Life in the shadows: Pakistani Christians fear arrest in Thailand

His family of seven share two small, squalid rooms in a cockroach-infested Bangkok apartment. But like many Pakistani Christians living illegally in Thailand, Farooz's sharpest worry is not poverty but arrest.

There is no safe return to the homeland they fled due to religious persecution, where Islamist invective surged higher last week after the release of Asia Bibi on blasphemy charges.

Christians make up less than two percent of Pakistan's Muslim-majority population, but are the sporadic targets of hardline Islamists.

Churches have been bombed while pernicious charges of blasphemy are easily pinned on the group, often to settle personal scores.

Mass protests against last week's pardon of Asia Bibi - a Christian woman on death row since 2010 over allegations of insulting Islam - have put conditions for the minority in Pakistan back under the spotlight.

It has also reminded those who fled, thousands of whom live in the shadows in Bangkok, what awaits if they return.

"We cannot go back, our country does not accept us, and no other country wants to take us ... so we are trapped here in Thailand," says Farooz, who gave an alias to avoid being identified by police.

Yet the minority are deprived refugee rights in Thailand, and appear increasingly unwelcome as a police crackdown takes place.

Aged 15, Farooz is erudite and multi-lingual - he speaks Urdu, Punjabi, English and Thai.

But neither he nor his three younger siblings have gone to school for the last five years.

Instead, they are forced to pass the days inside - unable to work legally and facing the thinly-disguised scorn of their Thai neighbours.

Thailand is not a signatory to UN conventions protecting refugees. But it used to be a sanctuary of sorts, where relaxed visa rules allowed entry and