Pakistan

Pakistani police have arrested two Muslim suspects in connection with the killing of a young Christian agricultural worker whose death sparked protests in the country’s eastern Punjab province, investigators and Christian advocates said Saturday.

Hundreds of Christians, including family members, have protested the killing of a young Christian agricultural worker by one or more Muslims in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province and the alleged reluctance by authorities to properly investigate the case.

An 11-year-old Christian girl was abducted and killed by her Muslim neighbor in the Pakistani city of Gujranwala, the latest in a series of attacks targeting members of the country’s Christian minority, investigators told Worthy News on Tuesday.

A Christian sanitation worker employed by the legislature of Pakistan’s Punjab province was found shot dead late Friday at a government hostel in Lahore, police and Christian rights advocates confirmed early Saturday.

A young Christian woman alleges she was abducted at gunpoint and forced to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim man four years ago after meeting him through her job at a beauty salon in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province. Now in her 20s, she fled this month and is in hiding with her young daughter, fearing retaliation.

A Christian sanitation worker in eastern Pakistan has alleged he was brutally beaten while performing municipal cleaning duties in what advocacy groups describe as part of mounting pressure on Christians in the Muslim-majority nation.

Christians in Pakistan’s industrial city of Gujranwala expressed fears of renewed violence after a Christian family’s ancestral home was allegedly taken over by a Muslim lawyer who accused the homeowner of blasphemy, sources told Worthy News.

Christians in Pakistan’s Punjab province were searching Thursday for an abducted minor girl, days after the provincial governor signed legislation raising the legal marriage age to 18 and criminalizing child marriage as a non-bailable offense.

A series of alleged attacks and harassment targeting Christian communities in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, including at least one fatal assault, has raised renewed concern about the safety of religious minorities, advocacy group LEAD Ministries said.

Christian rights campaigners have welcomed Friday’s landmark decision by Pakistan’s Punjab province to criminalize child marriage by setting 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage. However, the killing of a Pakistani Christian shopkeeper in the same province cast a shadow over the celebrations.