Pakistan Christian Family Hiding Amid Death Threats

ICC Note: Sadiq Masih Zafar, a Christian father, said that his family is hiding after Islamic militants tried to abduct and kill one of his daughters because they refuse to convert to Islam, BosNewsLife reports. “Religious extremists brutally carry on their act without any problem as they don’t fear the law. The law enforcing agencies are helpless against them making the religious minorities vulnerable,” he said.
By Xavier P. William
4/26/2013 Pakistan (BosNewsLife) – A Christian father said Friday, April 26, his family is hiding in the Pakistani city of Lahore after Islamic militants tried to abduct and kill one of his daughters because they refuse to convert to Islam.
Sadiq Masih Zafar told BosNewsLife that the threats come nearly a decade after his family was forced to flee the nearby city of Muridke, where another daughter was nearly strangled to death in 2004 because of their church work.
He said the problems began when the Lahore Church Council appointed him to supervise the construction of a local church building. “Religious extremists tried to pressurize and stop the construction and took over the church land,” he recalled.
“They demolished the construction and brutally assaulted” him, family members and even workers, Zafar said. Soon after, “A mosque was constructed near the church land “and announcements were made that if the church is constructed, they would burn it,” he added.
The “extremists”, he claimed, also pressured him and his family to convert to Islam. He recalled that his daughter Sarwat Naheed was returning home in 2004 from the city of Faisalabad, when she was “abducted by masked men.”
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