Addressing an event at the UK parliament on 16 June, Christian Solidarity International’s director for public advocacy, Joel Veldkamp, shared the story of Neha Faqir, an 18-year-old Pakistani woman who was recently abducted and apparently forcibly converted to Islam.
CSI has been providing legal support for Neha’s family since her disappearance on 24 March. On 9 June, a Pakistani court refused to release Neha to her family, or even to let her family speak with her.
“In this case,” Veldkamp told the hearing, “the miscarriage of justice is so brazen that our partners in Pakistan have asked us to bring Neha’s case to the attention of the international community.”
“We need to bring Neha home,” he said.
The event, entitled “Grooming, coerced marriage and conversion of minority women: Global incidence and evidence”, was sponsored by David, Lord Alton, who also chaired the event. It was organised by the Institute of Development Studies, in cooperation with the All-Parliamentary Group on Minorities in Pakistan and Refcemi, the Coptic Orthodox Office for Advocacy and Public Policy.
Vanished, then converted to Islam
As Veldkamp told the hearing, on 24 March, Neha’s mother accompanied her to her course in a local sewing centre. Her family had enrolled her there so that she could gain valuable skills and a measure of economic independence. That evening, she did not return.
After searching for her for six days, her family reported her missing to the police on 30 March. The police originally refused to file a missing person’s report, but finally did so two days later, after a lawyer supported by CSI intervened on the family’s behalf.
The lawyer filed a petition on behalf of the family, compelling the police to search for Neha. They eventually found her in a madrassa in Lahore called Kafalat Centre al-Hassan. She had been legally converted to Islam on 26 March, and taken the Muslim name “Ayesha” – despite never having shown any previous interest in converting.
The family’s lawyer then filed a habeas petition, asking the authorities for a hearing where Neha’s rights could be defended.
A counter-petition filed by a lawyer named Muhammad Shafique Awan on 4 April claimed that Neha had embraced Islam freely, “after doing her research on the issue”. This claim is made all the more implausible by the fact that, like many lower-class Christian women in Pakistan, Neha is illiterate. On her official conversion documents, she affixed her thumbprint instead of signing her name.
On 9 June, Neha arrived at the Lahore High Court in the company of Muslim clergy, dressed in Islamic garb, her head, face, and the rest of her body covered in a black robe.
In court, Judge Muhammad Tariq Nadeem stunned the family by dismissing their petition outright. Despite the alarming circumstances of her disappearance and sudden conversion, the judge took no steps to ascertain whether Neha felt free to speak. He simply asked her, in open court, where she wanted to go. She replied, “Not with my parents.”
Neha’s parents desperately asked the judge to speak with her alone for 10 minutes. The judge refused.
Victims of abducted and forced conversion in Pakistan are often threatened with harm to them and their family members, if they try to return to their family.
A history of anti-Christian violence
Neha’s family are bonded labourers working at a brick kiln in Kot Radha Kishan, near Lahore in Punjab province.
Families in this system typically owe a debt to the kiln owner, often from loans taken for medical or emergency expenses. The structure of wages and interest makes repayment nearly impossible. It is standard practice to have children working alongside bonded parents to increase the chances of paying off the debt. Nevertheless, the cycle frequently passes from one generation to the next.
Neha’s parents had enrolled her at the sewing centre where she disappeared, in the hope of giving her skills that would allow her to escape working in the brick kiln.
This form of debt slavery affects Christians in particular. Christians account for roughly two percent of the Pakistan’s 240 million people, but an astonishing 60 percent of bonded brick kiln workers in Punjab. Christian families are often prevented from attending church by Muslim brick kiln owners, who sometimes offer to forgive their debts if they convert to Islam. CSI works to liberate particularly needy families from the brick kilns.
Kot Radha Kishan, the area where the family lives, carries its own history of violence against Christians.
In November 2014, a Christian couple, Shahzad Masih and his pregnant wife Shama Bibi, were attacked and burned alive in a brick kiln in a village near Kot Radha Kishan after being accused of blasphemy.
