ICC Note:

A 15-year-old Christian girl from the Kasur District of Pakistan’s Punjab province has reportedly been abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and forcefully married to one of her kidnappers. Abduction and forced conversion of religious minorities continues to be a major problem in Pakistan with some groups estimating as many as 700 girls are affected each year. In many cases, rape is used as a tool to trap victims using shame in Pakistan’s traditional culture. Police and local courts have done little to curb this pandemic allowing it to spread and ruin the lives of more minorities. 

1/15/2016 Pakistan (The Blaze) – A Christian teenage girl was recently abducted in Pakistan by a group of Muslim men and then forced to convert to Islam and marry one of her captors, her family has claimed.

The girl, 15-year-old Saima Bibi, was alone in a village in the Kasur district of Pakistan when she was kidnapped, her brother Riaz Masih said. The family have issued a case against Saima’s captors with police in Kasur, ucanews.com reported.

“We have been told that she has married after converting to Islam with a Muslim man Tanvir, her kidnapper,” Masih told ucanews.com. “My sister … is 15 years old. We have her birth certificate, which will be produced before the court.”

Saima’s family hopes providing a birth certificate that verifies her age will prove useful in the case, as the legal marriage age in Pakistan is 16. The police, however, already confirmed that Saima converted to Islam and officials have documents proving the marriage.

“We will produce the couple before a local court, where the girl can testify whether she was kidnapped or willingly married the Muslim man,” police officer Noor Ahmed said.

Father Joseph Louis, the executive secretary of Caritas Pakistan, called the abduction an attack on religious freedom. ”This is unacceptable, we totally condemn this,” he said. “We demand that courts give justice to the affected family.”

According to the Movement for Solidarity and Peace, a research, education and advocacy group, 700 non-Muslim girls are converted to Islam each year in Pakistan. Christians and Hindus are commonly targeted minority groups.

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