KHANEWAL, Pakistan (Compass Direct News) – The head of a Muslim village last week ordered 250 Christian families to leave their homes in Khanewal district, Punjab Province, local residents said.
Abdul Sattar Khan, head of village No. 123/10R, Katcha Khoh, and other area Muslim residents ordered the expulsions after Christian residents objected too strenuously to sexual assaults by Muslims on Christian girls and women, said a locally elected Christian official, Emmanuel Masih.
Most of the village’s Christian men work in the fields of Muslim land owners, while most of the Christian women and girls work as servants in the homes of Muslim families, said Rasheed Masih, a Christian in the village who added that the impoverished Christians were living in appalling conditions.
The Muslim employers have used their positions of power to routinely sexually assault the Christian women and girls, whose complaints grew so shrill that four Christian men – Emmanuel Masih, Rasheed Masih, his younger brother Shehzad Anjum and Yousaf Masih Khokhar – sternly confronted the Muslims, only to be told that all Christians were to leave the village at once.
“The Muslim villagers came to us with the expulsion order only after Christian women and girls raised a hue and cry when they became totally exasperated because they were sexually attacked or forced to commit adultery by Muslims on a daily basis,” said Khokhar, a Christian political leader.
Khokhar said the unanimous decision to compel the Christians to leave their homes and relocate them was possible because the Christians were completely subject to the Muslims’ power.
“The Muslims had been telling the Christian women and girls that if they denied them sex, they would kick them out of their native village,” Emmanuel Masih added.
Christians created the colony when they began settling in the area in about 1950, said Anjum. Since then the migration of Muslims to the area has left the Christians a minority among the 6,000 residents of the village, said Emmanuel Masih.
“There is no church building or any worship place for Christians, and neither is there any burial place for Christians,” Emmanuel Masih said.
He said that the Rev. Pervez Qaiser of village No. 231, the Rev. Frank Masih of village No. 133 and the Rev. Sharif Masih of village No. 36, Mian Channu, have been visiting the village on Sundays to lead services at the houses of the Christian villagers, who open their homes by turns.
Asked why they didn’t contact local Katcha Khoh police for help, Emmanuel Masih and Khokhar said that filing a complaint against Muslim village head Khan and other Muslims would only result in police registering false charges against them under Pakistan’s notorious “blasphemy” statutes.
“They might arrest us,” Khokhar said, “and the situation would be worse for the Christian villagers who are already living a deplorably pathetic life under the shadow of fear and death, as they [the Muslims] would not be in police lock-up or would be out on bail, due to their riches and influence, very soon.”
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JMC Ministries Response
When you read the headline of this story what first comes to your mind?
What did come to our minds first was this is very much like what happened to the Jews during Hitlers Reign. They were forced out of their homes. Lived in deplorable conditions and was forced to work for the Nazi's and endured beatings, rapes and other horrible kinds of abuse.
This is very similar to what is happening to these Christians in Pakistan. How did it become a Crime to just believe in something, because that is basically how these people are being treated...like criminals.
It's frightening how far society has come in some parts of the world that if you just believe something that someone else doesn't you will be forced out of your homes, raped, and beaten.
We must pray for our brothers and sisters who are being persecuted for just believing in Jesus and also those here in America that are facing persecution as well.
The signs are everywhere that we are living in the end times nearly everyday a prophecy from the bible about the end of times from Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew, and Revelation is being fulfilled. We must be ready to go when Jesus comes back to take us home. We must endure to the end and not lose faith.
