Pakistan update

Open Doors' partners work to rebuild Pakistan's devastated Christian communities

Ten weeks after Pakistan's floods uprooted some 20 million people, the 75,000 Christians among them remain extremely vulnerable.

The most endangered are some 500 families of secret believers, converts from a Muslim background, who were already living in hiding to avoid persecution. Now forced to seek new places of refuge, many of these believers still have not been located by local church leaders.

Emergency relief and medical aid

In cooperation with three national church groups, Open Doors' partners are providing emergency aid in all four of Pakistan's affected provinces: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, southern Punjab, Sindh and parts of Baluchistan. The relief teams include pastoral workers, nurses and volunteers with first-aid training, and property assessors to advise residents on how to rebuild their homes. Other volunteers are helping people locate lost family members, and yet others are helping them locate homes for rent. This is proving a challenge, since many Muslim landlords are unwilling to rent to Christians, either because of personal prejudices or for fear of retaliation by extremists.

A specialised disaster management team consisting of a pastor, a doctor, a female nurse, a management consultant, one assessment manager, one trainer and a driver, has visited believers in various parts of the country, assessing damage to Christians, working on strategy with local pastors and counselling local believers.

This team is also training local midwives and caregivers to help them address health concerns in the aftermath of the flood. They are also preparing three resident medical teams for the worst-affected regions. Open Doors partners are purchasing mobile medical units for these teams to use. Currently three centres are serving as supply ports, as well as providing Christians with clean water and cooking facilities.

'This aid is not for Christians'

The ten relief teams on the ground are discovering serious trends of discrimination against Christians in government-run relief operations. More than 1,000 reports have been documented in which Christians were denied aid 'unless you convert to Islam'.

"They tell us we are just street-sweepers - the aid is not for us," destitute Christians told field workers. The reason given was always the same: "This aid is coming from Zakat (Islamic tax). It is not for Christians."

"Two women wrapped in burkas come every day to the women in the camp, asking if we are ok," a Christian woman said. "When we say we are being given bad food and getting sick, they tell us they are sorry, but there is nothing they can do because this aid was supplied by Muslims paying Zakat."

Women are especially vulnerable

More than 200 young Christian women met by relief workers had fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, leaving behind the shawls used to wrap themselves in for modesty. In the regions where extremism is growing, these girls already fight against the stereotype that Christian women are immoral and easily propositioned. A Christian women's vocational organisation has a team of 100 women sewing 10,000 warm shalwar kameez suits with shawls for women and girls in the flood-affected areas, to be delivered before the cold weather sets in in November.

One team found a 21-year-old Christian girl who lost her family in the flood. Separated in the chaos, she ended up in Quetta, hundreds of miles from her home. "She cries... all the time," reported one pastor. "When she heard I was a Christian, she came and flung herself on me. She was the only Christian in the camp, and very frightened. Fear does not leave her eyes."

A field counsellor with that team told Open Doors, "Without your gifts and love, we would not be able to meet all these needs. There are hundreds like her who we are reaching out for help. We intend to house them with families who will minister to their needs and keep them safe, while we try to locate their parents."

To date, 30 families have been set up with weatherproof tents, heating, clean water and toilets in a relatively safe place near a Christian residential colony. These young families had nowhere to live, and their young women are particularly vulnerable. Another 500 families have received large parcels of urgently needed food staples, detergents and anti-bacterial solutions.

"At this point in time, it would be so easy to annihilate the church in Pakistan," one church leader admitted this week. "That is why our emergency relief teams supported through Open Doors funding are keen to work swiftly, to meet the immediate and long-term needs of Pakistani Christians suffering from the world's worst natural disaster in the past century."