In Pakistan, to be born into the minority Christian community and female – definitely to be a Christian woman – is both a challenge and a kind of punishment.
A challenge, because it opens a Pandora’s box of issues related to social class, marital status and religious discrimination as well as gender bias. A punishment, because sometimes there is no redress from the law or even support from the church. In their own country these people are treated as outsiders and when they go abroad they are viewed as ‘Pakistani’. Thus they are ostracised everywhere! There are two sides to the picture. One is where all the social media, journalistic media, political parties and politicians say ‘all is well’. But is it really? What about the stark reality of the other side of this picture where many issues go unspoken, unheard or unread?
Sold as a slave
A child maid working in a prominent lawyer’s house goes missing. Upon her parents hue and cry, a few days later her body is found bruised, battered and tortured. The factory worker’s daughter is kidnapped. She is forcibly converted and then, after being desecrated, sold by her husband to a landlord in Azad Kashmir as a slave. All this happens because she dared to defy the neighbourhood goon’s lecherous advances. Human Rights Watch and others can make a poster child for rape of Mukhtar Mai, but who will help liberate these girls? Christians with property are targeted under the guise of the Blasphemy Law. They are plotted against by the land-grabbing ‘mafia’.
