New York: On September 18, 2021, leaders and community residents gathered in more than a dozen major cities around the world to stand in solidarity with the young Pakistani girls and their families – many between the ages of 12 and 17 – who are taken each year from their homes, raped and forcibly converted to Islam, thrown into abusive marriages with much older men, and finally forbidden to ever return to their families. According to reports by the Movement for Solidarity and Peace, 1000 young girls of minority religions, mostly Hindu and Sikh, but some also Christian, are kidnapped, sexually abused, and converted to Islam each year in Pakistan.
Led by Hindu Policy Research and Advocacy Collective (HinduPACT) religious and community organizations gathered together to silently protest the unfair treatment of these abducted girls in Pakistan across the US. This event was one of several such vigils being organized in Canada, the UK, Australia, Kenya and across the world by HinduPACT partners. The organizers have pledged to highlight the plight of these innocent girls who face this worst form of oppression because of their religious beliefs.
The CHINGARI Project (Coalition for HINdu Girls Abducted and their RIghts), founded in 2021 is a social justice campaign aimed towards bringing awareness to Hindus across the globe about the atrocities that young, innocent Hindu girls face in Sindh, Pakistan each day. Through informative advocacy, community outreach and research, the CHINGARI team is working towards making local US representatives aware of the unstable religious situation in Pakistan and encouraging them to take further action to convey their disapproval.
Rakhi Israni, the Director for the CHINGARI Project said, “Minorities in Pakistan live completely helpless lives. Over the past seven decades, the Hindu, Christian, and Sikh families in Pakistan have had their livelihoods, their property, and their basic rights stripped from them simply because of their religion, but, worse yet, many of them also have to helplessly watch as something much more valuable is violently snatched from them: their little girls. It is the duty of every decent human being everywhere to stand up and speak out against such injustice. CHINGARI hopes to spark that fire of awareness and action”
Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore attended the silent vigil in Las Vegas held on September 18. She spoke about trafficking of women and girls in the US and around the world. She said, “This is a sad problem and we all need to work hard and first to stop this!”
Shreya Mishra, a high school student intern working on CHINGARI project said, “As a Hindu girl living in the United States, seeing photos and videos of innocent victims in Sindh, Pakistan makes me gravely concerned for not only their lives but also for the inaction of Hindus across the globe when it comes to this issue. We must become the voice for these young girls. Our youth in privileged countries such as the US must understand the severity of this human rights crisis, and act to give these young, innocent victims a chance at life.”
Ajay Shah, Convenor of HinduPACT said, “You just have to watch a single video, out of dozens, on YouTube, showing poignant cries of a young teenage Hindu girl longing to go back to her parents, after being abducted and raped, and then imagine this replaying a thousand times each year to understand why CHINGARI project is so important. The images of the helpless girl are haunting, her cries are reverberating, and the world is silent. In a country that does not care for a young girl like Malala Yousafzai, the life of a Hindu girl has no value. This must change. We appeal to international human rights organizations to take note of this issue.”
