Edward Leigh: If Pakistan won’t crack down on the kidnapping of young girls, we should cut off aid

24 Nov

Sir Edward Leigh is Member of Parliament for Gainsborough.

On 13th October, in Karachi, Pakistan, 13-year-old Catholic girl Arzoo Raja, was kidnapped in broad daylight by a 44-year-old man called Ali Azhar. Her parents were told she had converted to Islam and decided to marry him.

Her parents went straight to the police and produced a National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) birth certificate showing she is 13. They argued the marriage was invalid in line with the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act, that forbids marriage to anyone under the age of 18.

Yet, on 29th October, the Karachi High Court ruled that she was neither abducted nor had she been forced to marry.

Three days later, after protests and international criticism, the court changed its mind and Arzoo was “recovered” and placed in a women and girls’ shelter. There was a medical examination of Arzoo which found she is “around 14 years of age”. Her abductor is now on judicial remand and Arzoo is still in the shelter.

Unfortunately, cases such as Arzoo’s are not uncommon in Pakistan. In April, another Catholic girl, 14-year-old Maira Shahbaz, was bundled into a car at gunpoint by three men during the lockdown in Madina Town, near Faisalabad.

As with Arzoo, Maira’s mother was told her daughter had married one of the men who abducted her, Mohamad Nakash Tariq, and converted to Islam.

Maira’s family also went to the police with a NADRA birth certificate. This time it showed she was 14. Nakash said she was 19. The case went to court and eventually the Lahore High Court ruled in Mr Nakash’s favour. The marriage was valid. She had “embraced Islam”.

Two weeks after this decision, Maira escaped Nakash and went straight to the police. She told them:

“I found myself at an unknown place where the accused forced me to have a glass of juice that contained some intoxicant. I was semi-conscious at that moment and the accused raped me forcefully and also filmed me naked. When I came to my senses, I started shouting and requesting them to release me…They threatened to murder my whole family. They have also shown me my naked video and pictures which they have taken on their mobile while raping me.”

Maira is now on the run, with extremist mobs going door-to-door looking for her. In their eyes, she is an apostate and they will kill her if they find her. This is why for #RedWednesday this year, Aid to the Church in Need have launched a campaign calling on Maira to be granted asylum to the UK so that she can rebuild her life free of this threat. They have launched a petition which has been signed by over 8,500 people.

Sumera Shafique, her lawyer, said: “Maira’s life is in constant danger because she is condemned as an apostate by her abductor and his supporters. Unless Maira and her family can leave Pakistan they will always be at risk of being killed.”

These are not isolated examples. The Movement for Solidarity and Peace in Pakistan calculate that every year in Pakistan, up to 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls and young women between the ages of 12 and 25 are abducted.

Pakistan is the biggest recipient of UK aid. It is reported that we pay an estimated £383,000 per day in aid to Pakistan. Over 20 years, it adds up to £2.8 billion. In 2019/20 we sent £302 million. In 2018/19 it was £325 million. Should we really send such a large sum of taxpayers’ money to a country where women are treated so poorly? What message are we sending by funding a country that treats its religious minorities so abhorrently?

Cases like Arzoo and Maira’s are endemic in a society that has serious issues with its treatment of women and religious minorities. To be both a Christian and a woman in Pakistan is a double jeopardy. The ostracisation they face on a daily basis puts them in a dangerous position. They are soft targets for predatory and rapacious men. For example, Maira had been forced to drop out of school and work because her family are so poor. That she also has no father around made her more vulnerable.

Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore spoke to ACN about the kidnappings of these girls, condemning it as a “crime”. He said: “Yes [abductions of under-age girls] are happening” and added that “there have been many kidnappings recently.”

He added: “Kidnapping is a crime. It has to be treated as one. This is the only way to stop it. The girls are usually 14, 15. The men often already have one wife. They can be 25 or older. They can be younger, more like 20.”

As Archbishop Shaw rightly points out, both Azhar, Arzoo’s abductor, and Nakash Tariq, Maira’s abductor, were middle-aged and already married with children. Nakash Tariq has two young children. Archbishop Shaw also raised another motivation for the men. He said: “It is lust. They think ‘she is pretty I want her’. It is a crime. But it has a possible religious component too.”

According to these men, the girls, of their own volition, decided to convert and get married. Yet, a number of questions arise. Why is it only ever young girls so desperate to convert to Islam? Why never young boys? Why never middle-aged women? Why never middle-aged men?

Further, quite why Maira would need to be bundled into a car at gunpoint – an event captured on CCTV – when she was converting of her own desire is unclear. And if Arzoo was such a willing convert and would-be bride, why was she only taken as soon as her parents left for work?

The evidence suggests that the problem of abduction, rape, and forced marriage and conversion to Islam of underage girls of religious minorities is a serious problem in Pakistan. ACN told me that their contacts estimate that there are probably far more than 1,000 cases each year, but families are too scared or too poor to raise them.

The UK needs to use its position as a global power, and generous benefactor of Pakistan, to deal with this problem. It is unclear to me the wisdom of sending such an administration vast sums of money. Perhaps for the government of Pakistan to bring about the requisite change, we need to hit them where it hurts: their coffers.