{"id":461,"date":"2010-11-01T11:12:14","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T04:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martianuswb.com\/?p=461"},"modified":"2013-03-12T22:10:23","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T15:10:23","slug":"pakistani-muslim-tortures-accuses-christian-who-refused-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/?p=461","title":{"rendered":"Pakistani Muslim Tortures, Accuses Christian Who Refused Slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>SARGODHA, Pakistan,<\/strong> October 29 (CDN) \u2014 A Muslim land owner in Pakistan this month subjected a 25-year-old Christian to burns and a series of humiliations, including falsely charging him with having sex with his own niece, because the Christian refused to work for him without pay.<\/p>\n

Fayaz Masih is in jail with burns on his body after No. 115 Chitraan Wala village head Zafar Iqbal Ghuman and other villagers punished Masih for refusing to work as a slave in his fields, said the Rev. Yaqub Masih, a Pentecostal evangelist. The village is located in Nankana Sahib district, Punjab Province.<\/p>\n

Sources said neither Fayaz Masih nor his family had taken any loans from Ghuman, and that they had no obligations to work off any debt for Ghuman as bonded laborers.<\/p>\n

Yaqub Masih said the young man\u2019s refusal to work in Ghuman\u2019s fields infuriated the Muslim, who was accustomed to forcing Christians into slavery. He said Ghuman considered Masih\u2019s refusal an act of disobedience by a \u201cchoohra,\u201d the pejorative word for Christians in Pakistan.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 3 Ghuman and 11 of his men abducted Masih from his home at gun-point and brought him to Ghuman\u2019s farmhouse, according to Yaqub Masih and Yousaf Gill, both of nearby village No. 118 Chour Muslim. Gill is a former councilor of Union Council No. 30, and Yaqub Masih is an ordained pastor waiting for his denomination to assign him a church.<\/p>\n

Fayaz Masih\u2019s family members told Yaqub Masih that Ghuman was carrying a pistol, and that the 11 other men were brandishing rifles or carrying clubs, axes and bamboo sticks. They began beating Masih as they carried him away, calling him a choohra, Yaqub Masih said.<\/p>\n

Gill said that Ghuman\u2019s farmhands tied Fayaz Masih\u2019s hands and legs and asked him once more if he would work in Ghuman\u2019s fields. When he again refused, Gill said, Ghuman summoned four barbers; three ran away, but he forced one, Muhammad Pervaiz, to shave Masih\u2019s head, eyebrows, half of his mustache and half of his beard.<\/p>\n

After they had rubbed charcoal on Masih\u2019s face, Ghuman then announced that Masih had had relations with Masih\u2019s 18-year-old niece, Sumeera, and called for everyone in the village to punish him. He and his men placed Masih on a frail, one-eyed donkey, Yaqub Masih and Gill said, and a mob of Muslim men and children surrounded him \u2013 beating tins, dancing and singing door-to-door while shouting anti-Christian slogans, yelling obscenities at him and other Christians, and encouraging villagers to beat him with their shoes and fill his mouth with human waste, Yaqub Masih said.<\/p>\n

Some threw kerosene on Masih and alternately set him on fire and extinguished the flames, Gill said. He added that Muslims made a garland of old shoes from a pile of garbage and put it around Masih\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n

Yaqub Masih said the abuse became unbearable for the young man, and he collapsed and fell off the donkey.<\/p>\n

Police Ignore Court<\/strong><\/p>\n

Masih\u2019s sister, Seema Bibi, told Compass that the accusation that Masih had had sex with her daughter Sumeera was utterly false. She said Ghuman made the allegation only to vent his fury at Masih for refusing to work for him.<\/p>\n

Seema Bibi said that Ghuman told her daughter at gun-point to testify against Masih in court on Oct. 4. Sumeera surprised the Muslim land owner, however, saying under oath that Masih was innocent and that Ghuman had tried to force her to testify against her uncle. A judge ruled that Sumeera had not had illicit relations with Masih, and that therefore she was free to go home.<\/p>\n

Her mother told Compass, however, that since then Ghuman has been issuing daily death threats to her family.<\/p>\n

After Masih collapsed from the abuse, Yaqub Masih and Gill called local police. Police did not arrive until three hours later, at 3:30 p.m., they said, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Shoiab Ahmed Kamboh and Inspector Muhammad Yaqub.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey rebuked the Muslim villagers that they could have killed this Christian youth, and they told them to give him a bath at once and change his clothes, in order to reduce the evidence against them,\u201d Gill said.<\/p>\n

Family members of Masih said Kamboh and Inspector Yaqub arrested some of the leading figures within the mob, but soon thereafter they received a call to release every Muslim.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of taking the Muslim men into custody, they detained my brother, and he was taken to the police station,\u201d Seema Bibi said.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 4 police sent Masih to District Headquarters Hospital Nankana Sahib for examination, where Dr. Naseer Ahmed directed Dr. Muhammad Shakeel to mention in the medical report how severely Ghuman and his farmhands had beaten him, Gill said. He said the medical report also stated that Masih had sustained burns and that his head, mustache, eyebrows and beard were shaved.<\/p>\n

In spite of the court ruling that Masih had not had sex with his niece, police were coerced into registering a false charge of adultery under Article 376 of the Islamic statutes of the Pakistan Penal Code, First Information Report No. 361\/10, at the Sangla Hill police station.<\/p>\n

At press time Masih remained in Shiekhupura District Jail, said Gill. Gill also has received death threats from Ghuman, he said.<\/p>\n

The 11 men who along with Ghuman abducted Masih and brought him to Ghuman\u2019s farmhouse, according to Masih\u2019s family, were Mehdi Hussain Shah and Maqsood Shah, armed with rifles; Muhammad Amin, Rana Saeed, Muhammad Osama and four others unidentified, all of them brandishing clubs; Muhammad Waqas, with an axe; and Ali Raza, bearing a bamboo stick and a club.<\/p>\n

\n

http:\/\/www.compassdirect.org\/<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SARGODHA, Pakistan, October 29 (CDN) \u2014 A Muslim land owner in Pakistan this month subjected a 25-year-old Christian to burns and a series of humiliations, including falsely charging him with… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[35,64],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-persecuted","tag-idop-2010","tag-pakistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2592,"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions\/2592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martianuswb.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}