the constitutional role of guarantor of Islamic tenets. Minorities are becoming increasingly vulnerable as a large number of ordinary Muslims justify church attacks and forced conversions as the means to achieving and maintaining sovereignty.

Christian girls face forced conversions, and those who resist face beatings, acid attacks, kidnapping, rape, or even murder by Muslim men, the Baltimore Post Examiner reported. A recent report titled 'Conversion without consent' lists over a hundred cases of abduction, rape, and conversion of minor Christian girls between 2019 and 2022. An overwhelming 97 per cent of these attacks took place in Punjab and Sindh.

Moreover, the discriminatory attitude of the police and the judiciary adds to the plight. Political and religious organizations support the criminals, making it impossible for the victims to use legal counsel against the perpetrators, the Baltimore Post Examiner reported. In most cases, conciliators coerced the girls into marrying their Muslim kidnappers and rapists, the Baltimore Post Examiner reported.

The story of 20-year-old Kainat encapsulates the lives of average Pakistani Christians who pay huge costs to preserve their religious identity. Kainat's mother was kidnapped as a child and forced to convert to Islam by her elderly Muslim abductor, with whom she had four children. While ignoring the risks, Kainat's mother took her children to church and introduced bible reading at home. At the age of fourteen, Kainat's father died, and the family forced her mother to remarry her uncle. They had to stop going to church after their secret visits were discovered. In October 2017, Kainat's relatives attacked her house, and shot her brother in the ribs and lungs., the Baltimore Post Examiner reported.

According to the records of Lahore's Madrasa Jamia Naeemia, on average, 55 Christians convert to Islam each month. That is a peek into only one Madrasa in a country with thousands of Madrasas and Mosques. The assistant protocol officer at the Badshahi mosque in Lahore admitted to having converted dozens of Christians on a daily basis. All of these conversions, in the opinion of Joseph Francis, National Director for the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement, are involuntary.

 In Pakistan, Christians have one of the lowest literacy rates. The principal of Jamia Naeemia, Raghib Naeemi said that more than 90 per cent of converts are illiterate. Many Christian girls drop out of school due to vulnerability to kidnapping, molestation, and forced conversion. In 2019, the media reported three incidents of school staff coercing Christian students to convert to Islam. Similarly, in 2021, a 12-year-old female Christian was kidnapped and taken to a Madrassa in Khankah Dogran, where she was converted.

According to studies, Christian girls suffer acid attacks from Muslim suitors in retaliation for rejection. In February 2023, Kamran Allahbux disfigured Sunita, his 19-year-old Christian neighbour, with acid after she declined a marriage proposal. Sunita's family tried for months to report Kamran to the police prior to the incident, but the authorities ignored them, the Baltimore Post Examiner reported. Julie Aftab, a Christian who fled to the United States, claimed that Muslims attacked her at the age of sixteen for wearing a cross. The attackers grabbed her by the hair and poured acid down her throat. People refused to transport her to the hospital because of her faith, and Muslim doctors refused to treat her. She had lost more than two-thirds of her oesophagus and was missing teeth, gums, an eye, and both eyelids due to acid burn.

The Pakistan government views media coverage of crimes against non-Muslims as an attack on Islam and the constitution. To avoid litigation, many organizations self-censor and minorities lose important allies while criminals gain impunity and safe havens. A few weeks ago, Pakistan's censor board banned a documentary on the life of a minor Christian girl from Faisalabad that was scheduled to be released on International Women's Day. The film which received eight international awards violated Pakistani culture by depicting the abduction, involuntary conversion, and marital rape of religious minorities, the authorities said.

In 2022, conservative Pakistanis were outraged when the British government sanctioned Mian Mithoo for forcing girls from religious minorities to convert and marry their captors. A few months later, the Islamabad High Court Bar Association invited Mian Mithoo to speak at a seminar titled "Forced Religious Conversion and Its Reality."

Mian Mithoo claimed during his speech that young Christian and Hindu girls willingly accept Islam and marry the elderly Muslim men they love to which the audience applauded Mian Mithoo for exposing false accusations and thanked him for his selfless services. The constitution of Pakistan is ambiguous regarding non-Muslim inheritance and divorce rights. The marriage act, inserted into the constitution during the reign of General Zia-ul-Haq, complicates the divorce process for Christians who seek escape from marital cruelty and toxicity.

Christian girls who drop out of school and take employment to help families make ends meet are vulnerable to elderly Muslim employers. In February 2023, 60-year-old Rana Tayab of Faisalabad raped and converted his minor Christian servant, Sitara, and claimed her as his second wife. Reporting a similar incident, the Baltimore Post Examiner reported that, in 2021, two Christian sisters, Sajida and Abida aged 28 and 26 respectively, were raped and killed in Lahore by their employer for refusing to convert.

Human rights organizations repeatedly request the government to review blasphemy laws, which have become an effective conversion tool. Blasphemy laws are used to settle personal disputes or seize Christians' property. Many Christians convert to Islam to avoid death sentences in blasphemy cases. In 2014, a mob burned a Christian couple in the Kasur district in a brick kiln for blasphemy. The police said that the couple was demanding unpaid wages and the kiln owner used blasphemy to get rid of them.

Recently in District Nankana Sahib, a Muslim falsely accused a Christian colleague of blasphemy to secure his job. The contentious blasphemy laws frequently result in premeditated attacks on Christian burial grounds and places of worship. Denying burial grounds and destroying places of worship is a direct violation of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, to which Pakistan is a signatory.

During riots, villages inhabited by Christian labourers and harvesters face large-scale demographic shifts, cultural regression, and the seizure of assets. In 2017, a church attack in Quetta killed nine. Likewise, during the Easter celebrations in 2016, a suicide bomber killed seventy Christians and injured 340 others in Lahore. Between 2013 and 2015, four bomb blasts in different churches in Peshawar and Lahore killed and injured over two-hundred Christian worshippers.

Moreover, in 2005, a Muslim mob burned down churches, homes, and schools in Sangla Hills, displacing an entire Christian neighbourhood population. Tens of thousands of Christians have fled to India and Western countries in order to escape the unbearable situation. Christians are not allowed to cast ballots in the general election or choose their representatives in the parliament. They are also prohibited from holding the positions of president, prime minister, or commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces.

In October 2022, six UN Special Rapporteurs wrote to Pakistan's government urging them to put an end to the abduction, rape, forced conversion, and child marriage of Christian girls. The Rapporteurs accused Pakistani law enforcement of colluding with the kidnappers and chastised politicians for failing to protect the victims. Pakistan, which takes pride in its democracy, should heed international advice and treat Christians with dignity and equality. 

https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/international/2413448-wrapup-1-taiwan-determined-to-safeguard-freedom-democracy-president-tsai-says

Christians slam Pakistan’s ‘faulty’ census

By Kamran Chaudhry

Many members of various minority groups, including Christians, are not being counted, they claim.

Christian leaders in Pakistan have slammed the ongoing national census saying the questionnaires were erratic and accused the enumerators of not counting many members of minority groups.“Many parish houses [parsonages] have been skipped. Maybe they thought no one stays in churches. Since every parish has at least three priests, at least 40 people will be missing in the count [in the city],” Father Mario Rodrigues, rector of St. Patrick’s High School in Karachi, the country’s largest city, told UCA News.

The population in the port city stands at more than 16.5 million as per the seventh national population and housing census that started last month.

Christian leaders like Rodrigues in Karachi and those in other cities have issued a series of allegations against the first-ever digital census including undercounting, faulty questionaries, and delaying tactics. Based on the latest data, the state-run Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said the current population of the country is estimated at 235 million. The agency did not reveal data on the religious minorities in the predominantly Muslim country. The bureau initially planned to hold the census from March 1- April 1, but it was later extended to April 30, media reports say. The field activities were halted on April 20 for the Eid-ul-Fitr festival and will resume on April 26.

"“The usual lack of transparency is an attempt to undercount Christians of Pakistan"

Anglican Bishop Humphrey Sarfaraz Peter of Peshawar Diocese, in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, alleged the bureau has been adopting delaying tactics to undercount Christians.

“The usual lack of transparency is an attempt to undercount Christians of Pakistan who are the biggest and most vocal religious minority in the country. Tribal Christians of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were mostly skipped in the last census as well,” Peter said.

The last national census of 2017 showed Pakistan had 2.6 million Christians who made up 1.27 percent of a population of 207 million. Hindus were at 1.73 percent.

Majid Abel, executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan accused the bureau of engaging insufficient and untrained staff in the census process leading to undercounting.

“The entire population with its religious, ethnic, caste, gender or racial identity must be reflected in the results which should be available at the union council level. People must be allowed to identify the missed population,” he said.

On April 17, the Lahore-based Center for Social Justice (CSJ) and Peoples Commission for Minorities Rights voiced grievances over irregularities in the census and demanded remedies.

“In violation of the instructions, the census enumerators have used an incomplete and different paper questionnaire instead of [computer] tablets to collect household data at least in four cities including Lahore,” CSJ executive director, Peter Jacob,  told a press conference.

He also said the standard questionnaire omitted columns on Baha’i and Kailash, both among 18 state-recognized religious groups.

"Usage of multiple census forms will create confusion"

The bureau "neglected rigidly the necessary aspects of preparation. This is an injustice and a betrayal of the nation,” Jacob said, adding that the census must continue until these issues are addressed.

The standard census form provides columns for religious groups in seven categories including Muslim, Christian, Hindu Jati, Ahmadi, Scheduled Cast, Sikh, and Parsi. The unnamed minority groups are lumped together in the “others” category.  

Peter Jacob, a Catholic, said that the enumerators used a second paper questionnaire that skipped the categories of religion, transgender, and disability. He claimed CSJ volunteers who were engaged in a census awareness campaign in 24 districts reported the discrepancy.

Anglican pastor Emanuel Khokhar, dean of Raiwind diocese in Punjab province, claimed a third questionnaire was used.

“The original one mentions Christians as Masihi while this one refers to us as Isai. Usage of multiple census forms will create confusion. It was revoked at least in our locality after local Christians protested but this is a dangerous trend,” he said.

Ashiknaz Khokhar, a Christian youth activist and census observer in Sahiwal, Punjab province, alleged that 30 Christian brick kiln families in city suburbs were not counted.

On April 11, Pakistan Minority Rights Commission secretary-general Roheel Zafar Shahi filed a complaint with the government about the “incomplete census” of the Bahar Colony, home to 350 churches and around 50,000 Christians in Lahore.

Christians from Youhanabad, the largest Christian colony in Lahore with some 150,000 residents, also made similar allegations.

https://www.ucanews.com/news/christians-slam-pakistans-faulty-census/101102

Is a 1960 treaty between Pakistan and India killing the mighty Ravi River?

By Diaa Hadid,Abdul Sattar

Abuzar Madhu sits by the Ravi, a storied river that begins in the Himalayas of northern India and crosses into Pakistan. Madhu, an artist and environmental activist, embraces an ancient South Asian tradition of river worship. "She's a mother," Madhu says. "She's also a God."Ships once sailed the broad and wide Ravi. Hindu and Muslim saints lived by the banks and people still worship at shrines built in their honor. But the river flowing past Madhu is not the Ravi of history. It is now a stinking, dirty ribbon flowing between dusty banks, a dump for industry, agriculture and sewage, one of the world's most polluted bodies of water.Environmentalists and activists alike say a treaty is partly to blame for killing the Ravi: the Indus Waters Treaty between Pakistan and India, signed in 1960.

In March, one water expert, Hassan Abbas, described the Indus Waters Treaty as causing "ecocide" and tells NPR that he hopes the treaty is in peril.

"If the treaty is in trouble, and it gets nullified," he said. A new river water treaty could be negotiated "in line with emerging trends of sustainability and environmental protection and restoration of degraded ecosystems."

But if the Indus Waters Treaty is loathed by environmentalists, it is also credited with preventing war over water between India and Pakistan by dividing the six rivers that crisscross the two countries. That is no small feat: India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed, have waged war three times and had multiple smaller conflagrations. They remain hostile neighbors 75 years after both countries were partitioned.

"In fact the treaty has been honored by both sides, even during the wars," according to Shekhar Gupta, the editor-in-chief of the Indian newspaper, The Print. Gupta spoke about the treaty on Cut The Clutter, a news show he hosts. "The treaty has stood the test of time, and the water has continued to flow as they [the rivers] were committed in the treaty," he says.

A treaty that divides rather than shares

The treaty divides six rivers that traverse both countries, allowing Pakistan and India to use their three waterways as they like. India has largely diverted its rivers into dams and canals, like the Ravi. Now downstream in Pakistan, it's a trickle of its former size."These are not small rivers. They are rivers rivaling the size of the Colorado River," says Abbas. Of the Indus Waters Treaty, he says dividing up rivers and not letting them flow "is something unthinkable today" because in contemporary times "you cannot think of shutting down a river."The Indus Waters Treaty is singularly peculiar, says Pakistani environmental lawyer Rafay Alam because the treaty "divides water rather than shares it."That reflects the violence surrounding the creation of India and Pakistan. "The treaty was in some ways, the unfinished business of partition," Alam says, referring to when the British divided their former colony into two countries: India and Pakistan. The partition triggered murderous sectarian violence. Millions of Muslims fled to Pakistan; Millions of Hindus and Sikhs fled to India. The brutality of partition led water negotiators to the conclusion that the two countries would not be able to share water, so the treaty divided up the rivers instead.

India's dams bring tensions

But now, the treaty is facing its toughest test in decades. "The level of mistrust is at the highest," says Jamaat Ali Shah. He used to represent Pakistan on a bilateral commission that oversaw the implementation of the Indus Waters Treaty. Experts say the tensions largely began when India started building hydroelectric dams on the upper portions of rivers that are allocated to Pakistan in the early 2000s. India is allowed to build structures that generate power under the treaty's terms. But many in Pakistan fear India's ultimate aim is to interrupt the flow of water. "Any such effort from India to stop water — I can't foresee good results because this water is [a] lifeline for Pakistan," says Shah.Two hydroelectric plants in particular worry Pakistan: one being built on the Chenab, a river that forms in India and flows into Pakistan, and another built on a river known in Pakistan as the Jhelum. That plant diverts water out of the Jhelum, and Pakistani officials say it has diminished the power of their own hydroelectric plant built on the Pakistani side of the river.In 2016, Pakistan appealed to the World Bank, which acts as a quasi-third party to the treaty. It asked the Bank to hold a court of arbitration to consider whether the design of India's hydroelectric schemes violates the treaty. This frustrated India, says Gupta, the editor-in-chief of The Print, in his video explainer, because a court can delay a project for years. To Indian officials, it looked like Pakistan was trying to play the role of a spoiler – adding to popular frustrations, because while both countries are allocated three rivers each, the bulk of the water flows in the rivers allocated to Pakistan. "India said, look, this has gone on for too long," says Gupta. "All our projects have got delayed like this."

The Jhelum River as seen from the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Indus Waters Treaty allocates the river to Pakistan, even though it forms in India and India is allowed to build hydroelectric plants on the upper parts. Pakistan protests that one of those Indian plants has meant less water in the river to operate its own hydroelectric plant. India asked instead for the World Bank to appoint an expert to look at the dams, which is less of an escalation.

The World Bank initially allowed both and then paused both to try a middle ground – mediation. Gupta says, "but once again both countries kept fighting, fighting, fighting" over the hydroelectric projects.So the World Bank halted mediation and in April, 2022, took two actions: As Pakistan wanted, it resumed the court of arbitration. As India wanted, the neutral expert was called back. A bank spokesperson tells NPR that it allowed both actions, simultaneously, because years of stalemate would be "a risk to the Treaty itself."

Already, there are problems.

First, India boycotted the court of arbitration, Gupta says. On January 25, India sent a notice to Pakistan that it wanted to modify the water treaty directly with Pakistan, excluding the World Bank. Pakistan responded, says Syed Muhammad Mehar Ali Shah, who is in charge of water treaty issues for Pakistan. "We would like to hear the concerns of the Indian side," he says, but declined to elaborate. While Shah didn't offer more detail, Daniel Haines, a specialist in South Asian water politics, says Pakistan wants to keep the World Bank as a third party because Pakistan is the weaker party: it's on the brink of default and mired in political chaos. Meanwhile, India is the world's fifth largest economy. "From a Pakistani point of view, it might look as though India at this moment is trying to use its growing strength to take out third parties from the dispute resolution process, which Pakistan has traditionally seen as a guard against the potentially greater power of its upstream neighbor." It's not clear what happens next. Haines, who is affiliated with the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, says a conflict solely over water is unlikely, but the tensions over the treaty "could contribute to an overall deterioration of relations ... which could be dangerous."

What the treaty left out .

Meanwhile, scientists say climate and environmental concerns may pose a far more existential threat to the waters – challenges the treaty doesn't address at all.There's the ecological damage done by stopping the flow of three rivers to their natural terminus in Pakistan — the three rivers allocated to India under the treaty. Then there's damage that structures like dams and canals have done to the rivers, as both countries have diverted their flow for agriculture in particular, says Abas, the river water expert. He says when the treaty was negotiated, rivers were seen as something to be utilized and river water that flowed into the ocean was seen as wasted. "That is against science," says Abbas, who notes that all the silt that was once carried through the river, enriching farm soils and allowing mangrove forests to grow on the coastlines, is now "creating problems."

"The silt is being deposited in the canals, in the riverbed, in the dams upstream," he says. "It raises the riverbank" and clogs up the dams.

"That means that when it floods, even the smaller floods, overspill the banks of the rivers," he says. And not allowing the river to flow is causing clogging and salinity of Pakistan's farm lands. "Soils are losing their fertility." And there's the specter of climate change. Those six rivers divided between India and Pakistan are largely fed by thousands of glaciers in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, an area known as "The Third Pole" because it's the largest store of the world's frozen water after the north and south poles. Those glaciers are under severe threat from climate change," says Alam, the environmental lawyer.

Around a third of them are expected to disappear if the Earth warms by 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to ICIMOD, a regional environmental group. The U.N. predicts warming will be even higher."What will happen first you'll have lots of flooding," Alam says. "Then there'll be no water. That doesn't really threaten the treaty as much as it threatens the region." A region where nearly two billion people rely, in some way, on rivers fed by those glaciers, not just the six mentioned under the Indus Waters Treaty.

Back at the Ravi River, Madhu, the activist, says the Indus Waters Treaty should replaced, a call echoed by other environmentalists like water expert Hassan Abbas. In addition to not addressing climate change, the treaty has damaged the rivers that it has divided, and, Madhu argues, created a culture where rivers have been stripped of their spiritual significance and turned into dumps. He points to blobs of gunk bobbing in the Ravi and an old wooden boat rotting in stagnant water. "It's not a treaty," he says. "It's the death of river, and people of river."

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/04/27/1172162308/is-a-1960-treaty-between-pakistan-and-india-killing-the-mighty-ravi-river