This is how they treat minorities

Abduction and Forced Conversion of Hindu Girls in Pakistan

Mariana Baabar
Jang News

Let me confess at the outset: I'm travelling in interior Sindh to
verify specifically the reported widespread menace of abduction of
Hindu girls, their forcible conversion to Islam and betrothal to
Muslim men. My first port of call is the district court of Mirpurkhas.
I promptly mingle among the crowd waiting for the court's decision on
a kidnap-and-conversion case. Different voices narrate contradictory
stories. I am befuddled for the moment.

Soon, a frisson of excitement sweeps through the throng, as a police
van drives through the gate. Inside it is Mariam. She's 13-year-old
and married! Mariam was Mashu, and Hindu, till the night of December
22, 2005. I pick my way through the jostling crowd. Mariam is in a red
chaddar, her gold nose ring sparkles.

She tells me, "I'm happy. I don't want to return to my parents or
brother." What's the fuss about, I wonder. It's quite another story
under the pipal tree of the court compound.

Huddled under it are the villagers of Jhaluree, 20 kilometres from
Mirpurkhas. Among them is Mashu's father, Malo Sanafravo. He says that
at 11 p.m., December 22, four armed men barged into their room. One of
them was Malo's neighbour, Akbar. They picked up Mashu, bundled her
into the waiting car. "She was taken to Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi's
village in Somarho tehsil." There Mashu became Mariam and was married
to Akbar.

Not true, insists husband Akbar. "Mariam has always been in my heart,"
he gushes, saying, at 11 p.m., December 22, it was she who had come
over to his house. But it's true that the Pir converted her and
married them, it was his idea that they issue statements in the court.
"Mariam was sent to Darul Aman in Hyderabad, in judicial custody,"
Akbar declares.

A 13-year-old choosing to convert and marry? A 13-year-old testifying
in the court, without her family by her side? Suspicious, I walk over
to the SHO, caught in the middle of a heated exchange between two
groups. Someone suggests he should allow the girl to meet her
relatives. Before the conversion yes, not now. She has now become
Muslim, says the SHO. He argues, "There's a huge crowd here. If Mariam
breaks down after seeing her father, there will be a communal riot
here in the compound."

A little later, there are celebrations as the word spreads: the court
has allowed the couple to live together. Standing next to me is Kanjee
Rano Bheel. He works for an NGO in the education sector; volunteers
for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) as well. "In just
two hours Mashu was converted and married," Kanjee says incredulously.
Disappointment and helpless rage fleet across his face.

"In Darul Aman the girls are kept away from parents and pressured into
issuing statements favourable to the abductors. They tame stubborn
girls through death threats." So, was Mashu abducted and forcibly
converted?

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Women's Development Nilofar Bakhtiar
told 'The News' that no case has come to her directly in this area.
"However, I will start investigating and take very serious action
about the forced conversions. This is certainly a very big issue. I
know that the Supreme Court has taken a suo motto action on several of
these cases. The issue was also raised in the National Assembly by MNA
Krishen Bheel and I instructed MNA Gule Farkhanda from Sindh to
investigate this issue," Ms Bakhtiar told 'The News.'

In Mirpurkhas, truth resembles the mirage of the surrounding Thar
desert, teasing and tormenting me as I drive from Karachi into
interior Sindh. It tests your credulity, it challenges your
journalistic skills. Wherever I go, and whoever I meet, in
disconsolate voices the Hindus talk about 'missing girls'; their
stories resemble Mashu's -- the theme of abduction, conversion, often
followed by marriage, is common to most narrations. The girls then
appear in courts to issue statements declaring their conversion was
voluntary.

All links to the natal family and the community are severed; they are
lost to the family forever. On January 4, 2005, Marvi, 18, and Hemi,
16, were kidnapped from Kunri village in Umerkot district; three
months later, on March 3, 14-year-old Raji was abducted from Aslam
Town Jhuddo, Mirpurkhas.

The script in their cases was similar to Mashu's. "Only 10 per cent of
all conversions involving girls are voluntary; because of romance,"
says Kanjee. Ten per cent of what? No official figures are available.

The DIG in Mirpurkhas, Saleemullah, says, "If there's need I'll
collect these figures. Minorities are the safest in Pakistan."
Saleemullah, perhaps, should tap the HRCP for statistics. Its director
in Lahore, I A Rehman, says that the HRCP has, between January 2000 to
December 2005, documented 50 cases involving conversion of Hindu girls
to Islam. Its investigations too endorse what I had found in interior
Sindh.

In many cases where it was claimed the girls had eloped with their
Muslim partners, the HRCP found that most were, in fact, abducted,
forcibly married to Muslim men or sold to them. There have been cases
of Hindu girls, usually from economically better off families, eloping
with their Muslim boyfriends.

Rehman says in most cases such marriages didn't last long. With links
to their families cut off, the girls were subsequently forced to marry
another Muslim or sucked into marriage rackets. Nuzhat Shirin, who
works for the Lahore-based Aurat Foundation, understands why girls
don't reveal their plight at the time they are presented in court.

"When a Hindu is forced to become Muslim, such a ruckus is made that
if the young kidnapped girl appears in court, the fanatics yell,
scream, throw rose petals in the air and follow the youth into the
building so that she's intimidated and can't speak," Shirin explains.

Social stigma arising from the loss of virginity, and the consequent
difficulty of finding a groom, prompt these women to accept their
misfortune and hope for the best. Fifty incidents in five years
represent just a percentage of the total number of cases, says Kanjee,
pointing out that a majority of such crimes go unreported.

"There have been 50 such incidents last year," insists Krishen Bheel,
who is a Hindu member of the National Assembly (MNA). He begins to
rattle out the cases he remembers: two months back Sapna was kidnapped
and converted in upper Sindh; seven months earlier it was 17-year-old
Lakshmi in Nawakot, and then.... "The trend is increasing," he says.

"If these conversions are voluntary, then how come boys rarely ever
convert?" Only once did the popular resentment against abduction spill
out in the streets of Mirpurkhas. It was in the eighties: a girl named
Sita had been kidnapped. Some 70,000 Hindus turned up to protest the
kidnapping. The police opened fire, killing several. "Sita was never
returned," Krishen laments.

"She had even told Justice Dorab Patel, who later joined the HRCP,
that she had been forcibly converted. We have now stopped agitating."
Instead, the Hindus take the support of civil rights groups and the
media to publicise abduction cases, hoping public scrutiny would goad
the state into action. On December 30, the day after the Mariam case
was disposed, the Supreme Court took cognisance of the complaint
Qosheela's parents from Ghotki, Sindh, had filed.

They claimed their 13-year-old girl had been kidnapped, converted,
given the name of Hajra and married to a Muslim man. The girl, as in
most other cases, had said she had converted of her own free will.

A three-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad
Chaudhry, ordered the medical examination of the girl to determine
whether she had attained puberty. Should it be proved otherwise, the
husband could be tried for rape.

Even cities are not immune to the menace. Last year, Sammo Amra and
Champa in Karachi received a letter from their three missing
daughters, Reena (21), Reema (17) and Usha (19), informing that they
had converted to Islam and were ordained under the dictates of their
new religion not to live with infidels, including their Hindu parents.
The letter bore the address of Madrassa Taleemul Islam, Karachi.

It prompted Supreme Court Bar Association president Malik Mohammad
Qayyum to petition the Supreme Court in the first week of December. He
accused the religious seminary's administrator of using coercive
methods to convert the three girls.

On December 16, the court ordered the police to shift the girls to the
Edhi Welfare Centre and provide protection to them until the time it
was ascertained they had been indeed compelled to convert to Islam.

Sensitive Muslim citizens feel the way to counter the menace is to
reinterpret and widen the scope of law. Major (r) Kamran Shafi cites
the case of 17-year-old Kochlia, who was kidnapped and gangraped in
Jacobabad, Sindh, in September 2005. Four men were arrested for the
crime. They were subsequently released because Kochlia stated in the
court she had converted and was married.

Shafi asks, "Isn't something very, very wrong here? Suppose the poor
girl was forced into changing her religion and marrying one of the
assailants so that they get off the hook? Can't the state prosecute
the four on its own, for their original crime of rape?"

The three Hindu MNAs -- Krishen Bheel, Gyan Chand and Ramesh Lal --
raised the Kochlia case in the National Assembly. They claimed
Kochlia's statement was not tenable as under the local Hindu custom
and law a girl can't marry of her own will until the age of 20. Since
Kochlia is a minor, her abductors should be tried for rape.

Such an interpretation of existing laws could provide ample relief to
Hindus. Till then, though, the fear of kidnap stalks the Hindus of
Pakistan.

Krishen Bheel says Hindu girls are scared to go out; he has enrolled
his own children into a Christian school. He points to Mirpurkhas'
strange predicament: there's freedom to worship, there are 10 temples
which bustle through the day with devotees; and yet Hindu girls here
are kidnapped and converted and the community humiliated.

Perhaps these abductions are part of the general scenario of crime
against women in rural Pakistan. Perhaps they are converted and
married to criminals to enable the latter to escape the dragnet of the
law. Yet, such arguments don't comfort the Hindus.

Sat Ram of Shadi Bali village near Mirpurkhas says Hindu girls are
deprived of education because their parents are apprehensive of
sending them to schools located at a distance. "They receive education
only till the primary level. It isn't safe to send them to school
after that."

But the plight of Hindu women can't be seen just through the prism of
gender discrimination rampant in rural Sindh.

Reena Gul of Sattar Nagar village, Mirpurkhas, says the boys too are
converted but their numbers are very few. The community here feels it
is the Islamist's agenda to drive out non-Muslims from Pakistan.

In fact, Krishen told the National Assembly that even Hindu
businessmen are being kidnapped in Sindh for ransom. He said on the
floor of the House, "Several religious parties are reportedly behind
the move to convince the people that it is their responsibility to get
rid of infidels in Pakistan, (that) taking ransom from non-Muslims is
not a sin."

I now set out to meet Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi, whose name surfaces
repeatedly in conversion stories. The drive from Mirpurkhas to
Sarhandi village, Somarho tehsil, is through a picturesque landscape.
Peacocks dance in the field and gypsies pitch their tents for the
night. Even the Pir appears tranquil, his white flowing beard and
winsome disposition camouflaging his mission. Yet, when he begins to
talk, he conceals nothing.

Yes, the Pir declares, he has been converting the Hindus for the last
30 years. Perhaps his claim of converting 1,000 families a year is a
boast. "There's a surah in the Quran which speaks specifically about
conversion, especially about conversion of women," he says to justify
his mission.

"Recently, three Hindu girls were brought to me. I named them Benazir,
Sanam and Nusrat," he reveals, with the righteous air of someone who
had bestowed a favour.

"These Hindu women are mistreated by their husbands who do nothing but
watch TV." The Pir rubbishes the allegation that he converts abducted
Hindu girls.

The unwilling are sent back. Yet, he adds in the same breath, "In many
cases Hindu girls are kidnapped and kept as keeps. But these keeps are
not converted. But believe me, they are very happy."

I express the desire to meet the women whom he had converted and found
sanctuary with him. The Pir agrees, even allows us to photograph them,
contrary to the local tradition.

Into the room, the women walk. Rehana, 50, was earlier Nabee; she
converted three years ago, after the death of her husband. "I had no
one to turn to. If we do not convert we would not be helped by this
family."

It was the same reason for 35-year-old Mariam, who came here seven
years back. "Under the Pir's protection, I earn at least Rs 200 a
month." Ruksana was earlier Chotee, and hails from Umerkot. Extreme
poverty and a drug-addict husband persuaded her to take the extreme
step. "I brought my four kids as well," she declared.

As I talk to these women, I realise most of them are widows or
wallowing in poverty. I mention this to the Pir. He says, "The
government is responsible for all Hindus and non-Hindus. When the
government doesn't help them, they come to us."

Forced or economically enticed, the Hindu converts do not symbolise
Islam's appeal. Rather they represent the state's failure to provide
succour to the poor and protect their religious rights. Perhaps it's
also symptomatic of the sickness afflicting the Pakistani state. As
they say, the condition of the minorities is an indicator of a
nation's health.