124 including 81 Hindu women forcefully converted to Islam in the year 2022 in Pakistan, 58% were minors

Case ID : 242de83 | Location : Pakistan | Date of Incident : Thu, 30 March, 2023

Case ID : 242de83

Pakistan

30 March, 2023

124 including 81 Hindu women forcefully converted to Islam in the year 2022 in Pakistan, 58% were minors

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

A Human Rights Observer 2023 fact sheet revealed that in the year 2022, as many as 124 women belonging to minority communities were forcefully converted to Islam in Pakistan. Out of this, 81 were Hindu, 42 were Christian and one was Sikh. Further, the fact sheet revealed that 23 per cent of girls were below 14 years of age, 36 per cent of them were between the age of 14 and 18 years, and only 12 per cent of the victims were adults, while the age of 28 per cent of the victims was not reported.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. In this subcategory, we would only include cases where the victim was harassed, threatened or coerced to convert. Cases where attempts were made to convert but the victim resisted would be documented in another sub-category. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. In this case, though the method employed to convert the Hindu women to Islam in Pakistan is not explicitly mentioned, the sub-category under which we have put this case is 'harassment, threats, coercion for conversion' under the prime category of Predatory Proselytisation. This is because rampant violations of the rights of religious and other minorities are reported from Islamic countries on a daily basis. Hindus and other religious minorities have long been the target of atrocities and discrimination in Pakistan albeit with State support. Unlike Muslims – the so-called minorities – in India, these Hindus in Pakistan never enjoyed any normal life let alone special rights and privileges. Hindus in Pakistan live in perpetual fear of persecution at the hands of the Muslim majority. According to research, over 14,000 cases of gang rape, kidnapping, and religious conversion of Hindu girls have surfaced in the last 12 years. Since the most common tactic employed to convert Hindus in Pakistan is harassment, threat and coercion, we have proceeded to record the case in the Hindu hate tracker under this sub-category.