Pakistan No Place For Other Faiths- by Ajit Kumar Singh*
March 28, 2016
On early reports, at
least 72 people have been killed and more than 300 injured in a suicide blast
inside the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in the Iqbal Town area of Lahore, the
provincial capital of Punjab Province, on March 27, 2016. Lahore’s District
Coordination Officer Muhammad Usman stated, “The bomber managed to enter the
park and blew himself up near the kids’ playing area where kids were on the
swings”. Significantly, a large number of people, mostly Christians were
present in the park, celebrating Easter [Christendom’s holiest day].
The Jama’at-ul-Ahrar
(JuA), a breakaway faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed
responsibility for the suicide attack. JuA ‘spokesperson’ Ehsanullah Ehsan
declared, “We had been waiting for this occasion. We claim responsibility for
the attack on Christians as they were celebrating Easter. It was part of the
annual martyrdom attacks we have started this year.” The operation was
codenamed Saut-ul-Raad [Voice of Thunder]. JuA had declared its ‘support’ for
Daesh (Islamic State, previously Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, ISIS) in
March 2015.
The bomber involved
in the March 27, 2016, attack has been identified as Yousuf, son of Ghulam
Farid, a resident of Muzzafargarh District in Punjab. According to preliminary
investigations, the bomber had been teaching at a seminary for eight years in
Lahore after completing his religious education in Dera Ghazi Khan District.
SAIR has noted on numerous occasions in the past that most of the seminaries
across Pakistan are breeding grounds for terrorism and Islamist extremism.
Even on the presently
known fatalities, the Easter Sunday attack is the second worst ever targeting
Christians inside Pakistan. In the deadliest attack on Christian minorities in
Pakistan, at least 79 worshippers, including 34 women and seven children, were
killed and another 130 were injured when two suicide bombers attacked a
Christian congregation at the historic All Saints Church in the Kohati Gate
area of Peshawar, the provincial capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP)
Province, on September 22, 2013. According to varying media reports, some 600
to 700 people were inside the church at the time of the attack.
There have been at
least another four such attacks, resulting in 19 deaths, in the intervening
period. The last terrorist attack targeting Christians was on March 15, 2015.
At least 15 persons, including 13 Christians and two Policemen, were killed and
more than 70 were injured, when two suicide bombers attacked two churches near
the Youhanabad neighbourhood in Lahore, sparking mob violence in which two
terrorists were killed. Youhanabad is home to more than 100,000 Christians. JuA
had claimed responsibility for the attack as well.
According to partial
data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 21 terrorist
attacks targeting Christians, resulting in at least 200 fatalities, have taken
place across Pakistan since 2001. Some of the major incidents (each resulting
in three or more fatalities) among these included:
March 10, 2010: Six persons,
including two women, were killed and seven persons were injured when over a
dozen terrorists armed with Kalashnikov rifles, pistols and hand-grenades
attacked the office of World Vision International, a US-based Christian aid
agency, in the Oghi village of Mansehra District in KP.
September 25, 2002:
Seven persons were killed and another three were injured in a terrorist attack
on a Christian welfare organisation’s office, Idara Amn-o-Insaaf (Institute for
Peace and Justice), in Karachi District, the Provincial capital of Sindh
Province. Lashkar-e-Islami Mohammadi (LIM), a little-known terrorist group, was
blamed for the attack.
August 5, 2002: Six
persons were killed and another four were injured in a terrorist attack on a
Christian missionary school in the Jhika Gali Town of Murree tehsil (revenue
unit) in Rawalpindi District of Punjab Province.
March 17, 2002: Five
persons were killed and more than 40 were injured, including the High
Commissioner of Sri Lanka to Pakistan, in a grenade attack during the Sunday
morning service at the Protestant International Church located between the
American and Russian Embassies in the heavily protected area of the Diplomatic
Enclave in Islamabad. Amongst those killed were Barbara Green, wife of an
American diplomat and her daughter; two Pakistanis and an Afghan. The injured
belonged to different countries including USA, Britain, Australia, Canada,
Switzerland, Afghanistan, Iran, Ethiopia, Iraq and Sri Lanka.
October 28, 2001: 17
Christians – including five children – and a Policeman, were killed and nine
persons were injured, when six gunmen opened fire on a church in the Model Town
area of Bahawalpur District in Punjab Province.
The Christians
constitute a meagre 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s population of 193 million. While
they have been victims of terrorist atrocities, they have also been
intermittently attacked in mass and targeted violence by Islamist extremists.
Christians have, moreover, been systematically targeted by Pakistan’s perverse
blasphemy laws, which prescribe a mandatory death sentence for any purported
act bringing against Islam and its Prophet to disrepute. On May 24, 2015,
Police arrested one Humayun Faisal Masih, a mentally ill person, who was
burning newspapers in Sanda, a Christian locality, in Lahore. Muslim onlookers
accused him of blasphemy, alleging that some of the pages contained verses of
the holy Quran. A number of people gathered outside the Ravi Road Police
Station and demanded that the accused be handed over to them. Simultaneously, a
mob rampaged through the Christian neighbourhood. An unnamed local Christian
stated, “some angry Muslims, some armed with guns, ransacked churches and
attacked Christian residences and houses pelting stones… (there was) a horrific
and gruesome scene of violence against the innocent women, children, and
elderly.” According to reports, local Christians were warned of impending
violence by Police, and many had fled the area before the attack began.
Underlining the
complicity of the state in such incidents, the Supreme Court had observed, on
March 13, 2013, that the Punjab Police had failed to protect the lives and
properties of the inhabitants of Joseph Colony in Lahore. Notably, on March 9,
2013, hundreds of protesters turned arsonists and attacked some 160 houses and
80 shops belonging to Christians in Joseph Colony, a predominantly Christian
locality in the Badami Bagh area of Lahore, just a day after allegations of
blasphemy were levelled against a man in the region.
Christians have been
the principal targets for alleged acts of blasphemy. Significantly, then
Federal Minister for Minorities’ Affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian, was
killed on March 2, 2011, by terrorists of Fidayeen-e-Muhammad, a TTP faction,
and al Qaeda Punjab Chapter, for his opposition to the country’s blasphemy
laws. The Christians are also attacked for opposing often forcible conversions
to Islam. Asia Bibi, 46, who has been sentenced to death and has been in prison
for the last four years following a conviction for blasphemy, in her memoir
Blasphemy, describes how she had been asked to convert to Islam to ‘redeem
herself’.
Terrorists and
Islamist extremists have issued threats against the Christian community on
several occasions. On May 18, 2011, for instance, in the wake of Osama bin
Laden’s killing, the TTP vowed to fight with “new zeal” against “Our enemies…
NATO, Jews and Christians.” In another such threat, in June 2008, an extremist
group, Jesh Ahle-i-Alqiblat al-Jihadi al-Sari al-Alami [Army for the Direction
of the Movement of Global Jihad], distributed pamphlets demanding that
Christian Pakistanis convert to Islam or face death. The group declared, “every
Muslim had a duty to take such action against Christians”. It also called on
Muslims to attack and kill Christian foreigners.
Seeds of religious
intolerance have been systematically sown in Pakistan since its inception in
1947 – and, indeed, even earlier, during the struggle for independence. There
was a further and escalating radicalization during and after the regime of
military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq. Since then, Pakistan has witnessed rising
attacks against all minorities, including the Christians. According to the
Annual Report, 2015, of the United States Commission on International Religious
Freedom (USCIRF), between July 2013 and June 2014, 122 incidents of sectarian
violence occurred in Pakistan, resulting in more than 1,200 casualties,
including 430 fatalities. The report, thus observed, “Pakistan represents one
of the worst situations in the world for religious freedom for countries not
currently designated by the U.S. government as ‘countries of particular
concern’… Pakistan continued to experience chronic sectarian violence targeting
Shi’a Muslims, Christians, Ahmadi Muslims, and Hindus.”
Similarly, the Jinnah
Institute of Pakistan in a report titled State of Religious Freedom in Pakistan
2015, stated that, during the period 2012-2015, at least 543 incidents of
violence were carried out against religious minorities in Pakistan. Shias were
targeted on at least 288 occasions during this period, followed by Hindus (91
occasions), Christians (88 occasions), and Ahamadiyas (76 occasions).
In another
development that reiterates the fact that religious extremists have enormous
support, national capital Islamabad was turned into a fortress as supporters of
Mumtaz Qadri put the city under siege. Qadri was the bodyguard and killer of
Salman Taseer, then Governor of Punjab and an advocate of the amendment of
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. In a message on Twitter on March 27, 2016, Director
General Inter-Services Public Relations Asim Bajwa disclosed that the Army had
been requisitioned by the Government to control situation and secure the ‘Red
Zone’, the area which includes the Parliament House, Pakistan Secretariat,
Supreme Court, Prime Minister’s House, President’s House, and Diplomatic
Enclaves in Islamabad. Qadri was hanged on February 29, 2016. The hanging was
followed by protests in most major towns of the country.
The seeds of
religious extremism sown over the decades have brought Pakistan to the verge of
virtual anarchy. State-backed extremism has made life impossible for minorities
and, indeed, for Muslim sects deemed ‘deviant’ by the Sunni majority. Indeed,
sectarian violence between Sunni factions is also a growing reality as takfiri
ideologies (which arrogate to themselves the right to declare others
‘apostate’) take firm root across the country. State agencies continue to
harness Islamist extremism and terrorism to extend their strategic agenda into
the country’s neighbourhood – particularly in Afghanistan and India – creating
wide spaces for armed extremism that have produced a bloody blowback in
Pakistan as well. There is little evidence, however, of any radical review of
this ‘strategy’ at present.
* Ajit Kumar Singh Research Fellow,
Institute for Conflict Management
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