QUETTA, Pakistan (UCAN) -- Christians here in the capital of Balochistan province have protested the death of a Christian laborer whom soldiers beat seeking information about an unsuccessful attempt to steal a motorcycle.

Church leaders have visited the house of Nadeem Menga, where his elderly parents and young widow are in mourning.

Menga, 34, a sanitation worker at an infantry school, died on June 28 after soldiers beat him and others at an abandoned army clinic in Quetta, 1,500 kilometers southwest of Islamabad. He was a member of the Church of Pakistan, a union of Protestant Churches.

According to Shehzad Menga, the victim's younger brother, also a low-paid "sweeper" at the same school, some people on June 27 tried to steal a motorcycle parked outside the nearby house of an army captain, but the officer's wife foiled the attempt.

"The next day 35 people, 30 of us Christians, were detained," he told UCA News. "When we failed to name the culprits, they started beating us with batons and kicking us with their army boots."

Shehzad recounted how he saw his brother badly beaten and, though also injured, managed to pick him up and flee to the nearby Combine Military Hospital, where doctors pronounced Nadeem dead. However, they refused to hand over the body to the family until Father Anjum Nazir, parish priest of Holy Rosary Church, spent the night at the hospital negotiating the release.

The Catholic Church in Quetta has taken a keen interest in the case, with Father Nazir conducting meetings with army officials as the investigation continues.

The day of Menga's death, the Catholic priest led 600 Christians in a protest march from the Quetta press club to the governor's house, 35 kilometers away. "We want justice for Menga's blood," protesters shouted as they walked.

Father Nazir advised protesters against any "destruction to public property for revenge." Soldiers posted at checkpoints along the way tried to snatch cameras from workers of the Catholic bishops' National Commission for Justice and Peace, who photographed the action. Some Church workers were also detained for two hours. However, their mobile phones and cameras were eventually returned, again after Father Nazir's intervention.

Following the rally, the five Church-run schools in Quetta -- three Catholic and two Protestant -- closed for three days in protest, during which time local Christians also remained indoors in protest. The Church of Pakistan-run Mission Hospital of Quetta also closed.

Local Catholic Church representatives -- a De La Salle brother and two priests including Father Theophilus Joseph D'Souza, vicar general of Quetta prefecture -- paid a condolence visit to Menga's family on July 2. "Even now we are encouraging local Christians to become strong in their faith in such difficult circumstances," Father D'Souza told UCA News.

Pastor Bashir Masih told UCA News that both the protest march on June 28, which he joined, and the funeral the next day were memorable events.

During the protest, he said, "some enraged Christians even abused soldiers who closed Nadeem's body in a coffin planned to bury him only in the presence of close relatives." He estimated about 7,000 gathered to pay their last respects to Menga.

The pastor charged that poor Christians working menial jobs in army institutions are regularly abused and made prime suspects in case of any robbery.

Javed Barkat, a local Christian, similarly told UCA News, "Christian maids and sweepers are usually the prime suspects whenever there is theft in the house or office in which they work." He said the response to Menga's death should serve as "a warning for authorities who think of us as a poor and submissive community."

Several Catholic and Protestant priests told UCA News the local Christian community has been living quietly while several ethnic Baloch groups have been fighting a low-level war with government forces for political autonomy and a greater share of revenues from local resources. Balochistan, bordering Afghanistan and Iran, is considered Pakistan's most underdeveloped province, even though it has valuable natural resources.

Most Christians in the troubled province do menial work. Christians and Hindus are both tiny religious minorities in Balochistan, where Muslims form up to 98 percent of the people. The Catholic Directory 2006 counts 28,716 Catholics in a population of 7.7 million.

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