New Delhi, Jan 19 In the wake of several allegations of rape and sexual assault at the highest tiers of the Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya, as many as 136 members of the community, majority of them women, have sent an open letter to their global head, raising concerns over the Jamaats handling of the cases being reported, Samaa TV reported.
The cases went public last December when Nida Ul Nasser, 36, the grand-daughter of both the third and the fourth Ahmadi leaders, revealed a long history of alleged sexual abuse by her father and close family members of the incumbent global leader of the community, which was recorded as telling her to produce four witnesses to prove rape or stay silent, otherwise the Jamaat's system would take its course to deal with her, the report said.
Although some of the signatories of the open letter are ex-Ahmadis, this letter is the first of its kind as no culture of questioning policies of the Jamaat has existed to date. The Jamaat office-bearers closely monitor their members on social media and issue warnings to those liking, tweeting, retweeting, or quoting tweets of sex abuse survivors, including Nida and Afzal Upal, or those endorsing hashtags such as #AhmadiMeToo or #JusticeForNida, the report added.
A copy of the five-page letter started floating around on social media and particularly in WhatsApp groups Monday when the initiator informed all signatories that it had been sent electronically to the community head's office in the UK, and national executive bodies of the Jamaat in the US and Canada.
The signatories of the letter, out of whom 91 are women, belong to different cities in the US, the UK, Canada, Pakistan, Germany, Mauritius, and Scotland.
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