GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, September 6, 2012 (Toronto Sun): Minority religious communities in Pakistan are living in “fear and terror” of Islamic fundamentalists amid abductions and forced conversions that the government is helpless to stop, the World Council of Churches (WCC) said on Wednesday. A statement from the WCC’s ruling Central Committee declared that Pakistan’s small Hindu and Christian communities were increasingly subject to “persecution and discrimination”, with mounting Islamization of a formerly more secular nation.
“Today a significant number of young women of religious minorities … face violence, including sexual assault, rape, threats and persecution,” said the WCC – an influential global organisation of all Christian faiths except Roman Catholics. These women were “abducted, confined, converted to Islam and forced to marry Muslim men,” while the authorities “seem to be powerless to stop the Islamist fundamentalist forces that are responsible…and are freely operating,” the WCC said. The statement said minority faith leaders had constantly tackled the Pakistani authorities over the situation but they had been ignored. “This lack of protection of religious minorities by the government of Pakistan is unacceptable.”