Khanewal (AsiaNews / Agencies) – There are still cases of religious persecution in Pakistan, a large majority Muslim nation where religious minorities are often victims of abuse and violence. In Punjab a group of 14 Muslims attacked a Protestant pastor and his wife who was expecting a baby. In a district of the same province, the Muslim village chief has ordered 250 Christian families to flee their homes because "Christian women and girls have reported repeated sexual abuse." In Sindh province, finally, a couple was indicted for blasphemy and threatened with the death penalty.
International Christian Concern (ICC) reports that on 3 June in Sahiwal, Punjab, 14 Muslims attacked a Protestant pastor, his pregnant wife and his brother. At the base of the attack were charges of "evangelizing" against Mumtaz Masih, pastor of the Full Gospel Church of Pakistan and his wife Noreen. Imam Ahmed Maqsood led the punitive expedition, injuring the man's legs, and his wife in the stomach and hand. His brother was assaulted while trying to help his relatives. The couple complained to the police, but the police do not want to open an investigation.
Jonathan Racho, ICC chief for South Asia, strongly condemns "the violence against pastor Mumtaz and his family." He adds that Pakistani Christians are victims of assault "because they express their faith in Christ", but the faithful want to stay "with vigour" in their homeland "despite the persecution."
In Khanewal district, also in Punjab, the chief of a village with a Muslim majority has ordered 250 Christian families to leave the area because "they are too vigorously denouncing sexual violence by Muslims against women and girls”. Most Christians in the area are labourers on Muslim owned land and the women domestic servants in homes. The abuses were occurring in homes, almost "daily." "Christians - denounce the displaced - are totally at the mercy of the will of Muslims."
Finally in the town of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, a suburb of Karachi (Sindh), two Christians couples must answer charges of blasphemy. A crowd of Muslims ransacked the garbage of the four, saying they had found torn pages of the Koran. The court issued an arrest warrant and the police started searches. The two pairs of Christians have abandoned the rented house and are still at large. Christian sources complain that officials have threatened the family, to reveal the place where the four are hidden. In Pakistan the crime of blasphemy carries life imprisonment or even death.