In Pakistan, Christians grapple with orchestrated prejudice, savage mob assaults, involuntary faith changes, debt bondage, and rampant sexual predation, betrayed by a state’s feeble response. Securing 8th spot on Open Doors’ World Watch List 2026 among 50 nations, the country exemplifies stalled progress in safeguarding believers.
The report’s rollout on January 27, 2026, in the European Parliament—spearheaded by MEPs Miriam Lexmann, Bert-Jan Ruissen, and Matej Tonin—featured harrowing accounts from Joseph Johnson, a Pakistani rights crusader. He dismantled illusions of reform: May 2025’s child marriage ban in the capital failed to halt kidnappings of minority teens, their coerced Islamization, and sham weddings, as benches invoke Sharia routinely.
False blasphemy raps unleash hellish reprisals—church demolitions, lynch mob fury, endless detention sans verdict. The unpunished 2023 Jaranwala inferno, claiming 26 churches, epitomizes this travesty.
By sparing outfits like TLP meaningful reprisals, the regime courts disaster; faith prisoners fester behind bars, redress eludes the harmed, fostering brazen lawlessness. Pakistan’s entrenched ranking demands urgent reckoning, with world leaders pressing for legal reforms and aggressive extremism curbs to restore dignity for Christians.