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Christian Nurse in Pakistan Boldly Opts to Report Videotaped Rape
LAHORE, Pakistan, September 8 MPBS24/7(A CDN REPORT) – A Christian nurse here filed a police report on Saturday (Sept. 3) alleging she was raped by a Muslim colleague who filmed the act in an attempt to blackmail her into renouncing her faith and marrying him, she and hospital sources told Compass. Shaista Samuel, a 27-year-old nurse at the Services Institute of Medical Sciences (SIMS), filed a First Information Report (FIR) at Shadman police station accusing Ali Adnan, an assistant accounts officer at the hospital, and an armed accomplice of abducting her at gunpoint from the government hospital on Aug. 21 and taking her to a house in Lahore where Adnan’s accomplice filmed the rape. |
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Pakistani Muslims Convicted for Beating Christian to Death
Court gives life sentences to three men who killed merchant for refusing to convert to Islam. By Jeff M. Sellers July 22 MPBS24/7 (A CDN News) – Three Muslims convicted of killing a Christian in Pakistan’s Punjab Province for refusing to convert to Islam last year have been given life sentences, according to attorneys for the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) in Pakistan. |
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Pakistan’s Christian Sanitation Workers Swept into Societal Gutter
‘Sweeper’ leader faces suspension, criminal charges; for others, disease, death – and murder. The following news analysis was written by Asif Aqeel, director of the Community Development Initiative, a human rights group affiliated with the European Centre for Law and Justice. |
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Pakistani Woman Appeals Death Sentence for 'Blasphemy'
LAHORE, Pakistan, Nov. 13 2010. MPBS24/7 A CDN Report – Attorneys for a Christian mother of five sentenced to death by hanging for allegedly speaking ill of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, have filed an appeal of the verdict, they said. Bowing to pressure from Muslim extremists in Pakistan, according to the Christian woman’s husband and rights groups, a district court judge handed down the stunning sentence to Asia Noreen on Monday (Nov. 8). Additional District and Sessions Judge Naveed Ahmed Chaudhary of Nankana Sahib district delivered the verdict under Pakistan’s controversial “blasphemy” statute, the kind of law that a resolution before the United Nations condemning “defamation of religions” would make legitimate internationally. |
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Pakistani Muslims Beat Elderly Christian Couple Unconscious
Summary: SARGODHA, Pakistan, October 21 MPBS24/7 From CDN – An 80-year-old Christian in southern Punjab Province said Muslims beat him and his 75-year-old wife, breaking his arms and legs and her skull, because he refused a prostitute they had offered him. From his hospital bed in Vehari, Emmanuel Masih told Compass by telephone that two powerful Muslim land owners in the area, brothers Muhammad Malik Jutt and Muhammad Khaliq Jutt, accompanied by two other unidentified men, brought a prostitute to his house on Oct. 8. Targeting him as a Christian on the premise that he would not have the social status to fight back legally, the men ordered him to have sex with the woman at his residence in village 489-EB, he said. District Headquarters Hospital Vehari officials confirmed that he suffered broken hip, arm and leg bones in the subsequent attack. The couple was initially rushed to Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Burewala in critical condition, but doctors there turned them away at the behest of the Jutt brothers, according to the couple’s attorney, Rani Bekat. Bekat said the Muslim assailants initially intimidated Fateh Shah police into refraining from filing charges against them, but after intervention by Bekat and Albert Patras, director of human rights group Social Environment Protection, police reluctantly registered a case against the suspects for attempted murder and “assisting to devise a crime.” Station House Officer Mirza Muhammad Jamil of the Fateh Shah police station declined to speak with Compass about the case. |
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Muslim Mob Targets Christian, Family in Murder Case
Summary: SHEIKHUPURA, Pakistan, October 11 MPBS24/7 REPORT FROM CDN – A young Christian has been jailed for nearly eight months and his family was attacked after a Muslim friend framed him for murder, he said. Yassir Masih, 18, has been locked up at Sheikhupura District Jail since his arrest in late February. Masih told Compass that on Feb. 17 his Muslim friend Muhammad Mubashir came to his house late at night and asked him to accompany him on “an urgent piece of work” – which turned out to be accompanying Mubashir to the Pandori village home of Muhammad Imran, who was in love with the same girl as Mubashir. When Imran came to the door, Mubashir shot him dead. A mob formed, and Masih, not wanting to endanger his family, fled; he and Mubashir agreed to leave the village, but Mubashir instead melted back into the mob looking for the killer. As Masih was missing the next day, the village assumed he was the killer, and Mubashir’s father filed murder charges – as well as arms possession charges against Masih’s father and brothers Villagers on Feb. 18 also ransacked and plundered Masih’s home, crops and the home of his late grandfather, beating women and children there. Khalid Gill, chief organizer for Punjab Province of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, said that on Feb. 19 Yassir Masih’s mother, Shamshad Bibi, went to the Narang Mandi police station to file a complaint against the Muslim villagers, to no avail. Narang Mandi police have arrested not only Yassir Masih but his brothers Ashir Masih and Asif Masih, 15 and 23 years old respectively, Gill said. The brothers were interrogated by Criminal Investigation Agency officers and have been kept at an undisclosed location since Feb. 18; Masih’s father is in hiding. |
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MUSLIMS RESUME BUILDING ON CHRISTIAN GRAVEYARD
PAKISTAN September 1 MPBS247 From CDN – Muslims led by a hard-line cleric on Friday (Aug. 27) resumed building on a Christian cemetery in Mandi Bhawaldin, desecrating more graves in spite of a local government order to halt construction, according to the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA). Radical Muslim cleric Mirza Abdul Ghani had built a mosque on the Christian graveyard off New Rasool Road in Mandi Bhawaldin after allegedly occupying the land 16 years ago, when area Christians were too intimidated to object, said Salamat Zia of APMA. The cleric’s alleged desecration of more of the graveyard land around the Masjid Ahle-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat mosque began three months ago, Zia said, with a basement and what appear to be shops completed. On Aug. 6 Zia led a seven-member Christian delegation to meet with area officials, and after inspecting the site, local administrative officers issued directives to stop the illegal encroachments. For a few days construction stopped, Zia said, but last week it began anew. Khalid Gill, chief organizer of APMA in Punjab Province, said that Muslim leaders threatened Christians who objected to the construction. “They threatened that in case Christians protested against the resumption of construction they would also carry out a protest rally against Christians, and Muslim clerics said Christians would be responsible for the consequences,” Gill said. |
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MUSLIM MOB ATTACKS CHRISTIANS IN GUJRAT
PAKISTAN September 27 MPBS24/7 From CDC. A mob of Muslim extremists on Thursday (Sept. 23) shot at and beat dozens of Christians, including one cleared of “blasphemy” charges, in Punjab Province’s Gujrat district, Christian leaders said. The attack on Tariq Gill, exonerated of charges of blaspheming the Quran on Sept. 3, 2009, and on his father Murad Gill, his mother and the other Christian residents was the latest of more than 10 such assaults on the Christian colony of Mohalla Kalupura, Gujrat city, since Sept. 8, the Rev. Suleman Nasri Khan and Bishop Shamas Pervaiz told Compass. About 40 Islamists – some shooting Kalashnikovs and pistols at homes and individuals on the street, others brandishing axes and clubs – beat some of the Christians so badly that they left them for dead, Pastor Khan said. So far, 10 families have been targeted for the attacks. Bishop Pervaiz, central vice-chairman of the Pakistan Interfaith Peace Council, said the mob was led by two members of the National Assembly, Meer Anjum and Farasat Dar, at the behest of a powerful member of the Punjab Assembly named Sheikh Islam. The three Muslim politicians were not immediately available for comment, but the Gujrat superintendent of police investigations, identified only as Hafeez, told Christian leaders they were respectable legislators who were innocent. Bishop Pervaiz said the attackers have threatened to kill him, Pastor Khan and Bishop Yashua John and continue to roam the streets of Mohalla Kalupura looking for Christian residents to kill. The Lorry Adda police station house officer (SHO), inspector Riaz Qaddar, has stated publicly that “no stone would be left unturned” to apprehend the gunmen, but the Christian leaders said he has refused to act. “The SHO flatly denied indicting the Muslim mob and especially the Muslim legislators,” Pastor Khan said |
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MUSLIM MOB ATTACKS CHRISTIANS IN GUJRAT
PAKISTAN September 27 MPBS24/7 REPORT From CDC – A mob of Muslim extremists on Thursday (Sept. 23) shot at and beat dozens of Christians, including one cleared of “blasphemy” charges, in Punjab Province’s Gujrat district, Christian leaders said. The attack on Tariq Gill, exonerated of charges of blaspheming the Quran on Sept. 3, 2009, and on his father Murad Gill, his mother and the other Christian residents was the latest of more than 10 such assaults on the Christian colony of Mohalla Kalupura, Gujrat city, since Sept. 8, the Rev. Suleman Nasri Khan and Bishop Shamas Pervaiz told Compass. About 40 Islamists – some shooting Kalashnikovs and pistols at homes and individuals on the street, others brandishing axes and clubs – beat some of the Christians so badly that they left them for dead, Pastor Khan said. So far, 10 families have been targeted for the attacks. Bishop Pervaiz, central vice-chairman of the Pakistan Interfaith Peace Council, said the mob was led by two members of the National Assembly, Meer Anjum and Farasat Dar, at the behest of a powerful member of the Punjab Assembly named Sheikh Islam. The three Muslim politicians were not immediately available for comment, but the Gujrat superintendent of police investigations, identified only as Hafeez, told Christian leaders they were respectable legislators who were innocent. Bishop Pervaiz said the attackers have threatened to kill him, Pastor Khan and Bishop Yashua John and continue to roam the streets of Mohalla Kalupura looking for Christian residents to kill. The Lorry Adda police station house officer (SHO), inspector Riaz Qaddar, has stated publicly that “no stone would be left unturned” to apprehend the gunmen, but the Christian leaders said he has refused to act. “The SHO flatly denied indicting the Muslim mob and especially the Muslim legislators,” Pastor Khan said |
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Muslims Resume Building on Christian Graveyard in Pakistan
Hard-line cleric defies local officials’ order to stop construction. SARGODHA, Pakistan, September 1 MPBS24/7 REPORT From(CDN) — Muslims led by a hard-line cleric on Friday (Aug. 27) resumed building on a Christian cemetery in Mandi Bhawaldin, desecrating more graves in spite of a local government order to halt construction, according to the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA). |
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Pakistani Taliban Kills Three Foreign Christian Aid Workers
An army spokesman said security has been increased since the Taliban killed three Christian relief workers providing aid to victims of flooding in Pakistan. Kidnapped relief workers had come to provide aid to victims of massive flooding. |
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‘Blasphemy’ Threats Send Pakistani Worker, Couple into Hiding
Pretexts for filing charges of blaspheming Muhammad, Quran are easy to find. BAHAWALNAGAR, Pakistan, August 24 MPBS24/7 REPORT From(CDN) — Threats of “blasphemy” charges in two provinces in Pakistan have sent a Christian cleaning worker and a young inter-faith couple into hiding. |
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Rapes of Christian Girls in Pakistan Reflect Hidden Trend
Sexual assault by Muslim extremists is commonplace but rarely reported. FAROOQABAD, Pakistan, August 16 MPBS24/7 REPORT From(CDN) — The vulnerability of Christian girls to sexual assault in Pakistani society emerged again last month as a Muslim landowner allegedly targeted a 16-year-old and a gang of madrassa (Islamic school) students allegedly abused a 12-year-old in Punjab Province. |
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Pakistani Court Acquits Christian Woman of ‘Blasphemy’
Authorities previously pressured her into false confession. GUJRANWALA, Pakistan, August 12 MPBS24/7 REPORT From(CDN) — Yesterday a court here exonerated a Christian woman of “blasphemy” charges after authorities had pressured her into making a false confession, according to the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS). |
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Christians Narrowly Escape Flying Bullets in Pakistan
Saleem Masih (left) and John Masih were arrested on false charges of murder in Gujrat; they were released after an investigation indicated police had been bribed. Evangelistic team cheats death; separately, stray gunshot leads to false charges. |
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