Pakistan: Abduction, conversion, and forced marriage of girls from religious minorities

Women in Pakistan are regarded as possessions by both known and unidentified males. Whether it’s the father, brother, son, husband, male members of the extended family, clan, or a stranger. Men have always viewed women to be inferior and a commodity. Many women live in fear, their lives secured in exchange for compliance and subordination to norms and traditions of the patriarchal society. In Pakistan, this culture grants men with legitimacy to dominate women, who are deemed inferior and subordinate in every facet of life.

As published in April, 2024 by The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is the leading United Nations, UN experts stated, “Christian and Hindu girls remain particularly vulnerable to forced religious conversion, abduction, trafficking, child, early and forced marriage, domestic servitude and sexual violence…The exposure of young women and girls belonging to religious minority communities to such heinous human rights violations and the impunity of such crimes can no longer be tolerated or justified.”

Among the girls involved, 77 per cent are younger than 18 years old, and around 18 per cent are younger than 14. The age of 9 per cent of the girls was uncertain. Consequently, this breaches the Child Marriage Restraint Acts in three provinces, particularly in Sindh, where the minimum age for marriage is 18 years.

In cases of forced conversions, violence — emotional, physical, and/or psychological — is used by the abductors towards these helpless girls. Victims are usually abducted and submitted to intimidation or threats and coerced to select between bearing abuse and converting to Islam. Pakistan has recently witnessed a large number of cases of abductions and forced conversions and subsequent marriages of girls from minority communities. However, finding reliable data on this issue is difficult. According to a US-based Sindhi foundation, every year over 1,000 young Sindhi Hindu girls between the ages of 12 and 28 are abducted and then forcibly converted to Islam and married.

Few such unfortunate incidents are:

On April 4, 2024, 13-year-old Christian girl, Sania Ameen, was abducted near her home in Anjotar village in Punjab, Pakistan. The girl’s father, Ameen Masih, said his daughter was forcibly taken by a local man, Saif Ali and his two accomplices while on her way to shop for groceries for the family.

On March 11, a minor Christian girl Muskan was abducted from her home in Tando Ghulam Ali town in Badin District, Sindh Province. She was later forcefully wedded by Arsalan Ali, her abductor.

As reported on January 22, 2024, a married Hindu girl abducted from Sindh province was abducted by Ibrahim Mangrio, Punho Mangrio and their accomplice. She said they threatened her and told her to convert to Islam, but when she refused, she was raped for three days. The victim said she returned home after managing to escape her abductors.

As reported on January 4, 2024, a minor Hindu girl, Beena Kolhi was abducted in Badin, Sindh. Later, her abductor, named Wahid Lagati forcibly converted her to Islam and married her in Niqah.

Meanwhile, in May, 2024, Senator Danesh Kumar Palyani said in the Parliament: “The daughters of Hindus are not a booty that someone should forcibly change their religion, Hindu girls are being forcibly converted to religion in Sindh. It has been two years since innocent Priya Kumari was abducted. The government does not take action against these influential people. …A few dirty eggs and robbers have defamed our beloved motherland Pakistan. The law/Constitution of Pakistan does not allow forced religious conversion and neither does the Holy Quran,”

Around a decade back, a 2015 report by the South Asia Partnership Pakistan in collaboration with Aurat Foundation found that at least 1,000 girls are forcibly converted to Islam every year and most conversions take place in the Thar region, particularly in the districts of Ghotki, Tharparkar, Mirpur Khas, Umerkot, Sanghar, and Jacobabad. The report added that a nexus of wealthy landlords, extremist religious organisations, weak local courts and indifferent administrations works together to allow the perpetration of this forced arrangement.

This issue affects women differently than men. Women are victims of forced conversion and subsequent forced marriage. It is not only related to democratic rights, but it is also connected to discriminations based on class and gender, since in a feudal and patriarchal society of Pakistan, women are more vulnerable to forced conversion. They are financially poorer, are thought to be subordinate to men and in many cases, their identification documents are not prepared. Birth registration of girls are disproportionately lesser to that of boys. Similarly, with the Identity Registration of girls and boys, there is considerable disparity. Maybe, the girls are not considered important enough or employable members of a household. Therefore, the necessity of getting identification documents hardly comes across.

Mostly, acts of forced conversion have institutional support and legitimacy. If the women report to state authorities regarding any form of coercion, their reports are disregarded. They are not done randomly. It’s either the landlord, religious seminary or shrine, working in tandem with local police, judiciary and administration to speed-up the process of abduction, forced conversion and marriage. They are safeguarded by the government, which is afraid of upsetting them in the tense, often unstable environment of Pakistani politics, in which an attack on a religious figure is seen as an attack on Islam and responsible to draw out extremists.

“This appears to be a systematic, organised trend and it needs to be seen in the broader context of the coercion of vulnerable girls and young women from communities that are already marginalized by their faith, class and socioeconomic status,” said Mehdi Hasan, Chairperson of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). He further stated, “The ugly reality of forced conversions is that they are not seen as a crime, much less as a problem that should concern ‘mainstream’ (Muslim) Pakistan.”

Consecutive Pakistani governments did not criminalise forced conversions to safeguard religious minorities from such practices, owing primarily to pressure from Islamic groups. Previous attempts to implement comprehensive legislation have met with opposition, with measures in 2016 and 2019 being defeated. The Protection of Rights of Minorities Bill, 2020, which talked about forced conversion, was also rejected by the Standing Committee on Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony on September 24, 2020. These bills planned measures such as setting an age limit of 18 for conversions, ensuring due process, and imposing jail terms for coercion in faith conversion. Also, in October 2021, a parliamentary committee sparred over a proposed bill that would have forbidden forced conversions by proposing up to 10 years of imprisonment.

Nevertheless, the religious clerics, outwardly, are of the opinion that hardly any case of forced religious conversion occurs in Pakistan. But the fact is that religious minorities are facing problems due to the influence of religious might in the country. A religious might, which is at times marginal, but regrettably significant. Unfortunately, on matters of religious issues, the attitude of the Pakistani government is apologetic, causing severe suffering and trauma for citizens belonging to minority communities and other marginal sections.

The writer is Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi