Slender and frightened, wrapped in a colorful scarf that covers her from head to waist. Meerab Mohsin She holds the fabric tightly between her fingers, curled to protect her body as a girl forced to grow up too soon. She is probably trying to sit between her mother and her lawyer while she awaits the medical tests, trying to find an explanation for the violence she has suffered. A Muslim man older than her first kidnapped her and then raped her in order to force her to marry and convert to Islam.
Such was the forever shape of the life of this Christian girl from Orangi Town, a Pakistani city northwest of Karachi. Meerab is one of many. His alleged tormentor, Noman Abbas, would have repeated the same script with two other Punjab province girls who were sold after being forced to marry him. But she managed to escape and, with the help of the lawyer Tabassum Yousaf, she had the courage to report everything to the Karachi court. In the province of Sindh, the government actually started a squeezeon in 2013 weddings Infants, with the approval of a law that sets the minimum age for marriage at 18.
But the violations are still numerous. Every year at least 2,000 underage girls are kidnapped, forced into marriage and abused Convert to the belief of his tormentors, he condemns Aid to the Church in Need, the papal foundation that spawned the story of Meerab. And not all stories have happy endings. In November 2020, a young Christian woman named Sonia was killed for refusing the advances of a Muslim man. A few months earlier, also in Karachi, in the Eissa Nagri district, where the majority of the population is Christian, a fiveyearold girl was abducted, raped and killed. The killer then set the lifeless body on fire by leaving it in a landfill.
Also attracting attention was the case of Raja Arzoo, a 13yearold kidnapped and forced to renounce Christianity to marry a 44yearold Muslim. As if that wasn’t enough, the forced marriage was also confirmed by the district court. In fact, the judges accepted the kidnapper’s version, namely that Raja, who later became Fatima, had converted voluntarily. Even the judges examining the case of Maira Shahbaz, a 14yearold girl who was taken from her home by three gunmen and forced to marry a man who was already the father of two, twice agreed that the torturer was right . kidnapped, drugged, raped and forced to renounce their religion.
“The hope is that Pakistani institutions will take action to pass laws protecting minors belonging to religious minorities across the country,” writes the Pontifical Foundation today, which has decided to Women Pakistani victims of kidnapping and forced marriages through an ad hoc fund appealing to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government. Meanwhile, the Meerab affair reached Brussels, where Northern League MEP Marco Dreosto, member of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Pakistan, called for an EU delegation to be sent to Islamabad to shed light on the incident and “relieve the victims.” to protect against new abuses”.
What happened to the 16yearold from Orangi Town was “unacceptable”, commented the Lega Nord. “Sexual violence for the purpose of forced marriage and forced conversion of the sixteenyearold attacked Dreosto are acts that cannot be tolerated. respect of freedom of religion it must be guaranteed to all believers who want to freely express their faith in Christ”.