How girls in Pak are enslaved |
Sometimes parents, burdened by an unforgiving debt, even offer their daughters as payment in Pakistan. The women are like trophies to the men. They choose the prettiest, the young and pliable. Sometimes they take them as second wives to look after their homes. Sometimes they use them as prostitutes to earn money. Sometimes they take them simply because they can.Ameri, who is Hindu, says the land manager made her daughter convert to Islam and took the girl as his second wife. More than 2 million Pakistanis live as " modern slaves ," according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index , which ranks Pakistan in the top three offending countries that still enslave people, some as farm workers, others at brick kilns or as household staff. Sometimes the workers are beaten or chained to keep them from fleeing.They have no rights, and their women and girls are the most vulnerable, says Ghulam Hayder, whose Green Rural Development Organization works to free Pakistan`s bonded laborers.An estimated 1,000 young Christian and Hindu girls, most of them underage and impoverished, are taken from their homes each year, converted to Islam and married, said a report by the South Asia Partnership organization.
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