Authorities in Islamabad, Pakistan have bulldozed 115 houses of Christian slum dwellers – whilst leaving the homes of nearby Muslim residents untouched. The victims are mainly deprived sewage, drainage and domestic cleaning workers.
Without warning the Christians, who had been preparing to go to work, were faced with teams of men with pickaxes, mallets and a steady stream of bulldozers and cranes, intent on destroying the homes that had been built by their occupants with cement and breeze-blocks. The families are now forced to live in tents, and other makeshift structures, with minimal insulation, through the bitterly cold Islamabad winter.
The demolition workers also stole woven charpai (rope beds), blankets, kitchen utensils, and other valuable items.
Raped and killed
Also in Pakistan Diya Bheel, a widow of 42 with five young children, was gang-raped by five men before they skinned her alive, chopped off her breasts and beheaded her, then dumped her body in a wheatfield. The horrific attack took place in Sind province, in the southwest of the country.
The mother and her daughter were collecting hay from a field. They had gathered up a pile to feed their own cattle and were building a second pile. The mother A slum in Islamabad then asked her daughter to return home with the first pile and then return to collect the second one.
When the daughter returned she could not find her mother. She searched frantically before returning home to get help from her uncles. After a fruitless search her uncles called the local police, who used sniffer dogs to find the gruesomely-mutilated corpse. They made safe the investigation area and the body parts were sent for a post-mortem examination.
Diya leaves behind five children who are now being cared for by their uncles.
