Zeeshan Salahuddin - Strangers in their own land
A research report
reveals the plight of minorities in Pakistan
On Tuesday, January 19, the Jinnah Institute (JI) in
Islamabad released their second report on minorities titled “State of Religious
Freedoms in Pakistan”. The publication documents and maps incidents of violence
and atrocities against minorities since 2012, and the findings are shocking.
With the advent of the National Action Plan (NAP), other institutions such as
the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) have determined that the
incidents of violence overall (and thus violence against minorities) have gone
down in the last calendar year, this publication reports at least 351 incidents
of violence against minorities since 2012.
Minorities in Pakistan have always been presented as soft
targets, easy picking for sectarian groups, and in recent years, even
non-sectarian elements. The primary groups that suffer as a result of the
state’s weak response are Shias (including Hazaras and sub-sects), Christians,
Ahmedis and Hindus. Since 2012, JI reports that 40 attacks of varying scale and
intensity were carried out against the Christian community, the most
significant ones being a massive arson attack on Joseph Colony in Lahore, and a
church bombing in Peshawar. Christians account for 2.5 million individuals in
Pakistan.
During this period seven churches were damaged, and 14 Christians
were charged with blasphemy. As stated before, the amount of violence in the
country has declined overall, which also lowers the incidents of violence
against minorities overall. However, in interviews and conversations with JI
researchers, it is evident that the Christian community feels marginalized, a
second class of citizen, unprotected practically despite being protected
constitutionally, and a non-priority for the state.
There has been an increase in violence against Shias
Nearly 1 million Hindus reside in Pakistan, with 80% of them
hailing from Sindh. Hindus bear the additional issue of being discriminated
against institutionally, as they are labelled as untrustworthy, vile, and evil
traitors, even within curriculum taught in schools. This systemic hatred and acrimony
translates into forced marriages, forced conversions to Islam with complete
boycott from the originating family, and rape of young girls in the Hindu
community. This is further exacerbated by regularly targeting of the Hindu
community by extortionists and kidnappers. The systematic and systemic
stigmatization of Hindus is also resulting in mass migrations of Hindu
populations from Pakistan to neighboring India.
Ahmedis have the added disadvantage of being discriminated
constitutionally, the report says. This marginalization originates from the
anti-Ahmadi Ordinance XX of 1984, which criminalizes any Ahmadi for declaring
themselves as Muslims. Between 2014-2015, 39 Ahmadis were killed in religiously
motivated attacks. Of the hundreds of Ahmadis displaced by persecution, several
have sought asylum abroad. Most recently, in Lahore, a step by the government
to remove a discriminatory sign against Ahmadis from a local shop resulted in a
massive protest by right-wing parties, calling the incident an insidious Ahmadi
conspiracy.
Shias, unfortunately, are the worst affected community. CRSS
data suggests that even though overall violence against minorities has halved
since 2014, there has been anincrease in violence against Shias in the
country. In the last three years, JI recorded 23 attacks on Shia places of
worship. There were 203 target killings and 1,304 Shias were killed in bomb
attacks. In places like Balochistian, public anti-Shia messaging continues
unabated, and blasphemy charges and other legal harassment is also used as a
tool, even in the most populous province of Punjab.
The stigmatization of Hindus is resulting in mass
migration
The report provides 15 recommendations for the state and
provincial units. These include regulation and registration of seminaries and
regulation of their curricula, accurate databases of sectarian and
religiously-driven attacks as well as blasphemy cases, additional training and
capacity building of law enforcement agencies, and reenergizing the practically
defunct National Commission on Human Rights and giving it magistracy rights to
take up public interest litigation. The recommendations also include setting up
parliamentary committees, government job quotas, and teachings of tolerance.
As it stands, the government progress, even under the NAP,
has not been effective. It is convenient to hide behind the numbers, but it is
clear that nothing concrete has been done to not just protect minorities in
Pakistan, strangers in their own land, but actually empower them to be prominent
members of society without fear of persecution, harassment or death.
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/strangers-in-their-own-land-2/