If Pakistan won’t crack down on the kidnapping of young girls, we should cut off aid
by Sir Edward Leigh, Conservative Home:
On 13th October, in Karachi, Pakistan, 13-year-old Catholic girl Arzoo Raja, was kidnapped in broad daylight by a 44-year-old man called Ali Azhar. Her parents were told she had converted to Islam and decided to marry him.
[…] Unfortunately, cases such as Arzoo’s are not uncommon in Pakistan. In April, another Catholic girl, 14-year-old Maira Shahbaz, was bundled into a car at gunpoint by three men during the lockdown in Madina Town, near Faisalabad.
[…] These are not isolated examples. The Movement for Solidarity and Peace in Pakistan calculate that every year in Pakistan, up to 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls and young women between the ages of 12 and 25 are abducted.
Pakistan is the biggest recipient of UK aid. It is reported that we pay an estimated £383,000 per day in aid to Pakistan. Over 20 years, it adds up to £2.8 billion. In 2019/20 we sent £302 million. In 2018/19 it was £325 million. Should we really send such a large sum of taxpayers’ money to a country where women are treated so poorly? What message are we sending by funding a country that treats its religious minorities so abhorrently?
Cases like Arzoo and Maira’s are endemic in a society that has serious issues with its treatment of women and religious minorities. To be both a Christian and a woman in Pakistan is a double jeopardy. The ostracisation they face on a daily basis puts them in a dangerous position. They are soft targets for predatory and rapacious men. For example, Maira had been forced to drop out of school and work because her family are so poor. That she also has no father around made her more vulnerable.
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