Pakistan’s official policies restrict religious freedom: US

The US State Department’s annual report on religious freedoms in Pakistan and several other countries seeks to mirror the reality while expressing concern over growing levels of intolerance. It is a useful index in assessing the state of religious tolerance in Islamic countries like Pakistan, which are also propelled to the frontline of the war on terrorism.

The chapter on Pakistan on brings out clearly that the government is responsible for the heightened threat to minorities, particularly Christians and Hindus. “The government demonstrated a trend towards deterioration in respect for and protection of the right to religious freedom,” says the report, and goes on to lament that some government practices have ‘limited freedom of religion, particularly for religious minorities’.

Is this an indictment of Pakistan? Well, in a sense it is because religious tolerance is sin qua non for harmony and peace in any society. Yes, this is not the first time that the US State Department has voiced concern over the state of affairs in Pakistan. It has done so in its earlier reports on religious freedoms as well. It means that there is no appreciable change in the plight of Shias, Ahmadiyas, Christians and Hindus in the country.

Significantly, this year the US report points out that the Pakistani constitution is not above blame in targetting religious minorities. It says: “In Pakistan, the Constitution and other laws and policies restrict religious freedom and the government has enforced these restrictions”. 226 people from minority Muslim sects have been killed in 63 incidents this year; in the western Balochistan Province, more than 100 members of the ethnic Hazara community, who are predominantly Shiite, have been fatally attacked in 2012 More than 400 Shias were killed between 2008 and 2011.

The Pakistan authorities regularly block web sites without specifying any reason. At last count, more than 15,000 Web sites were censored thus under the generic complaint of hosting ‘‘pornographic or blasphemous’’ content, according noted Pak journalist Huma Yusuf. Writing in the New York Times (July 23), he lamented: “The crackdown on minority-run Web sites is especially egregious given that terrorist groups enjoy a vast and unchecked Web presence. Abu Jundal, a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group held responsible for the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, recently told his Indian interrogators that the organization maintains a trained Web team to manage Web sites. Other violent extremist groups are active on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter”.

It is difficult to disagree with Huma Yusuf when he says that the blocks on minority Web sites ‘bode poorly for the basic right to free speech, not only for Pakistan’s religious minorities, but also for anyone whose views diverge from those of unaccountable officials’.

Blasphemy law is the stick the majority community uses to terrorise the minorities.

Under the Pakistan law, anyone can make a complaint of an alleged blasphemy. The complainant need not be an eye witness. Opponents of the law are mostly liberals, who are no more than paper tigers. And the few, who really matter like Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer, and the lone Christian Minister in the Gilani government, Shahbaz Bhatti have been assassinated in what a move is aimed at silencing the voices of the liberals and reformers.

Another aspect of the Pakistani society that comes out loud and clear in the report is the fact that Pakistan is fast becoming unsafe for the religious minorities with attacks on them are on the raise. The government rarely investigated attacks on minorities, and prosecution of perpetrators of violence is also rare. As a consequence, Pakistan is plunging into a climate of impunity. More so since police and security agencies regularly abuse religious minorities in custody.

The situation for the Hindu minority has become so unbearable that most of them and their sympathisers in Ghotki town of Sukkur district in the Sindh Province have taken out a protest rally through the main streets of the town. The rally staged on Sunday, July 29 was unprecedented; it was billed as a demonstration in solidarity with the Hindus; while kidnapping of Hindu business men has become a regular occurrence, forced conversion of Hindu girls into Islam are on the rise in Sindh and Balochistan alike. Headline to the report on the rally in the Express Tribune (on July 30) read: “There is a conspiracy to make Hindus flee from Pakistan”.

A damning commentary on the state of affairs six decades after Pakistan emerged as an independent and separate nation for the Muslims of British India.

-yamarar