Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani confirmed that negotiators managed to convince the captors to release the believers, hours after they were kidnapped late Saturday, June 21, while praying in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
A Christian legislator, speaking on condition of anonymity, told BosNewsLife that the Christians were taken from a house church in the city Danish Abad suburb near Peshawar University .
News reports said an unknown "religious organisation" operating in Bara area of the semi-autonomous Khyber tribal district handed over the hostages to government representatives early Sunday, June 22, after successful negotiations. One of the freed Christians described the hostage takers only as "bearded men carrying assault rifles," news reports said. No more details were immediately available.
ACT CONDEMNED
"We condemn this act and, despite the recovery of the abductees, an enquiry will be held to uncover the faces behind the incident," Prime Minister Gilani said in reported remarks.
Peshawar is the capital of NWFP bordering Afghanistan, where militants are trying to pressure the government for the enforcement of Taliban-style Islamic rule. In recent years, church officials say, there has been growing violence specifically targeting Christians in the area.
"Religious hostility against religious minorities, especially against Christians has escalated these days," added a well-informed Christian politician in an interview with BosNewsLife, speaking on condition of anonymity.
ATTACKS INCREASE
He said incidents of bomb attacks on video shops by Islamic elements also increased in NWFP, where watching video movies is seen as anti-Islamic by radical clerics.
This weekend’s brief kidnapping came after last year Islamic extremists threatened in letters to kill or kidnap Christians in the province unless they convert to Islam or leave the region, BosNewsLife established.
Local authorities have said that accepting ‘Sharia’. Or Islamic, law may be the only way to restore peace in NWFP, a suggestion that has added to concerns within the province’s minority Christians.
(Jawad Mazhar is a Christian journalist covering and investigating persecution from the most difficulties areas of Pakistan. He even survived at least one suicide attack while covering a major news story for BosNewsLife News Agency. As everyone at BosNewsLife, he currently raises his own financial support to make his ministry possible. Will you help him? Please prayerful consider any donation to: ‘Rays of Development Organization’
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