About Us

The British Asian Christian Association (BACA) was born from a single event – in the ashes of churches and homes razed to the ground by a horde of Islamist thugs who persecuted Pakistani followers of Jesus Christ. It happened in the city of Gojra on August 1st 2009 when a married Christian couple were wrongly accused of using torn shreds of the Koran as confetti at their wedding. This false rumour grew in popularity following a hate message preached by a local mosque. Mob violence then led to the deaths of nine innocent people, 100 destroyed homes and two churches set on fire.

This incident pinpointed the need for a body such as the BACA to highlight the ongoing abuse of Christians in Pakistan. Believers in the country face regular persecution under a so-called, ‘Blasphemy Law’ by the wider community including a lack of employment and constitutional rights; child slavery and forced labour; the rape and forced marriages of women; the imprisonment of believers for their faith; destruction of churches and even death.

Creating a voice for Pakistani Christians

This incident pinpointed the need for a body such as the BACA to highlight the ongoing abuse of Christians in Pakistan. Believers in the country face regular persecution under a so-called, ‘Blasphemy Law’ by the wider community including a lack of employment and constitutional rights; child slavery and forced labour; the rape and forced marriages of women; the imprisonment of believers for their faith; destruction of churches and even death.

Human Rights Watch reports (2015) that 60 people have been murdered after being accused of ‘blasphemy’ since 1990. Pakistan’s penal code makes the death penalty mandatory for blasphemy although no one has yet been officially killed. Some 17 people are currently on death row for alleged blasphemy and another 19 people are serving life sentences. Our most recent research in 2021 indicates that 22 Pakistani Christians are currently serving life sentences or are on death row.

BACA was also begun to create a fellowship network for Pakistani believers and promote their needs to the wider secular community.  In 2019 we brought South-East Asian Christians together to celebrate 50 years of the Asian Christian Church in the UK (click here). We have raised the plight of Pakistani Christians in the worldwide media by protest actions (click here) such as a number of campaign marches from the Pakistan Embassy to Downing Street in London (click here) and peace concerts (click here).

Political pressure pushing for reform of the Blasphemy Laws of Pakistan has also increased following the meeting of multi-faith delegations, including BACA, with both the High Commissioner of Pakistan and MEP Jean Lambert, South Asian Delegate to the European Union. BACA leaders have also taken part in media debates with appearances on several TV and radio programmes.

The result of this hard work was the announcement of an amendment to the Blasphemy Law during a Federal Government hearing in Pakistan in early 2010. Shahbaz Bhatti, Minister for Minorities, gave a positive report of the amendment progressing during his visit to the UK in July 2010. The only Christian member of the Pakistani Cabinet, his assassination in 2011 slammed the door shut on any reforms.

A Muslim NGO with our help in 2014 estimated that 700 Christian girls are abducted raped and forced into Islamic Marriage every year (click here). We were the first Christian charity to free a woman from the clutches of their forced marriage rapist (click here) in 2017, and have set free several more since. We continue this fight which has become one of our main priorities.

Our response to questions from the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board are still used as a tool for assessing asylum claims from Pakistani Christians and has resulted in Special Status for them (click here). We have spoken at two Extraordinary Parliamentary Meetings in the Netherlands (click here) which has resulted in ‘High Risk Status’ being given to Pak-Christians fleeing there (click here). We have contributed to the UK Home Office Guidance for Pak-Christian Asylum seekers every year since 2015 and have helped the Home Office revamp their training and practices for interviews of Pak-Christian Asylum seekers. Our individual reports have helped scores of Pak-Christians gain refugee status in the UK (click here).

Other needs in Pakistan are always a focus for the BACA. We have helped give humanitarian aid to flooding and earthquake victims (click here); supported Asia Bibi, Pakistan’s most famous blasphemy law victim (click here) and advocated for her (click here) and continue to help many others caught under the same draconian law (click here). We have provided over 30 new clean water wells to deprived Christian communities in Pakistan, using a mixture of electrically powered generators and hand pumps (click here) – even getting the Pakistani Government to contribute (click here). We provide safe houses for forced marriage rape victims and their families and continue to extricate them from their captors (click here). We emancipate slaves from Pakistan’s notorious brick kiln industry (click here). We provide aid to Christian families who lose loved ones in the despicably unhygienic and unsafe sewage industry of Pakistan in which only Christians are allowed to be employed (click here). We provide advocacy to any persecuted Christians challenging for justice in the courts of India and Pakistan (click here). We provide Disaster and terrorism recovery for victims in India (click here), Pakistan and Sri Lanka (click here). Our aim is to establish projects to make the lives of Christians safer, equal and free from persecution in South-East Asia.