Christian girl rebuffs advance of Muslims in car, is run down and killed
LAHORE, Pakistan (Christian Examiner) – A 17-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan was killed by a group of Muslim men because she spurned their sexual advances, the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) has reported.
According to the report, the girl named Kiran and two friends, Shamroza and Sumble, 18 and 20, respectively, were walking home to their Christian community after work when they were approached by four Muslim men in a car.
The men, apparently intoxicated, told the girls to get into the car "for a ride and some fun," BPCA reported.
The girls then told the men they were Christians and rebuffed their advances. When the men became angry, the girls ran. According to the survivors, one of the men then shouted at the girls:
"How dare you run away from us! Christian girls are only meant for one thing – the pleasure of Muslim men."
The men then ran the girls down in their car. Shamroza and Sumble were thrown clear of the car and suffered broken bones, but Kiran hit the windshield of the car. She remained there while the men drove at a high rate of speed. They then slammed on the brakes and the girl was thrown into the air.
She died when her head hit the ground.
To add insult to injury and death, according to BPCA, Pakistani police forced the family to pay a bribe before making an official report of the assault and murder.
Naveed Aziz, BPCA's representative in the area, said the survivors are "grateful to God for saving them but have been inconsolable at the loss of a close friend. Other girls in the local area are now too scared to travel at night and are being accompanied by the men in their families. The community wants justice for poor Kiran and seeks an end to the targeting of young Christian girls."
Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the BPCA, said from London that the poor are frequently oppressed by the rich in Pakistan and Christians are often persecuted.
"Violence against Christians is rarely investigated and highly unlikely to be met with justice. The usual pattern in these cases is for Christians to pay a bribe to encourage police to complete their duty of registering an investigation, and for the criminals to pay further bribes for the police to spoil the investigation."
Chowdhry said the world is ignoring the treatment of Christian women in Pakistan, where an average of two women a day disappear and are raped, sold into sexual slavery, or forced to marry Muslim men.
"Evidence exists that some rogue imams declare that such acts of conversion through violence are rewarded in heaven, what a terrifying thought," Chowdhry said.
English-language newspapers in Pakistan did not report the incident, but they seldom do when Christians are involved. Similar crimes have also gone unreported by the Pakistani media.
In October 2015, a Christian woman named Sonia Bibi was set on fire by a mob after refusing a marriage proposal from a Muslim man – her former boyfriend.
In November 2014, a Christian couple was attacked by a Muslim mob after they were accused of having burned pages from Quran. After the mob broke their legs, they were thrown into a brick kiln. When the woman's clothes would not burn, the mob wrapped her in cotton and threw her back into the fire. She was four months pregnant at the time. The crowd also forced the couple's children to watch.
Persecution in Pakistan is also often carried out under the imprimatur of national improvement. In December, a Muslim news source reported Islamabad's Capital Development Authority (CDA) planned to demolish "Christian slums" to "protect the beauty of Islam."
The plan was halted by the country's Supreme Court that said every Pakistani – even Christians – deserved shelter. The court ordered the CDA to provide written justification for the removal of the houses.
"Most of the [slums] are under the occupation of the Christian community," the CDA replied.
The BPCA, which reported the killing of Kiran, was established after Islamists in the city of Gojra rioted and killed nine people after accusing a Christian couple of using pages from the Quran as confetti at their wedding.