Lethal attack on two Protestant pastors in Peshawar, in the north of Pakistan. Yesterday afternoon, January 30, two men on a motorbike opened fire on the car with two Protestant pastors on the Peshawar ring road near Madina market. Pastor William Siraj was killed and Pastor Patrick Naeem, who was seriously injured, is in hospital
As the government announced a state of emergency across the country on August 5, villagers hosed down vegetation in rural areas threatened by wildfires near Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia
The Pakistani police have registered a complaint about the kidnapping of another Christian student from Lahore in order to force her into an Islamic marriage. Mehwish Bibi, a student at the Women’s College in the city of Gujranwala, left her home at 8.10 am on February 18, to go to college but she never returned home
All religious organizations and leaders have condemned the torture inflicted on the Christian nurse in hospital. The Government of Pakistan will not tolerate these abuses”. This is what Hafiz Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister for Religious Harmony said. Hafiz Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, Muslim cleric at the head of the Council of Ulema of Pakistan, expressed outrage and sorrow for the violent treatment of Tabitha Nazir Gill, a Christian accused of blasphemy on January 28 while working at Sobhraj Maternity Hospital, promising a thorough investigation into the incident, in order to verify any abuse
With a sensational about-face, the police registered case no. 74/21 against the Christian woman Tabitha Nazir Gill, according to article 295 C of the Pakistani Penal Code, that is, for “having used derogatory comments pronounced or written, directly or indirectly, which offend the name of Muhammad or the other prophets”. It is one of the articles of the infamous blasphemy law that makes so many victims in Pakistan and that is frequently abused and brought up for personal revenge
The merciless murder of Abida and Sajida is a tragedy that shows how the lives of religious minorities in Pakistan are held by a thread or is worthless. Rape, kidnappings, forced conversions and even murders of young Christian girls are worrying phenomena
We appreciate the government’s renewed commitment to the protection of Pakistan’s religious minorities, especially the protection of those falsely accused and the protection of innocent underage girls trapped in forced conversions and forced marriages. The initiative of the Government Office for Interreligious Harmony will certainly strengthen peace and harmony between people of various religions and will lead people of religious minorities not to live in fear “
News of the granting of bail to the main defendant Ali Azhar and to the co-defendants saddens and wounds the religious minorities of Pakistan
: The judicial battle continues in the case of Arzoo Raja, the kidnapped Catholic girl, forcefully converted to Islam, forced to marry Islamic last October, then freed by the police and now living in a family home, under the control of social workers
According to CSJ, a total of 162 cases of Hindu and Christian women were kidnapped, converted and forcibly married were officially recorded from 2013 to 2020 in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh alone