Schoolgirl beaten
An 11-year-old girl in Pakistan was beaten unconscious by her Muslim teacher after she said she was both Pakistani and a Christian.
Nadia Iftikhar, who was at an evening school called Bright Future Academy, in Dharema, Punjab province, told the teacher that she was a Pakistani, but not a Muslim.
The female teacher started to beat her with a bamboo cane until, according to reports from her classmates, she became unconscious.
Reports from Barnabas Fund said that, as she beat her young pupil, the teacher kept repeating that all Pakistanis are Muslims and: ‘You are not a Pakistani but a Christian. Your homeland is somewhere in Europe or America’.
Her father felt that he could not go to the police, as being poor and a Christian meant that he would not get justice.
Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, international director of Barnabas Fund, said: ‘It is a perpetual struggle for Pakistani Christians to convince the rest of society that they love their homeland, Pakistan, just as much as Pakistani Muslims do. The myth that they are loyal to the West instead of to Pakistan must finally be laid to rest’.
