This is just one family out of a great many in the same situation. This is a human rights catastrophe of immense proportions. But no “Islamophobia” is being committed, so the UN doesn’t consider it worthy of significant attention.
“‘They will kill us’: Pakistani Christian family seeks asylum in Bangkok after escape,” Express Tribune, February 26, 2015 (thanks to Lookmann):
BANGKOK: They were a middle-class family in Pakistan, living in a comfortable three-bedroom apartment with a modern kitchen and a PlayStation for the three kids, reports The Associated Press.
Fluent in English, the father ran his own moving company while the mother taught art.
A death threat signed by an extremist group with three bullets attached compelled the Christian family to leave it all behind 18 months ago.
Now they live in a barren room in Bangkok, where the children share a double bed and the parents sleep on the floor. They cook on a propane burner on a tiny balcony.
A picture of Jesus, the source of their solace and their troubles, hangs on the inside of the door.
This, increasingly, is the life of the asylum-seeker and refugee….
Despite the hardships, many say they will never return home. They are too afraid. “We’ll just face the same sort of threats again,” said the mother. “I’m not willing to sacrifice my children for that. “‘We will shoot you and your children’
In Pakistan, the couple and some Catholic friends helped run a small, free school for poor children.
One morning in 2013, a warning signed by an militant group was slipped under the door of the school office.
“Stop giving missionary education to Muslim children. Otherwise, we will shoot you and your children,” said the threat, which was viewed by The Associated Press.
Ten days later, the school received another warning, only this time it was with bullets.
The school volunteers filed a complaint to the police; the AP viewed a copy of the document, which had been stamped by local police to indicate they had received it.
The couple’s account was corroborated by several people contacted by the AP. The couple said the school never taught Christianity to Muslim children, but did teach Bible stories and prayers to the Christian kids when their Muslim classmates were not there.
They said that sometimes the Muslim kids would hang around, hear the prayers and recite them at home. Pakistan’s religious minorities are increasingly persecuted – not only Christians but Hindus and Ahmadis.
They say that although no one has been executed under the country’s harsh blasphemy law, it has been used to threaten non-Muslims and incite mob violence. In November, a Christian couple was killed by a mob for allegedly desecrating the Quran.
An estimated 12,000 religious minorities have fled Pakistan since 2009, according to Farrukh Saif, who heads a minority advocacy group that supports asylum-seekers in Bangkok.
The threatened couple fled to Thailand because friends said it was easy to get a tourist visa and because other Christians had gone there.
“People told us, ‘Save your lives first, then worry about the other things, “’ the father said. After hiding for a month, they packed two suitcases of their belongings and boarded a midnight flight for Bangkok. When they arrived in the steamy Thai capital, relief quickly turned to anxiety.
The food, the language – everything was new….