WUNRN
PAKISTAN - HINDU GIRLS ABDUCTED
& FORCED INTO MUSLIM MARRIAGES
KARACHI, 27 February 2012 (IRIN) - Sixteen-year-old Ameena
Ahmed*, now living in the town of Rahim Yar Khan in Pakistan’s Punjab Province,
does not always respond when her mother-in-law calls out to her.
“Even after a year of `marriage’ I am not used to my new name. I was called
Radha before,” she told IRIN on a rare occasion when she was allowed to go to
the corner shop on her own to buy vegetables.
Ameena, or Radha as she still calls herself, was abducted from Karachi about 13
months ago by a group of young men who offered her ice-cream and a ride in
their car. Before she knew what was happening, she was dragged into a larger
van, and driven to an area she did not know.
She was then pressured into signing forms which she later found meant she was
married to Ahmed Salim, 25; she was converted to a Muslim after being asked to
recite some verses in front of a cleric. She was obliged to wear a veil. Seven
months ago, Ameena, who has not seen her parents or three siblings since then
and “misses them a lot”, moved with her new family to southern Punjab.
"The abduction and kidnapping of Hindu girls is becoming more and more
common," Amarnath Motumal, a lawyer and leader of Karachi’s Hindu
community, told IRIN. “This trend has been growing over the past four or five
years, and it is getting worse day by day.”
He said there were at least 15-20 forced abductions and conversions of young
girls from Karachi each month, mainly from the multi-ethnic Lyari area. The
fact that more and more people were moving to Karachi from the interior of
Sindh Province added to the dangers, as there were now more Hindus in Karachi,
he said.
“They come to search for better schooling, for work and to escape growing
extremism,” said Motumal who believes Muslim religious schools are involved in
the conversion business.
“Hindus are non-believers. They believe in many gods, not one, and are
heretics. So they should be converted,” said Abdul Mannan, 20, a Muslim
student. He said he would be willing to marry a Hindu girl, if asked to by his
teachers, “because conversions brought big rewards from Allah [God]. But later
I will marry a `real’ Muslim girl as my second wife,” he said.
According to local law, a Muslim man can take more than one wife, but rights activists argue that the law
infringes the rights of women and needs to be altered.
Motumal says Hindu organizations are concerned only with the “forced
conversion” of girls under 18. “Adult women are of course free to choose,” he
said.
“Lured away”
Sunil Sushmt, 40, who lives in a village close to the city of Mirpurkhas in
central Sindh Province, said his 14-year-old daughter was “lured away” by an
older neighbour and, her parents believe, forcibly converted after marriage to
a Muslim. “She was a child. What choice did she have?” her father asked. He
said her mother still cries for her “almost daily” a year after the event.
Sushmat is also concerned about how his daughter is being treated. “We know
many converts are treated like slaves, not wives,” he said.
According to official figures, Hindus based mainly in Sindh make up 2 percent
of Pakistan’s total population of 165 million. “We believe this figure could be
higher,” Motumal said.
According to media reports, a growing number of Hindus have been fleeing
Pakistan, mainly for neighbouring India. The kidnapping of girls and other
forms of persecution is a factor in this, according to those who have decided
not to stay in the country any longer.
“My family has lived in Sindh for generations,” Parvati Devi, 70, told IRIN.
“But now I worry for the future of my granddaughters and their children. Maybe
we too should leave,” she said. “The entire family is seriously considering
this.”