WASHINGTON: A panel of the US government has called for India to be blacklisted over concerns about religious freedom violations, and for the removal of waivers that enable Pakistan to avoid consequences for similar violations. The panel’s call for action was renewed on this occasion.
The statement suggests that the waivers in place that allow Pakistan to avoid certain consequences that would be imposed if it were designated as a violator of religious freedom, be removed, rendering Pakistan not be able to evade such consequences.
In its detailed report, the United States Commission of International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) says that in 2022, Pakistan’s religious freedom conditions continued to deteriorate. Religious minorities were subject to frequent attacks and threats, including accusations of blasphemy, targeted killings, lynchings, mob violence, forced conversions, sexual violence against women and girls, and desecration of houses of worship and cemeteries.
The report says that members of the Shi’a Muslim, Ahmadiyya Muslim,Christian, Hindu, and Sikh communities faced the continued threat of persecution via harsh and discriminatory legislation, such as anti-Ahmadiyya and blasphemy laws, as well as increasingly aggressive societal discrimination amid a rise in radical Islamist influence. These laws have enabled and encouraged radical Islamists to operate with impunity, openly targeting religious minorities or those with differing beliefs, including nonbelievers.
It says that the new government under Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, which took office in April, weaponized the country’s blasphemy laws against former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his cabinet members.
Religious minorities, however, were especially vulnerable to prosecution or violence based on blasphemy allegations in a society that has grown increasingly intolerant of religious diversity.
Blasphemy cases remained a substantial threat to religious freedom, as did the sort of mob violence that has long accompanied such accusations. In February, a court sentenced Notan Lal—the owner and principal of a private school in Ghotki, Sindh—to life in prison under Article 295(c) of the Pakistani Penal Code (PPC) after a student accused him of insulting the Prophet three years prior. His appeal remains pending despite pleas of innocence. That same month, an angry mob in Punjab Province stoned to death Muhammad Mushtaq, a mentally ill man accused of burning the Qur’an; a mob of some 300 people then hanged his body from a tree.
The USCIRF report says that societal violence and targeted killings also continued to plague the country’s religious minorities. In January, unknown gunmen killed a Christian priest and wounded another as they drove home from Sunday Mass in Peshawar.
In May, unidentified assailants gunned down two Sikh businessmen in Peshawar, and a seminary student stabbed to death an Ahmadiyya man in Okara District, Punjab Province. The victim’s family members accused the chief cleric of the seminary of provoking the student to commit murder by delivering sermons calling for violence against the Ahmadiyya community.
From January to July alone, that community reported the desecration of over 170 graves and at least two houses of worship, often with the assistance of authorities. In July in Punjab Province, 53 Ahmadiyya graves were desecrated in Gujranwala District under the supervision of the police, while security forces
arrested several Ahmadis for conducting Islamic ritual slaughter in celebration of the Eid al-Adha holiday and thereby “posing as Muslims.”
In June, a group of armed men desecrated a Hindu temple in Karachi after two spokespersons for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reportedly made insulting statements about the Prophet Muhammad; Pakistan’s government vowed to hold the perpetrators accountable, although it had made no arrests by the end of 2022.
