A recent UN report on atrocities perpetrated in Pakistan against girls and young women from Christian and other minority faith communities should serve as a wake-up call, and prompt urgent action by the Canadian government, say Canadian activists. 

Dozens of people, mostly police and security forces, were killed in a suicide bombing at a mosque in northeastern Pakistan.

Younis Gil is a small man who struggles with English. Years of stress, uncertainty and hard labour have left an imprint. But he squares his shoulders, straightens his back, meets your gaze and smiles. With his wife Saleema Bibi and surrounded by three of his adult children plus a son-in-law, he is a proud pater familias embracing a life that a few months ago was hard to imagine.

Canada can do more to counter Pakistan’s blasphemy law — a law that made refugees of the Younis family and thousands of others, whose lives are on hold in Bangkok and other places around the world — the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief told the All-Party Parliamentary Interfaith Caucus in an online presentation earlier this month.

LAHORE, Pakistan -- The daylight attack by motorcycle-riding gunmen on two Church of Pakistan ministers, killing one and wounding another, has reignited fears among Pakistan’s beleaguered minority community.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Shakeel Raphael projected an image of his brother Nadeem Samson on the screen, prison bars superimposed over the man's sorrowful face.

LAHORE, Pakistan -- Human rights activists were shocked after Asia Bibi dissociated herself from her autobiography, due out later in September.

MANCHESTER, England -- Asia Bibi is seeking political asylum in France less than a year after fleeing her native Pakistan for the safety of Canada.

WASHINGTON -- Despite the blasphemy law that has roiled Christians in Pakistan, the government has not executed anyone found guilty at trial.

BANGKOK, THAILAND -- A plea has been issued for Canada to rescue a Pakistani Christian refugee who is in hiding after a viral video calling on jihadi fighters to kill him swept through Bangkok's refugee community.

MANCHESTER, England - Pakistani authorities freed Asia Bibi, a Catholic woman acquitted of blasphemy, and she has flown to Canada to join her family at a secret address.

KARACHI, Pakistan - Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said Asia Bibi remains in the country, negating speculation that she had already joined her family in Canada.

More than a month after Pakistan’s Supreme Court announced that it had confirmed its decision to acquit Asia Bibi, the 51-year-old Catholic woman is still in Pakistan under protective custody despite an offer of asylum from Canada. 

After a decade of prayer, diplomacy and legal wrangling, a persecuted Christian farmhand and her family is about to start a new life in Canada.