What would you do if your daughter went to school one morning and never came home? And when they finally found her, the judge told her she couldn’t even talk for 10 minutes?
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That’s not a hypothesis. That’s what’s happening to the family of Neha, an 18-year-old Christian girl living in Pakistan.
Neha’s family works in brick kilns, part of a generational system of debt slavery that Christian Solidarity International (CSI)’s Joel Feldkamp says unfairly confines Christians in Pakistan. Christians make up only about 2% of Pakistan’s population, but they make up about 60% of the country’s brick kiln workforce.
After her parents scraped together enough money, Neha enrolled in a local sewing course. It was a small but hopeful step toward a better future. She only worked there for a short time and one day she left for work and never came back.
“There was no warning, no communication, nothing,” Feldkamp told CBN. “She just disappears.”
When the family went to the police, they were met with indifference. CSI intervened and secured a lawyer, who filed a habeas petition. From then on, the situation became even more disturbing. Neha was found at an Islamic school in Lahore. She had legally converted to Islam just two days after her disappearance.
The conversion document claimed that Neha had done her own “research” and freely chose to change her religion. There’s one problem. Neha is illiterate.
The case went to court. Neha was brought to court wearing Islamic clothing from head to toe. Her family lived in the same building. The judge sentenced them immediately. When they begged to speak with their daughter for just 10 minutes, the judge said no.
In an interview on CBN’s Quick Start Podcast, Feldkamp said the bias in these courts runs deep. “Many of these judges are simply Muslim supremacists,” he says. “They think Christians are dirty. They think all Christians should convert to Islam, voluntarily or not.” He also noted that extremist groups have killed lawyers and judges who ruled in favor of Christians, and that this fear shapes every decision made in the courts.
And Neha’s case is by no means unique. Such forced conversions occur to more than 1,000 Christian and Hindu women each year in Pakistan.
CSI is currently working with US and UK government officials, including Lord David Alton of the House of Lords, who is writing a letter on her behalf, to draw international attention to Neha’s case. They are also looking for ways to involve members of Congress.
“We’re trying to get the Pakistani government to do the right thing,” Feldkamp said.
If you would like to help, please visit csi-usa.org for more information. The organization supports families financially through court proceedings, provides legal assistance to Christians facing blasphemy charges, and works to free families from the brick kiln system once and for all.
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