ICC Note:

A deaf Christian woman from Pakistan’s Kasur District was gang raped by three Muslim men that broke into her home while her family was away. Assaults on Christian women, and women from other religious minority communities, are common and under-reported in Pakistan. Often, police turn a blind eye to assaults of this nature and in some cases actively cover up the crimes. One of the worst forms of persecution in Pakistan is the forced marriage and forced conversion of Christian women which happens to hundreds of women every year. 

10/26/2015 Pakistan (Breitbart) – Three Muslim men broke into the home of a deaf Christian woman in a village in the district of Kasur, Pakistan, and took turns raping her while the men of the family were at work.

The incident occurred in the Ganda Singh Wala village in the Kasur district of Punjab.

The woman reportedly screamed for mercy while being raped, but no one came to her assistance. Relatives of the woman have retained the services of Christian lawyer Sardar Mushtaq Gill, who runs an advocacy group offering free legal assistance to Pakistani Christians and other minorities who are victims of abuse and religious persecution.

The lawyer filed the first information report with the police and is trying to reconstruct the facts of the attack, though he admits that it is not easy to get a case like this prosecuted fairly in Pakistan. One suspect, Muhammad Umar, has been arrested while the other two attackers reportedly escaped, and Gill is not optimistic about seeing justice done.

“It’s very difficult to get a punishment for those responsible,” he told the Fides news agency. “Often in these cases the police take no action or, worse, side with the rapists.”

Gill also noted that cases of violence against Christians and other religious minorities are far more frequent than is commonly known because of a system that turns a blind eye to religious persecution.

“Christian families or witnesses are pressured to withdraw complaints,” Gill added. “Violence against women and children of religious minorities, the weak and vulnerable, is widespread in Pakistan and is often carried out in silence. The cases and the stories do not come to light and when victims talk about it they are intimidated,” he said.

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