A Christian girl was killed allegedly by a Muslim man in Pakistan after her parents rejected a marriage proposal sent by him, a media report said on Sunday. The deceased, Sonia, and the accused, Shehzad, were residents of the Old Airport area in Rawalpindi. The local police station officers claimed to have arrested an accused named Faizan, whereas raids were being carried out to arrest the prime suspect Shehzad, the sources said.
Incidents involving forced conversion of minority non-Muslim girls and subsequent marriage with Muslim men frequently surface in Pakistan.
Last month, a young Christian girl, Arzoo Raja, was reportedly abducted, forced to convert and marry a 44-year-old Muslim man in Karachi. Her parents filed a case which is still in the court.
Religious minorities have been living in Pakistan for centuries, but still they are not considered equal citizens. They are persecuted by both state and society. Why?
Pakistan is an Islamic country, which was arrived on the world map on 14 August 1947. When British rulers left the Indian subcontinent, they divided the region into two independent states: India and Pakistan – created as a state for subcontinent Muslims. According to Pakistan’s constitution, non-Muslims are considered a minority, including Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Ahmadis, Kalash, Zoroastrians, and so on. At the time of partition, they constituted 20% of the total population. Today, however, minorities constitute only 3% of Pakistan’s 207 million people because of their continual emigration. According to government statistics, almost 97% of Pakistanis are Muslim – about 80 percent Sunni and nearly 20 percent Shia.
Pakistan’s Constitution, like any other provides for fundamental rights, but whether they are guaranteed is debatable because, every now and then, we hear of cases of religious discrimination against Hindus, Christians and non-Sunni Muslims, targeted terror-related sectarian and communal violence, caste discrimination in the corridors of power and electoral restrictions.
The Pak government claims to have launched several initiatives to promote religious pluralism and curb rising sectarian and religious violence, but factually, religious violence, particularly against the minorities, be they Ahmadiyyas, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and Zoroastrians, is common throughout Pakistan.
They face violence, intimidation, periodic charges of blasphemy, which in Pakistan, carries a death penalty.
Extremism and terrorism have become political weapons against Hindus, Christians, Ahmadiyyas, Shia, Sufi and Sikh communities. These attacks are usually blamed on religious extremists, but certain laws in the Pakistan Criminal Code (PCC) and government inaction have allowed attackers to surge higher. Sunni militant groups are known operate with impunity against minorities, and it is quite common to see law enforcement turning a blind eye or appearing helpless to prevent such attacks.
Pakistan, in fact, is turning into a human rights graveyard. Experts say that using extremists and terrorists, and by default, the armed forces or even the ISI, as instruments of societal suppression is aimed at facilitating and ensuring the dominance of the Punjabi lobby over others.
Pakistan’s Christian community, which forms approximately 1.5 percent of the country’s population, has often been accused of blaspheming the Quran and Prophet Mohammad.
Some notable incidents involving blasphemy accusations were as follows:
•On October 28, 2001, in Lahore, Islamic militants killed 15 Christians inside a church.
•On September 25, 2002, two terrorists entered the “Peace and Justice Institute”, Karachi, where they separated Muslims from the Christians, and then executed eight Christians by shooting them in the head.
•In November 2005, 3,000 militant Islamists attacked Christians in Sangla Hill in Pakistan and destroyed Roman Catholic, Salvation Army and United Presbyterian churches. The attack was over allegations of violation of blasphemy laws by a Pakistani Christian named Yousaf Masih.
•In August 2006, a church and Christian homes were attacked in a village outside Lahore. Three Christians were seriously injured and one missing after some 35 Muslims burned buildings, desecrated Bibles and attacked Christians.
•On August 1, 2009, nearly 40 houses and a church in Gojra were torched on the suspicion that Quran had been burnt there. While police watched, 8 victims were burned alive, 4 of them women, one aged 7. Eighteen more were injured.
•In April 2014, a Christian couple from Gojra, Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar, received death sentences.
•On March 27, 2016, during Easter Sunday celebrations in Lahore’s Gulshan Iqbal Park, a suicide bomber killed 80 Christians and wounded another 340.
•Men are also not spared from the occurrence of such hate crimes against the religious minorities. In 2009, a young Christian man was gang-raped by thirty men when he refused to convert to Islam.
Human rights violations against the minority Ahmadiyya community have been systematic and allegedly state-sponsored to gain the support of Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan. In 1984, the martial law-run government promulgated the anti-Ahmadiyya Ordinance XX that added Sections 298-B and 298-C in Pakistan Criminal Code.
These draconian sections relate to the misuse of epithets, descriptions and titles etc. reserved for certain holy personages or places, and are punishable by imprisonment that may extend to three years, and also be liable to pay a fine.
Through this ordinance, Ahmadiyya Muslims were deprived of most of their basic human rights and their freedom of faith.
There has also been severe persecution of Hindus by Muslims in Pakistan since its formation in 1947.
Increasing Islamisation has caused many Hindus to leave Hinduism and seek emancipation by converting to other faiths such as Buddhism and Christianity.
The Hindu population in Pakistan is estimated to be around 1.5 percent of the total population from a high of 23 percent in 1947.
Pakistan’s citizens have had serious Shia-Sunni discord as well. Some see the April 1979 execution of deposed President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on questionable charges as the precursor of Pakistani Shia-Sunni strife.
Attacks on minorities are generally attributed to banned militant organisations of Deobandi or Ahl-e-Hadith (Salafi) backgrounds.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan, reports emerged that rations were being denied to minority Hindus and Christians in the coastal areas of Karachi. The Saylani Welfare Trust, carrying out the relief work, said that the aid was reserved for Muslims alone. On 14 April, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed concern with the discrimination.
The crimes against the minority communities do not stop here, hundreds of Pakistani Hindus who are victims of bonded labour were converted to Islam. They were converted amidst the pandemic in June in the Badin district of Sindh province.
Apart from the forced conversion of religious minorities, religious extremists have also burned down and vandalized churches, temples, and other places of worship of the minority groups. In January 2020, a mob of over 400 people attacked the holiest places of worship of the Sikh community, Gurdwara Nankana Sahib while chanting anti-Sikh slogans. They have also threatened to convert Gurdwara Shaheedi Astgan into a mosque. The prevalence of atrocious crimes against religious minorities shows how their rights and freedom are being violated just because they belong to the minority population.
In 1956, when the country adopted its current name, the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan,’ the lives of minorities changed in another significant way. History tells us that all governments of Pakistan used Islamic ideological card to hold political power. However, the process of Islamification, introduced and stringently enforced by the late dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977 – 88), furthered this process of discrimination against minority communities.
Islamic policies proliferated madrassas, which promoted hard-line ideology, introduced controversial blasphemy laws and instituted Sharia courts in the country. State and society increasingly rejected rationalism and humanism, amping up hostility towards vulnerable minorities.
The ill-treatment of minorities is two-fold: biased legislation and social intolerance. These two forms of discrimination do not operate in isolation; rather, they work together and are mutually reinforcing the law also contributes to these discriminatory practices. Though the constitution of Pakistan guarantees equal rights for every citizen under Article 25, the same document prohibits non-Muslims from becoming president or prime minister. The same standard applies to other high positions within the government.
International human rights and freedom advocacy groups and think tanks, such as Pew Research Center, Freedom House, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others; rank Pakistan not friendly and not free country particularly for religious minorities.
Considering the above facts, it wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that the condition of minorities is worsening in Pakistan and their numbers are declining by the day. The promises Pak government made about a “just” state in which minorities will be protected have been ignored and that is why Pakistan has been long identified by human rights organisations as one of the worst countries for religious minorities.