{"id":6761,"date":"2021-12-13T16:18:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T21:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/news\/news-2\/being-woman-and-christian-double-sentence\/"},"modified":"2021-12-13T16:18:00","modified_gmt":"2021-12-13T21:18:00","slug":"being-woman-and-christian-double-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diocesemontreal.wp.vortexdev.com\/en\/news\/news-2\/being-woman-and-christian-double-sentence\/","title":{"rendered":"Being a Woman and a Christian \u2013 A Double Sentence!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From ACN Canada<\/a>
\n
\nHear Her Cries, The kidnapping, forced conversion and sexual victimization of Christian women and girls paints a bleak picture of the situation of girls and women who belong to religious minorities, predominantly Christian, in countries where the status of women is still precarious in terms of equality, access to health care or the work environment. Not to mention religious laws concerning the family, which often subject girls and women to sexist rules issued in the name of religious laws.   <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThis report is like a shout out about an issue that international bodies are only just beginning to grasp,\u201d says Marie-Claude Lalonde, National Director of ACN Canada, the office responsible for the French translation. \u201cWhen we study the phenomenon of religious persecution, we realize that in some countries, the fact of being female becomes an additional source of persecution. Being a woman in addition to being Christian is a double sentence,\u201d she says.  
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\nFurthermore, it is extremely difficult to quantify the phenomenon, the cases of abduction, forced conversion and sexual victimization, because the victims themselves refuse to talk about it. \u201cSeveral aspects come into play,\u201d notes Lalonde. \u201cFirst, there is the shame of the women returning to their families. They don\u2019t talk because they are ashamed and they don\u2019t want this shame to reflect on their family and sometimes even on their community. They are also afraid of reprisals because their abusers have threatened them with death and have also threatened their loved ones. There is also the corruption of the law enforcement agencies, which do nothing to properly investigate, arrest suspects and convict them, as the case may be. This is particularly true in Pakistan, one of the worst countries in terms of respect for religious freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The Courage to Testify<\/strong>
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\n Yet some victims have agreed to come forward and tell their stories. The young Pakistani Christian girl, Farah Shaheen, was abducted at the age of 12 (she is now 13). She was shackled by her new \u201chusband\u201d, forcibly converted to Islam and used as a sex slave, in addition to having to muck out the farm animals.  
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\n\u201cThis case is one of the most horrific, but the courage shown by this young teenager is absolutely extraordinary,\u201d says Marie-Claude Lalonde. \u201cHer father also fought for her, but the police did nothing. He was called a churha, which means dirty, precisely because he is a Christian.\u201d In this case, the story has a happy ending, as a court finally annulled the marriage on February 16th. \u201cOfficially, in Pakistan alone, there are reportedly approximately 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls and women who are abducted, married and forcibly converted every year. But some reports suggest that this figure is valid for Sindh alone,\u201d says Lalonde. 
\n\u201cOn this International Human Rights Day, I am very pleased to be able to present this report, and I hope that it will lead to further progress on human rights,\u201d concludes Ms. Lalonde. 
\n 
\nThe report Hear Her Cries, the kidnapping, forced conversion and sexual victimization of Christian women and girls<\/em><\/strong>, can be viewed in PDF format<\/a> or via 3D FlipBook reading technology at https:\/\/acn-canada.org\/publications\/.  <\/a><\/p>\n\n


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