wife because he feared she would convert them, a Christian rights group confirmed.
Accusing Maria Samar John of trying to convert the children to Christianity, Abdul Ghaffar kidnapped his then 5-year-old son, Joshua, and 3-year-old daughter, Miriam, during a supervised parental visit within the Lahore Family Court premises on September 13, 2004.
The children were expected to be recovered shortly, said Open Doors, a Christian rights group involved in the case. "Christians have been praying for John for the last two years," the group added from its headquarters in the Netherlands in a statement to BosNewsLife.
The breakthrough came after Lahore’s Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), which had sheltered John from her apparently abusive husband since 2000, managed to trace Ghaffar’s telephone number.
After his arrest, Ghaffar told police that a religious dispute was at the heart of the custody fight. "Maria was trying to convert my children to Christianity, so I abducted them," he was quoted as saying.
GROUPS CONCERNED
Human rights groups have increasingly expressed concern about Muslim pressure on Christian Pakistani children, some of whom are eventually ending up as slaves. CLAAS said that the government has not done enough to avoid abductions and even the sale of Christian children used as a source of income for Islamic militants operating in Pakistan.
CLAAS has being involved in freeing children "living under the bondage of their cruel landlords," the group said in a statement monitored by BosNewsLife. CLAAS said it recently discovered 100 poor Christians families living among powerful Muslim families working as slaves in the village of Chawantain in Pakistan’s Jalal pur Chattach region.
Zubaida and her family were among those working for a Muslim landlord for last the 20 years in the village, CLAAS said. "Zubaida’s husband could not work because he is ill with uberculosis and the family had to borrow a lot of money from the landlord for his treatment. Zubaida and her sons had to work for the landlord without getting paid because of the big loan they had taken. The family was living hand to mouth. The landlord was demanding the money and making the family work hard," the group added.
LOSING HAND
A son of Zudaida allegedly lost his hand because his employer put his hand in the machine which was used too chop fodder for animals as a punishment for arriving late. “Mussarat, Zubaida eldest daughter who is married, found how her brothers were being tortured because of the debt they have to pay. She tried to sell her kidney to be able to pay the debt of her brothers" but that was apparently not successful, CLAAS added.
"Zubaida came to the CLAAS office in Pakistan and urged her family be freed from the bondage of cruel landlords. She said that in spite of their best effort they have not been able to pay back the debt."
CLAAS immediately took action and recovered Zubaida’s sons Tariq Masih, Arif Masih, Babar Masih, Sajad Masih, Shahbaz Masih, Iqbal Masih, Zafar Masih and her husband Khan Masih through the session court bailiff on February 22, 2006.
"The happiness on the faces of every member of the family could be seen clearly as they were being freed and this was the freedom they had experienced for the first time in their lives." However the group stressed that there "are many more families still under the bondage of slavery," and it was "struggling for the freedom for them too." (With reporting by BosNewsLife Special Correspondent Eric Leijenaar, BosNewsLife Research and reports from Pakistan).
