ATTACKED FOR BEING CHRISTIAN IN pakistan

[guru1]

A 26-year-old woman horrifically burned in an acid attack has spoken out about her trauma as she re-builds her life in Houston, Texas.
Julie Aftab was 16 and working in an office in Pakistan when a man walked in and asked her if she was Christian, spotting a small cross she wore around her neck.
She replied that yes, she was and the man became abusive, shouting at her that she was living in the gutter and would go to hell for shunning Islam.

Barbaric: Julie Aftab's face was horrifically disfigured during the attack, requiring 31 surgeries

He left and returned half an hour later, clutching a bottle of battery acid which he savagely chucked over her head. As she ran screaming for the door a second man grabbed her by the hair and forced more of the liquid down her throat, searing her esophagus.



Teeth fell from her mouth as she desperately called for help, stumbling down the street.
A woman heard her cries and took her to her home, pouring water over her head and taking her to hospital.
At first the doctors refused to treat her, because she was a Christian. 'They all turned against me,' she told the Houston Chronicle.

Light at the end of the tunnel: Aftab (left) has been able to start a new life for herself in Houston, TExas, supported by host parents Lee and Gloria (right) Ervin

'Even the people who took me to the hospital. They told the doctor they were going to set the hospital on fire if they treated me.'
Eventually Aftab's family found a hospital that agreed to take her in but there was little they could do.
Aftab could not speak or move her arms and the acid had burned through her skin to leave bone-deep wounds.


67 per cent of her esophagus was burned and she was missing an eye and both eyelids. What remained of her teeth could be seen through a gaping hole where her cheek had been.
The doctors predicted she would die any day.
Despite the odds she pulled through. She remained in hospital for a year, unable to speak or see for the first three and a half months.
On leaving the hospital she was labelled a pariah in her neighbourhood, her family was persecuted and their home was burnt down.
'They wanted to hang me,' she told the paper. 'They thought it would be an insult to Islam if I lived.'
But there was light at the end of the tunnel for Aftab. A nondenominational bishop arranged for her to be treated in Houston and to live with a local couple, Lee and Gloria Ervin, whom she now calls Uncle Lee and Auntie Gloria.
Supported by her host parents a now 26-year-old Aftab says the attack has made her faith stronger than ever.
'Those people, they think they did a bad thing to me, but they brought me closer to God,' Aftab told the paper. 'They helped me fulfill my dreams. I never imagined I could be the person I am today.'
Aftab has had 31 surgeries to reconstruct her face and has gone on to accomplish things no member of her family had done, including graduating from high school and going to college.
She spoke no English when she arrived in Houston in 2004 but will later this month take her citizenship test, having been granted asylum in 2007. Aftab is an accounting major at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Aftab's wounds are hidden in this picture of her profile

Persecution of Christians is an ongoing problem in Pakistan.
Pakistani Christians live in fear of being arrested under the blasphemy laws, which critics say are often misused to settle personal scores or family feuds.
Efforts to change the laws have made little headway. Last year, two prominent Pakistani political figures who spoke out against the blasphemy laws were killed in attacks that raised concerns about the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan.

Support: Aftab is considered part of the Ervin family, calling her host parents Auntie Gloria and Uncle Lee

Read more: 'They wanted to hang me... they thought it would be an insult to Islam if I lived': New life for Pakistani Christian woman who suffered savage acid attack by Muslim man who thought she was a traitor | Mail Online

 

[mjnaushad]

doctor refused to treate her because she is christian is utter bullshit..... sad story but the things she is telling are exagrated with hate (which is justifide)......but the lies are not...

 

[Damadji]

Very very sad state of affairs in pakistan.

May the god bless and help Christians and other minorities in pakistan.

 

[AstanoshKhan]

These cases happens to Muslims in Pakistan too... are Christian some other breed than Humans or what that they aren't suppose to face such domestic violence? Since she's a Christian (and in the USA right now), hence takes the limelight of Media. Why media doesn't post about those other millions Christians in Pakistan living side by side with Muslims with no problems whatsoever? Muslims had been the victims of Domestic violence so as Christians and Hindus and Sikhs and who not - why only the emphasise of Christian only?

 

[Pukhtoon]

Very very sad state of affairs in pakistan.

May the god bless and help Christians and other minorities in pakistan.

And in IN-Dia TOO !!


INDIA. INCREASE IN ANIMOSITY AGAINST CHRISTIANS

Three recent attacks against Christians in India reflect an increase in animosity against believers throughout the country.

In Kerala state, a pastor and his children were attacked on Feb. 21. Pastor Titus Ignatius Kapan and his family were eating dinner at the house of a Hindu convert when Hindu extremists entered the house. They abused the pastor and his children before dropping huge boulders on the pastor’s car.

Just days earlier, Hindu extremists disrupted a prayer service in Pandhi village, Chhattisgarh state. Although the church had reportedly obtained police permission for the event, 15 to 20 extremists interrupted the service on the first day, threatening attendees and slapping one of the pastors.

The next day, 50 extremists tore down the believers’ tent and began assaulting them. One of the pastors required stitches. The extremists returned later that night, beating church members and another pastor with their fists and leather belts. They also damaged a motorbike.

A group of Christians in Haibasa district, Jharkhand state, were forced to leave their village after a series of attacks against them by local villagers. The Christians took refuge at a nearby church and are living without adequate food and clothing. In the final attack on this group, on Jan. 29, a violent mob closed down all exit points to the village before assaulting the Christians with iron rods, axes, arrows and other sharp weapons. The mob severely beat four Christians and dragged others, including children, to a room. They locked the Christians inside and attempted to burn them alive. They were unsuccessful only because police arrived before they could complete the deed.

These are only a few of the attacks against Christians in recent weeks. Hindu groups revile Christians because they think Christians undermine the Hindu caste system. (March 2012 The Voice of the Martyrs)

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INDIA. A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Although Christianity has existed in India for more than 2,000 years, only 2% of its population is Christian, a great minority amidst the remaining population of Hindus (80%) and Muslims (13%).

Statistics by Christian groups in India clearly indicate that there has been no let up in the systematic persecution of Christians ever since it began in 1998, the year the Right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed a coalition government at the federal level. The BJP’s emergence coincided with the arrival of Mrs Sonia Gandhi, a Catholic and the wife of the late prime minister of India Rajiv Gandhi, in national politics. Her appointment as the chief of the Indian National Congress party led to the political targeting of Christians by the BJP and associated Hindu nationalist forces under the pretext of religious conversions.

From 2001 to 2004, at least 200 attacks on Christians were reported each year. There were around 165 anti-Christian attacks in 2005, and 130 in 2006. The following two years, 2007 and 2008, turned out to be the most violent years, vis-à-vis Christian persecution, since the Independence of India in 1947. During the Christmas week of 2007, at least four Christians were killed and 730 houses and 95 churches torched in Kandhamal, Orissa. A repeat of violence in Kandhamal killed over 100 people and burned 4640 houses, 252 churches and 13 educational institutions in 2008. Apart from these major incidents, 2007 and 2008 each saw around 200 attacks in various parts of the country. The year 2009 witnessed more than 152 attacks, and 2010 saw at least 149. The actual number of incidents is likely to be much higher than reported, as not all cases are formally registered or come to light.


Now STFU @$$ }{0I_3

 

[Pukhtoon]

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Old But Worth Reading !!

Convert or we will kill you, Hindu lynch mobs tell fleeing Christians
As a fresh wave of sectarian violence is unleashed across the Indian state of Orissa, Gethin Chamberlain talks to homeless survivors in Kandhamal district who were forced to abandon their religion

Hundreds of Christians in the Indian state of Orissa have been forced to renounce their religion and become Hindus after lynch mobs issued them with a stark ultimatum: convert or die.

The wave of forced conversions marks a dramatic escalation in a two-month orgy of sectarian violence which has left at least 59 people dead, 50,000 homeless and thousands of houses and churches burnt to the ground. As neighbour has turned on neighbour, thousands more Christians have sought sanctuary in refugee camps, unable to return to the wreckage of their homes unless they, too, agree to abandon their faith.

Last week, in the worst-affected Kandhamal district, The Observer encountered compelling evidence of the scale of the violence employed in a conversion programme apparently sanctioned by members of one of the most powerful Hindu groups in India, the 6.8-million member Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) - the World Hindu Council.

Standing in the ashes of her neighbour's house in the village of Sarangagada, Jaspina Naik, 32, spoke nervously, glancing towards a group of Hindu men watching her suspiciously. 'My neighbours said, "If you go on being Christians, we will burn your houses and your children in front of you, so make up your minds quickly",' she said. 'I was scared. Christians have no place in this area now.'

On her forehead, she wore a gash of vermilion denoting a married Hindu woman, placed there by the priest at the conversion ceremony she had been obliged to attend a day earlier, along with her husband and three young children. 'I'm totally broken,' she said. 'I have always been a Christian. Inside I am still praying for Jesus to give me peace and to take me out of this situation.'

She and her neighbour, Kumari Naik, 35, gazed forlornly at the charred remains of the house. The mob that arrived one evening in the first week of the violence, armed with swords and axes, had looted what they wanted before dousing the building with petrol and setting it alight. Kumari had fled into the nearby forest with her husband, Umesh, and 14-year-old son Santosh. A smoke-damaged child's drawing of Mickey Mouse pinned to one wall was all that remained of their former lives. Shattered roof tiles crunched underfoot as the women moved through the blackened rooms.

The priest had given them cow dung to eat during the ceremony, they said, telling them it would purify them. 'We were doing that, but we were crying,' Jaspina said.

The roads between the villages are rough and potholed, adding to the difficulties in accessing what is already a remote region, a six-hour drive from the state capital, Bhubaneshwar. The remoteness has undoubtedly played a part in the continuation of the violence, making it harder for police to move about quickly, even if they were minded to do so. Christian leaders, though, have accused the authorities of dragging their feet, claiming they are reluctant to antagonise the majority Hindu community in the run-up to parliamentary elections next year.

 

[WolfSlayer]

Look who is talking....
In India Muslims are being mass murdered and they have history of repeating and not repenting on such events.
and they talk about Pakistan where a single person is targeted and no body knows why (only western and Indian media know, who is always ready like hungry dogs to attack Pakistan)
i don't why they start crying like raped women if a single person i Pakistan claims that he is targeted for being not Muslim and stick their tongs in .........when Muslims are being murdered on a very organised and massive scale.