Pakistan Army Sexually Abusing Minority Women - NGO

By PHP Staff
Monday, May 02, 2011

(Photo : Pakistan Army. In its annual survey on human rights the State)

New York,  (IANS) The Pakistani army is sexually assaulting minority women and using them as sex slaves, alleges the European Organization of Pakistani Minorities (EOPM), an NGO working for the rights of minorities in Pakistan.

In a prayer-cum-demonstration held at the UN, it said the Pakistani army is taking minority women away from their families, raping them and then using them as sex slaves.

Referring to the December attacks on Christians in Lahore, the organisation alleged that attacks on minorities in Pakistan were increasing.

Using a symbolic broken chair to highlight the plight of minorities in Pakistan, more than 100 women from different faiths lit candles at the prayer to highlight the plight of minority women allegedly being raped and killed by the Pakistani Army.

Expressing concern over the plight of women of Balochistan and Gilgit Baltistan, the organisers said army officials are taking them to torture camps, raping them and then using them as sex slaves.

"One such case is of that Zarina Marri who is a 23-year-old school teacher from Quetta and is being used as a sex slave by the Pakistani Army," the EOPM said in a statement.

It said international observers and the media should be allowed free access to Balochistan and Gilgit Baltistan to meet families whose women members have disappeared and yet no police cases have been registered.

The organisation demanded that the UN organise a special session on the plight of Pakistani women.

According to the EOPM, religious minorities constitute much more than five percent - as claimed in Pakistani census - of Pakistan's 160 million population.

However, the census intentionally keeps minority population low to deny them greater representation, it said.

Christians, Sikhs, Hindus and other minorities are constant targets of attacks in Pakistan, it said, citing Minority Rights Group International, a watchdog organisation, which ranked Pakistan last year as, "the world's top country for major increases in threats to minorities since 2007".

Pakistan has also been listed seventh among the 10 most dangerous countries for minorities, after Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar and Congo.

No Christmas joy for Aasia Bibi & Hindu human rights in Pakistan is pathetic says Baluch activist

By Ahmar Mustikhan (Baltimore Foreign Policy Examinerin USA)
Friday, January 07, 2011

(Photo : Mr.Ahmar Mustikhan in USA)

Washington DC: December 23, 2010 : Pakistan's extremists mullahs would be taking out massive processions Friday all over the country to demand hanging of Aasia Bibi, 45, mother of five who has been sentenced to death by a Punjab court.

Friday is Muslim sabbath. The main religious parties in Pakistan including Jamiat Ulema Islam and Jamaat Islami have given calls for protest rallies after noon prayers to keep the blaphemy law in tact in Pakistan's statute books.

Pakistan's tough blasphemy law calls for death penalty on anyone who blasphemes Islam or Prophet Mohammed.

The religious parties have also given a call for a shutter down strike next Friday, or New Year's eve.

In June last year, Aasia Bibi had allegedly asked Muslim women with whom she was working a field that Jesus Christ had given his life for her and what sacrifice did Prophet Muhammad give for them. her question followed an argument as the women had refused to drink water she had fetched for them saying infidel's hand had touched the water tumbler.

"We appeal to Maulana Fazlur Rehman, to please call off the protest demonstration. His father the late Mufti Mehmud, was a real moderate Muslim who believed in secular politics," said Nazir Bhatti who is president of Pakistan Christian Congress and publisher of Pakistan Christian Post.

He recalled that the late Mufti Mehmud had opposed the nationalization of Christian schools and hospitals way back in the early 1970s in two Pakistan provinces and that was the reason why no schools or hospitals were nationalized there, he said.

"Please follow your father who was an enlighten Muslim. Please take back your call," he said.

Hindu human rights activist say the situation with the equally sheepish minority Hindus in Pakistan is pathetic where even their marriages are not recognized even to this day. According to Gopinath Kumar even dead Hindus are frowned upon and he cited a case on Tuesday night when the remains of a 10-year-old Hindu girl was dug out from a Muslim grave to "purify" the graveyard.

Pakistan means land of the pure and the name was conceptualized by under British patronage to ridicule the majority Hindu faith in India as impure. Arab Muslim invaders massacred more than 80 million Hindus and destroyed thousands of their temples in India before becoming rulers of India, independent historians say.

South Asian analysts blame Pakistan's military for promoting Islamic extremism even more vigorously since they met their Waterloo in the Paltan Maidan of Dhaka, Bangladesh formerly East Pakistan, on December 6, 1971. On that day more than 90,000 Pakistan soldiers surrendered at the hands of the Mukti Bahini and Indian army.

Even now, Islamists are acting as show boys of the Pakistan's defense establishment and scapegoating Aasia Bibi to shield the Al Qaeda and Taliban as the U.S. is determined to take out their sanctuaries that shifted to Pakistan when the U.S. launched Operation Enduring Freedom in winter 2001.

Christian and Hindu women are routinely abducted and forcibly converted and married against their wishes, raped and even killed in Pakistan but no culprit has ever been brought to justice in the last 63 years.

Aasia Bibi is presently lodged at the Sheikhupura jail, Punjab, which is also the stronghold of the Pakistan military -- fourth largest in the world.