Islamabad, Jan 20 (IANS) Pakistan continues to harbour a wide range of radical Islamic terror groups of varying size, names, and influence that frequently split, merge, and resurface. At the same time, religious minorities in Pakistan are increasingly caught between these radical groups, a deeply entrenched Islamic social order, and a government accused of accommodating these groups, a report said on Tuesday.
According to the report in The European Conservative, two Muslim men abducted a 14-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan on December 7 2025, with her brother, Sahil George, alleging that the assault was an act of revenge over an earlier dispute.
Speaking to New York-based Christian Daily International, George, a 21-year-old member of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in the Sahiwal region of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, said the perpetrators identified as Muhammad Bilal Arshad and Muhammad Zohaib, took his sister to a house at gunpoint, where she was raped, a medical examination later confirmed.
“Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Women and girls from religious minority communities in Pakistan face a heightened risk of sexual violence at the hands of Muslim men. Reports indicate an increasing trend impacting Christians and Hindus who are abducted, raped, forced to convert to Islam, and ‘marry’ their abductor. Many families never see their girls again, and the authorities rarely take action to bring perpetrators to justice,” wrote Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut in ‘The European Conservative’.
Albert Patras, a human rights activist who works with female survivors of violence in South Punjab, was quoted as saying by The European Conservative: “Minority women in Pakistan are at greater risk of sexual violence and other forms of abuse compared to the general female population.”
“In many cases, perpetrators of crimes against minority women escape accountability,” he added.
According to the report, 10 days after the crime, the EU-Pakistan Joint Commission met in Brussels on December 17, 2025 — co-chaired by Muhammad Humair Karim, the Secretary of Pakistan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, and Paola Pampaloni, the Acting Managing Director for Asia and the Pacific in the European External Action Service. The two sides agreed to hold the next session of the EU-Pakistan Joint Commission in Islamabad in 2026.
The report underlined that the EU also granted Pakistan Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP+) status in January 2014, enabling the country to enjoy preferential access to the EU market.
Asserting that the EU’s failure in Pakistan is evident, the report said, “This lackadaisical approach is not diplomacy — it is complicity. It subsidises a regime shredding constitutional rights and exporting violence, all while EU trade perks flow unchecked via GSP+. Suspension is not optional; it is essential. The EU must act now to halt incentives funding a threat to its own borders — or risk rewarding impunity that boomerangs back to Europe.”
–IANS
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