Pakistan – Christian Women – Challenges as Religious Minority

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Women News Network

http://womennewsnetwork.net:80/2009/05/18/pcw812/

May
18, 2009

Christian
Women Face Unknown World in Pakistan

LYS ANZIA – Women News Network – WNN

 

Minority
girl from Sindh
Province, Pakistan. Image: Alysha

During the
recent days of battle in the northwest region of the Swat Valley, minority groups are leaving as quickly as possible.
Although the majority of religious minorities in the Swat
Valley are ethnic Pushtuns, with Sunni religious beliefs,
Christian minority women and their families are also part of the fleeing force
of refugees.

As violence continues
between 4,000 Taliban splinter groups and Islamabad
soldiers in the conflict of war, Christian minority refugees, global rescue
agencies and Pakistan’s own army leaders nervously wait to see who, in the
end, will end up controlling the region. Some Christian women and their
families will be forced to stay behind as they have been unable to leave due to
the expense of travel. Those who join the 100 degree Fahrenheit refugee camps
also face problems with the sharing in handouts of food, an activity that is
usually segregated among Sikhs, Hindus and Christians.

“Christian, Hindu and
Sikh families have been forced to flee because the Taliban imposed on them
Jizia, a tax levied on non-Muslims living under Islamic rule,” said Catholic
Archbishop, Lawrence John Saldanha, in a letter released by the Catholic
Bishops’ Conference of India. “Now minority communities in the province are
forced to endure unemployment, intimidation and migration,” continued the
Archbishop’s message.

90% of Pakistani Christians
live in Punjab with 50% living in rural villages. “Less than 2% of
Pakistanis are Christians,” says a 2008 CNS – Catholic News Service report,
although this number has been more recently set by United Nations agencies at a
larger 4%. Half of Pakistan’s Christian minority population is Catholic, the other
half Protestant.

Pakistan’s religious minorities

Minority religions and
sectarian groups in Pakistan come from a vast collection of religious diversity which
includes Christians, Buddhists, Ahmadis, Zikris, Hindus, Kalasha, Parsis
(Sikhs), and Shia Muslim sects, including Ismailis and Bohras. Ethnic regional
groups come from 5 different communities, including the Baloch, Huhajir,
Punjabis, Pushtuns and Sindhis.

Although 25% of religious
minority women are not considered disadvantaged, Christian minority women who
live on the bottom of society face many untold limitations. A policy of “living
invisibly” with family members is often the only answer for protection for many
minority Christian families who suffer under the great specter of poverty in Pakistan.

The most recent Pakistan 1998 census shows minority totals in the country to
number somewhere between 11 to 13 million. Ahmadis, Christians and Hindus claim
to have a population of 4 million each. 

Marginalization
of Christian minority women

Most of the families of
Christian minority women in Punjab came, at the turn of the 20^th
century, from families that were originally from India. They came from dalit Hindu families who moved to what
would later become the Pakistan region in 1947. Their legacy of isolation and separation
from Indian society is ongoing. As dalits they were part of the lowest
“untouchable” caste in India. This has been a nemesis that has followed them, even
after they converted from Hinduism to Christianity. Basic women’s
rights and human rights are often out of reach for these women who daily
experience conditions of extreme poverty.

Dalit Christian women who
have been severely marginalized often suffer from a shortage of even the
simplest basic needs. Lack of health care is common. Slum conditions can also
be found where families are forced to live on the streets or to live together
in crowded poorly constructed shelters, amid garbage, toxic chemicals and
refuse. Their structures often have no electricity, heat or clean water.

Because of these
conditions, many dalit Christian women fall into lifetime careers as sewer
cleaners, domestic servants or brick kiln workers. Payments for these positions
are painfully low, or at times non-existent. Some employers give payment loans
ahead to trap minority women, preventing them from ever paying the loans back
as they continue to work for free on wheels of never ending debt bondage.

University educated
Christian minority women, on the other hand, have quite an opposite experience.
Because they are usually supported by family or a husband with money they fare
much better among Pakistani society. These women usually have comfortable
standards of living, a home their family owns and personal time for leisure
activities. They also have much greater freedom with contacts and life
opportunities.

The act of clustering
poor dalit Christian minority women and families on church owned land or
“colonies” has contributed to a much deeper degree of cultural segregation.
While isolation and clustering is meant to provide safety, at times it has
created more danger for families, as Islamic extremist groups identify
Christian community locations to specifically plan their attacks.

A road
connecting a Mosque and a Church, ages 9-12 years. Funkor Child Art Center
contest, Islamabad 2005

A survey of
Christian minority women in society

When a 2006 University of Birmingham, UK study was conducted among a wide span of Christian
minority women in Pakistan, all women did mention that they had experienced what
they called Muslim “name calling.” One derogatory name which is used commonly
in Pakistan is “sweeper” which refers to the “worst of all” – a
dalit Christian.

Both educated and
uneducated Christian women admitted that they had been asked numerous times by
others if they would convert to Islam. Some also experienced reverse
discrimination when they befriended someone Muslim, as some of their Christian
friends criticized them. One student said that her marks at school were lowered
when her teacher realized she was Christian, but she also added her experience
was, “not that difficult.”

Those who come from much
greater disadvantaged backgrounds, on the other hand, shared much more serious
grievances.

Women from disadvantaged
backgrounds described how legal and police protection systems in Pakistan had failed minorities. For a few, this included their
own experience or someone they knew who had experienced rape, assault or torture
as Police forces did little to nothing to help them. In contrast, one woman who
had police fail to protect her and her family, admitted enthusiastically that
the Muslim owner of the factory where she worked “very happily” gave her a
position of “influence” at her workplace.

“The general attitude in Pakistan is that if you are rich you are respectable and if you
are poor you are not,” said another woman interviewed. Consensus in attitudes
among all the women pointed to feelings that the less educated and “poorer”
Muslims were, the more like they were to act from a “habit of discrimination.”

Literacy
challenges for women in Pakistan’s Christian minority

As the Convention on
the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) gathered
data on education for women in Pakistan (with the help of 900 civil and rights
groups), in 2007, their shadow report revealed, “Pakistan has an extremely low
female literacy rate with higher drop-out rates among girls before completing primary
education. The social norms and practices prefer boys over girls for better
education…”

Statistics show that
education for the poorest ethnic and religious minority women has constantly
been placed at the very bottom of Pakistan’s educational system goals.

With such little
opportunity for public education in rural areas, the best chance for poor
Christian minority girls to receive literacy training is for them to attend a
Christian parochial school. Even this is often very difficult as Islamic Madrasas
schools are moving to close all existing programs for minority girls education
across Pakistan.

“We are at the beginning
of a great storm that is about to sweep the country,” said Ibn Abduh Rehman,
who directs the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent
organization. “It’s red alert for Pakistan.”

“The mindset wants to
stop music, girls schools and festivals,” said Salman Abid, a social researcher
in southern Punjab. Because of the rapid expansion of Madrasas schools in
northern Pakistan, vandalism and burning of Christian schools and
buildings has been increasing since 2002.

Attacks in the Muree
region on a Christian school and violence against a chapel in Taxila Hospital have both been attributed to small terrorist groups like
the (LJ) Lashkar i Jhangvi, a small Sunni splinter group numbering approx 100
members.

Christian
girl ready for confirmation Lahore, Pakistan. Image: Nicholas

Current
dangers facing Christian minority women and girls

Under-reported cases of
rape against Christian women have occurred. In 2000, the rape of seven
Christian women on a bus to Lahore was viewed by the larger Pakistani (Muslim) public as a
“deplorable act.” In August 2007, Christian Bishop Arif Khan and his wife were
murdered in Islamabad. That same month seven churches and five Christian
settlements received threatening letters.

The intimidation of
abduction, rape or violence of women and girls from minority religious families
adds greatly to their vulnerability. Any legal recourse with police or courts,
in working Pakistani law in their favor, is often very limited.

“In the weeks after the Islamabad (March 17, 2002) attack (on the Protestant International Church), I talked to many Pakistani Christians—Catholics,
Protestants and Anglicans—in private homes and at dinners and church socials.
Several discerned what they described as a larger pattern of violence directed
not only at Christians, but at other religious minorities throughout the
country,” said David Penault, associate professor at Santa Clara University, California, US.

There have been a number
of reported cases of forced marriages of girls from religious minority
communities who are under the age of 15. After separation from their family,
abductions are framed with the pretext that their conversion to Islam was the
reason for their kidnapping. In some cases, there may be a possibility that
these are unidentified sex-trafficking kidnappings, but no study to date has
been done to confirm this belief yet.

The list of abuse against
poor Christian minority women and girls is long.

“Law enforcement
personnel abused religious minorities in custody,” said the 2008 International
Religious Freedom Report by the US Department of State. “Security forces and
other government agencies did not adequately prevent or address societal abuse
against minorities,” continued the report. “Discriminatory legislation and the
Government’s failure to take action against societal forces hostile to those
who practice a different religious belief fostered religious intolerance, acts
of violence, and intimidation against religious minorities.”

Legislative
tightening, Blasphemy Laws and Hadood Ordinances

In a reversal of
restrictions under laws covering accusations by a husband against his wife in
adultery, the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act, had the
intention to free 2,500 women from Pakistan jails in 2006. Unfortunately, this was not completed.
Following this improvement,  a more conservative interpretation of the
law, through Shar’ia based legislation, was given more emphasis, causing
greater restrictions in the courts.

As legal doors closed
again more tightly, Christian women suffering from extreme poverty were left
dangling in a forgotten field of legal ambiguity, no protection and
“non-personhood.”

Even with the measured
2006 attempt to ease the 1979 Hadood Ordinances, which now allow women to
report domestic violence and rape with one instead of the previously required
three male witnesses, women still do not feel safe stepping forward to press
their case. Blasphemy laws, that sanction anyone criticizing Islam also
inflicts intimidation under the sentence of death by stoning. Stoning as a
sentence in Pakistan’s courts has been used as punitive measures in quarrels
against neighbors and against religious minorities.

For protection, minority
women and their families, whether poor or middle class, often try to hide or
mask their religious beliefs for safety at work and in public.

“Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are so vaguely formulated that they
encourage, and in fact invite, the persecution of religious minorities or
non-conforming members of [the] Muslim majority,” said human rights advocates,
Amnesty International.

Under reported cases of
rape and torture of religious minority women and girls presents an ever present
human rights crisis. Police corruption, along with abysmal Pakistani prison and
jail conditions, creates an atmosphere of intimidation and non-accountability.

“Religious minorities
need more than just fair treatment under the law, they also require visible
cooperation from the police and authorities, to prevent mob justice taking
over,” said Settlement Director, Nasir Saeed of (CLAAS) Center for Legal Aid
Assistance, which has an office in Lahore and London.

In Oct 2007, Dr. Ms. Asma
Jahangir, the now UN Special Rapporteur for UN Commission on Human Rights said,
“The NWFP (North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan) presents a disturbing
picture of religious militancy that is increasingly manifesting itself in
vigilante actions against the population and creating widespread fear… The
government has continuously refused to heed complaints and warnings from both
the public and civil society organizations and has adopted a policy of
appeasement of militants.”

“The government has
chosen to look the other way when the militants have blown up girls’ schools
and video shops, threatened teachers, students, doctors, nurses, NGO workers
and barbers,” added Jahangir.

___________________________________________________________

 From Website Link, Scroll Down to VIDEO.

http://womennewsnetwork.net:80/2009/05/18/pcw812/

In Pakistan, there’s a very high price to pay for poor Christian
women and their families – all part of the minority. This video shows
unliveable conditions in Islamabad’s French Quarter, a sordid slum where Dalit Christians
try to survive. See this 11:16 min April 16, 2009, France24
News video.
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 For more information on this topic go to:

 Annual
Report – Pakistan, 2009 – International States
Commission on International Religious Freedom

 Religious
Minorities in Pakistan by Dr. Iftikhar H. Malik –
Minority Rights Group International, 2002   

 State of the World’s Minorities 2008 – Pakistan 
– UNHCR, RefWorld

How wealth/poverty affects the treatment of Christian
women in Pakistan by
Anna-Joy Alves  – International Development Department, School of Public
Policy, The University of
Birmingham, Edgbaston, United
Kingdom,
2006  

___________________________________________________________

2007 Pushcart
prize nominee, Lys Anzia, is a humanitarian journalist working on women’s
rights and advocacy issues worldwide. She is also Editor-At-Large for Women
News Network – WNN and current executive director for World Voice
International.
_______________________________________________

Sources for this article
include ReliefWeb, UNESCO, USAID, BBC News, UN Girls Education Initiative,
Asian Human Rights Commission, Emory University, In These Times, The World
Bank, CNS – Catholic News Service, USCIS, WLUML, UNHCR, Sindh Today, PILDAT,
Aljazeera News, USCIRF, ActionAid, CLAAS, US Department of State, The Catholic
Voice, Minority Rights Group International, The Malaysian Insider, Riz Khan –
Aljazeera TV, AFP news

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©Women News Network –
WNN 2009