World News | Pakistani human rights agency sees spike in rights violations in Punjab’s Ahmadi community

Lahore, 16th February (PTI) — A fact-finding mission led by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has reported appalling persecution against the minority Ahmadi community in the country’s Punjab province.

The HRCP report, released on Wednesday, found evidence that civil authorities in the Gujranwala and Wazirabad districts of Punjab were directly involved in the destruction of minarets at Ahmadi places of worship over the past few months after local communities raised objections. Action Politics Religion Outfit.

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“The government claims to do so to circumvent the threat of mob violence,” the report said, adding that the way authorities handled the matter only fueled hostility towards the community and made community members more vulnerable.

Rights groups have expressed concern about various issues facing minority communities, including the desecration of Ahmadi’s tombs, destruction of minarets at their places of worship, and FIR targeting members for animal sacrifices during Eid al-Fitr.

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“It is particularly worrying that the government believes that some laws and constitutional provisions provide space for such persecution, although the report indicates that this is not the case under Article 20(b) of the Constitution,” the report said.

“Whilst the delegation learned that the local bureaucracy, police and judiciary were successfully intimidated by a religious group (Tehreek-e-Laibbaik Pakistan), their response showed a pathetic inability to manage law and order while respecting the fundamental rights of the Ahmadi community ,’ the report added.

The mission recommended the implementation of the Supreme Court’s 2014 and 2021 judgments, which included the creation of a special police unit to protect religious minorities’ places of worship.

It also called for the development of police capacity to deal with the threat of mob violence in such situations.

Last month, a local cleric and his followers in the Sialkot district of Punjab refused to bury an elderly woman from the Ahmadi community in a cemetery.

Such incidents have occurred in other Ahmadi cemeteries in Punjab in the past, but none of the culprits have been arrested or tried.

Ethnic minorities, especially the Ahmadis, are vulnerable in Pakistan and are often targeted by religious extremists.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)