Every Sunday the Men Came to Watch the Christian Girls Walk to Church. On August 16 a Boy of Seventeen Asked Them Why.
A Christian boy in Sheikhupura asked a group of men why they came every Sunday to harass the girls walking to church. They came back with iron rods. Two groups, working separately, say what happened next.
Nasrat Colony is a Christian neighborhood in Ajnianwala, in the Sheikhupura district of Pakistan's Punjab. On Sundays its families walk to church. For months, locals say, a group of young men made that walk their entertainment. They came to follow the girls, to mock them, to be seen doing it. The one the neighborhood names is Ali Shah, the son of a man with influence in the area.
On Sunday, August 16, Ikhlaq Masih saw them at it again. He is seventeen. He makes pizzas at a restaurant. His father, Saleem, works a brick kiln. His mother, Zakriya, keeps the house. He walked up to the group and asked why they kept coming to his neighborhood to trouble its women.
They called him a chura. It is the slur Pakistan keeps for Christians. They asked how he dared. Then they left.
They waited until he was alone.
