Persecution of Christians March 2020

[A few examples from a long list.]

[On March 28 the Saylani Welfare International Trust] (...of Islam's five pillars), "is reserved for Muslims....Abid Qadri, a member of Saylani Welfare,...handed out food cards in his area. But, when they got to Christian homes, they just moved on." — Shafique Khokhar, AsiaNews.it, March 30, 2020, Pakistan.

"A few days back there was an announcement made through a mosque's loud speaker in the Sher-Shah neighborhood of Lahore inviting citizens to collect the government's announced foodstuffs," a pastor explained concerning another similar incident. "When Christians reached the distribution point and presented their national identity cards, they were asked by staffers to get out of the line claiming the foodstuff was only for Muslim citizens." This same pastor received numerous phone calls from his flock, all of whom experienced the same denial. "Christians often face religious hatred and discrimination," a Christian woman, aged 50, said of her experience. "However, we never thought of this biased behavior by the majority people at this critical time of COVID-19" (http://asianews.it/news-en/Coronavirus:-Karachi-NGO-denies-food-to-poor-Hindus-and-Christians-49699.html).

Separately, on March 1, two Muslim men abducted a 13-year-old Christian girl, forcibly converted her to Islam, and married her off to a Muslim. Saima Javid was kidnaped while fetching water from a pump near her home. [Her mother said] "Young Christian girls are not safe in this country. Muslims consider them as their property or slaves and therefore humiliate them as they wish." After confirming that "our daughters are often sexually harassed by influential Muslims," the girl'sfatheraddedthat "The police did not listen to us for five days. However, when news of the abduction went viral on social media, the police registered a First Information Report (FIR # 137/20) against the abductors on March 5." As a result, on March 26, the 13-year-old Christian girl appeared in court where she "testified that she had been abducted and was forced to convert to Islam and forced to marry [a Muslim man]." The judge ordered her returned to her family. "This order marks a rare victory for Pakistani Christians affected by the issue of abduction, forced conversion, and forced marriage," the report observes.

Unknown militants burned down two churches in the Muslim majority nation. According to a March 18 report from Dabanga, an independent Sudanese news outlet,

"[V]iolence against Christian communities has continued, despite the changes that have occurred in Sudan over the last year... [T]he first attack took place ... in Omdurman on Saturday February 29. A church building of the Sudanese Church of Christ was torched. It is not known who the perpetrators are. The second incident occurred on March 9, when militants set fire to the Presbyterian Evangelical Church in Bout, El Tadamon local in Blue Nile state. The church was destroyed completely, including the furniture and books within it."

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15969/persecution-of-christians-march