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DATE: December 10, 2005
TAMPA, FL - The Hindu American
Foundation (HAF) expressed outrage and deep concern over the
recently reported sudden religious conversions to Islam of
Reena (21), Usha (19) and Rima (17) - daughters of Sanno Amra
and Champa, a Hindu couple living in the Punjab Colony section
of Karachi, Pakistan.
According to a widely circulated
report in the Pakistan newspaper Dawn, entitled "Conversion
losses" (http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/20051203.htm),
the London based Pakistani commentator, Irfan Hussain, described
the shock experienced by Sanno Amra and Champa when they returned
home after work on October 18, 2005 to discover their three
daughters had unexpectedly disappeared. Only after desperate
queries to the police, affidavits stating the daughters' conversions
to Islam were received by the parents. Private visits with
their daughters, free from chaperones and even police officers
that supervised their only interactions thus far, have been
consistently denied. After their disappearance from home,
the girls have been living at a madrassa in the vicinity of
their home and may potentially be denied the freedom to return
home.
"The circumstances surrounding
the sudden conversions raise strong suspicions of coercion
and actual kidnapping," said Ramesh Rao, Ph.D., member of
the HAF Executive Council. "The Islamic Republic of Pakistan
is known to be a cruel prison to all minorities, and Hindus
in Pakistan have not just been reduced to a minuscule minority
but they are being forced to suffer mental and physical torture
in the process," said Ramesh Rao.
In its recently released
annual report on human rights of Hindus in South Asia in 2004,
HAF observed that, "Non-Muslim citizens of the Islamic Republic
of Pakistan are treated as separate and unequal citizens in
a form of religious apartheid. The Constitution and laws of
the land are overwhelmingly preferential to Islam, the State
Religion, and Muslims. Systematic exclusion of Hindus and
other minorities ranges from humiliations such that a non-Muslim
lawyer cannot appear before Federal Shariat Court to Constitutional
provisions that the President and Prime Minister of Pakistan
must be Muslims. Religious extremism and fanaticism sponsored
by the State that disenfranchise its own minority populations
have engendered fringe factions that endanger the well-being
and lives of minorities, including Hindus, Sikhs, Christians,
Ahmadiyas, and Shias."
The population of Hindus
in Pakistan in 1947, at the time of Partition, was estimated
to be anywhere from 15 to 24 percent. In 1998 the Hindu population
in Pakistan was 1.60 percent. "This decline of the Hindu population
over half a century is stark evidence of the effects of the
discriminatory nature of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan",
said Ramesh Rao.
The Hindu American Foundation seeks an immediate and open
inquiry about the fate of Reena, Usha, and Rima Amra, and
demands that in the meantime the three young women be put
under the care and guardianship of the Human Rights Commission
of Pakistan.
HAF is a non-profit, non-partisan organization promoting the
Hindu and American ideals of understanding, tolerance and
pluralism.
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