Christian persecution is routinely dismissed by media outlets across the world.
The spiritual forces influencing today’s media corporations do not want to give light to the horrific tragedies affecting believers in every corner of the world.
Attacks like what 19-year-old Sunita Masih suffered at the hands of a Muslim man simply for refusing his advances are a daily fear for many believers in non-Christian countries.
Sunita was leaving the house that she lives in with her sister in Karachi, Pakistan, to go to work, just like billions across the world do every day. She takes the bus to work but when her stop arrived, her life changed forever.
Kamran Allah Bux, Sunita’s neighbor and a Muslim, was waiting for her at the bus stop.
According to Sunita’s uncle, John Masih, Bux threw the acid on Sunita then fled the scene.
“Sunita is just 19, but now her whole life has been physically and mentally scarred by Kamran,” Masih said. “Even if he is convicted for his crime, will Sunita be able to live a normal life again? We all know how our society treats acid attack survivors, even though they are the victims of this heinous crime.”
As reported by Morning Star News, Sunita suffered burns on up to 20% of her body.
Talking to the police from her hospital bed, Sunita recalled the horror of the attack.
“My eyes, face, arms and legs started burning as soon as Kamran threw the acid on me,” she recalled. “The pain was so excruciating that I collapsed on the road.”
John Masih said that Bux had been pursuing Sunita and trying to force her into entering a relationship with him.
“He would try to force her to renounce her Christian faith, assuring her that he would marry her once she became a Muslim, but she refused to surrender to his illegitimate demands,” Masih said. “Sunita had informed her siblings about Kamran’s harassment, and they had repeatedly complained to his parents, urging them to stop him, but that did not work.”
While the family had registered a complaint against Bux for harassment, police rarely act on these matters, which is unfortunately the case for Sunita as well. Nothing was done with the complaint, and after Sunita’s brother-in-law took matters into his own hands and beat Bux for harassing her, things escalated into the attack on Sunita.
According to Assistant Sub-Inspector Sagheer Ahmed of the Frere Police Station, Bux has been charged with hurt by corrosive substance (Section 336-B of the Pakistan Penal Code) and taken into police custody.
“We obtained his two-day physical remand from a court during which he confessed to the heinous crime,” Ahmed told Morning Star News. “In his statement, Kamran claimed that he had fallen in love with Sunita and had attacked her with acid in retaliation after she rejected his marriage proposal.”
Pakistan, a country that ranks seventh on Open Doors’ 2023 World Watch List when it comes to Christian persecution and the dangers believers face in a country, is known for these types of attacks, mainly against women. Often, the attacker is male and a Muslim, and is retaliating against the woman for a perceived slight, usually due to religion or a rejected relationship as is the case for Sunita.
There is hope shining bright in Pakistan, even as the spiritual principalities in the country try to assault and intimidate believers into silence, revivals are breaking out in huge numbers across the country.
Christians in Pakistan risk everything for their faith, and they are rewarded with great spiritual outpourings of the Lord’s presence.
The people of Pakistan are spiritually starved for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which is evidenced in the large crowds that Christian crusades bring in non-Christian areas like Vehari.
Even as she is recovering from this vicious attack, Sunita and her faith have served as examples to the whole world, and the Lord uses men and women like her all over the world to show the redemptive power of the cross in the face of severe persecution. {eoa}
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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media.
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