a Muslim couple who also tortured them, an official involved in the rescue operation said.
Shahbaz Bhatti, the chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) told BosNewsLife Thursday, December 7, that Muslim house owner Muhammad Ikram and his wife "tortured and illegally detained" 40-year-old Nareen Pervaiz and her daughter Razia Pervaiz, 13, in the city of Sialkot in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
APMA, an organization supporting religious minorities in Pakistan, discovered the detained Christians after they disappeared earlier this year, he said. The problems began when Nasreen Pervaiz’s husband Pervaiz Masih, lost his a poultry farm business because bird flu "affected all the birds," Bhatti said. "He became seriously ill," and eventually died in September this year.
In the period leading up to his death, his wife began working as a house maid to financially support the impoverished family. She was soon joined by her young daughter, the APMA official explained.
However house owner Muhammad Ikram soon discovered they were Christians and he and his wife to physically torture them and also pulled out chains with the Cross sign from their necks, throwing it in the dust bin, Bhatti alleged.
EMBRACING ISLAM
"Both mother and daughter were asked to change their Christian faith and embrace Islam. On refusal, they were tortured and often brutally beaten…When they wanted to leave the job, they were forcibly detained in the basement of the house and fasten with chains at night so they should not flee away," said the APMA leader, adding that they were not allowed
to pray.
"The house owner wanted to call a Muslim clergyman, or Mulvi, to perform a conversion, on which Nasreen and her daughter said, ‘We can die but will not change our religion’," he
quoted them as saying.
"On the continuous refusal, Mr. Muhammad Ikram and his wife Sabiha Jabeen forcibly cut the hair of Nasreen and laid her down on the floor and physically tortured her with severe beatings with a gas pipe, while putting cold water on her. They even called one woman who posed herself as a police constable and threatened Mrs. Nasreen and her daughter Razia that they will kill the family if they will not change their religion or try to run away."
OTHER INCIDENTS
Other alleged torture incidents included threats to inject acid with syringe into their bodies. The eldest daughter of the family Sheeba Pervaiz managed to contact APMA. After the Lahore High Court apparently approved a rescue plan November 29 and the two Christians have since been freed, Bhatti explained.
APMA said the two Christians have been brought to a temporary shelter. Over 100 impoverished Christian women and girls, who have been persecuted for their faith, are already supported by the organization in several parts of the country in ‘Skill Development Centers,’ the group has said.
The women are learning skills aimed at earning a "dignified living," Bhatti told BosNewsLife. It comes amid concern that a growing number of Christian women in have become targets of abuse, including torture and rape, across Pakistan, a mainly Muslim nation. (With BosNewsLife Research and reports from Pakistan).
