Pakistan: Crucifying the People of the Book

“We had gone only a short distance when the boy took out a knife and attacked me, accusing me of having said something insulting about his religious beliefs two years back,” the 17-year old Christian boy told Dawn.com.

A shell-shocked Shiraz nevertheless mustered his strength, wrenched the knife from his attacker and ran back home to safety. For the next couple of days, he kept silent about the attack on him and the wound. On the third day he decided to inform his parents about the incident.

His father, a vegetable grower, quickly contacted the local Parish priest, who moved quickly to remove the family away from the village to Islamabad. A few days later, the Church leaders succeeded to secure the help of some senior police officers and a Muslim cleric (who is said to be a distant relative of the attacker) from Sargodha to effect a patch-up between Shiraz’s family and the village’s Muslim community. Shiraz and his family were forgiven after he swore his innocence upon Bible. Yet the mediating Muslim cleric debarred the family from entering his village or Sargodha ever again.

”Since then we are living in Lahore in forced exile,” says Shiraz’s mother, visibly shaken by their forced departure from her husband’s native village. She is now worried about the future of her three daughters and four sons as the family finds itself dependent upon assistance from a non-governmental organisation that has provided them shelter.

The family suspects that a local Muslim Jat, who is a close relative of the attacker, could have instigated the incident to oust them from the village. “I had a tiff with him some time ago after he barged into our house under the influence of alcohol. He had since been nursing a grudge against us,” says Shiraz’s father. “Obviously, we cannot prove it,” he admits.

Shiraz and his family were lucky to get “pardon” and escape their village alive. Other Christians – who form 2.4 per cent of the total provincial population, the largest Christian concentration in any province – spread across Punjab are not. Many of them have endured worst kind of violence from myriad sectarian and jehadi groups operating out of different parts of the province and others have actually lost their near and dear ones, and property and livelihoods. Just like Shiraz and his family, majority of the victims of systematic violence were later compelled to leave their homes and villages and cities and even the country to safety. Others who couldn’t or didn’t leave are force to live under constant threat to their lives and livelihoods.

Christian leaders and rights activist say the violence against their community has escalated steadily ever since the adoption of blasphemy laws and the rise of Islamic orthodoxy during the last more than two-and-a-half decades. According to the National Commission for Peace and Justice (NCPJ), a vast majority of 132 Christians and 456 Ahmedis charged under the blasphemy laws since 1986 belong to Punjab. “Most Muslims who faced charges of blasphemy also come from Punjab,” says the NCJP’s Peter Jacob.

That indicates that Punjab has already won the unenviable distinction of being the most intolerant of all the four provinces as far as their non-Muslims populations are concerned.

“It is true that non-Muslims in Punjab have suffered more violence than those living in the rest of the country,” Dr Hasan Askari, a Lahore-based political and defence analyst, agrees. “The increase in religious orthodoxy and extremism during the last three decades has spawned strong sentiments and violence against non-Muslims, particularly Christians and Ahmedis, living in the province,” he argues.

He attributes the increasing religious intolerance in the province to the rise and consolidation of various sectarian and jehadi groups like Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Sipah-i-Sahaba, Jaish-i-Mohammad and Lashkar-i-Tayyaba. Moreover, he says, the Pakistani military establishment and intelligence agencies have also contributed a great deal to the violence against non-Muslims in Punjab by fomenting anti-India and anti-Muslim feelings.

Apart from charging and killing individuals under the blasphemy laws, mobs of rabid extremists have time and again attacked Christian community in different cities of Punjab killing people, burning their churches and houses and expelling them from the homes.

Starting with the incident of arson and looting in Shanti Nagar in Khanewal in 1997, the Christian community has been subjected to arson, loot and lynching in Sialkot, Sagla Hill and Gojra in the recent years. In most such cases, the police have traced the involvement of different Punjab-based sectarian and jehadi groups. Yet no action has ever been taken to effectively protect the Christians from future attacks on their homes and worship places.

Christians are usually seen by the extremist groups as “agents of the United States” in Pakistan and, therefore, must be punished for Washington’s policies. At least 38 Christians lost their lives after “Taliban” and their local allied groups attacked Christian community in Bahawalpur, Texila, Murree and Islamabad in the spate of post-9/11 violence in October 2001, days after the US invaded Afghanistan.

“In most such incidents local police choose to remain a silent spectator. They prefer to reach the site of crime only when the mob has done its job and returned,” confesses a senior police officer who requested anonymity. “It is always a difficult situation for a police officer of the SHO level to tackle.

Nobody wants to be seen on the side of those accused of desecration the Holy Quran or using indecent language against the Prophet (PBUH) and stand up to the rabid mob, even if the victim involved is a Muslim,” he adds. At the same time, he admits that in many cases the charges against the victims are false and brought on to grab their property or because of old rivalries.

Police officers privately allege that in many recent cases the attackers have tacit support of local politicians from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). It is no coincidence that violence against Christians (and Ahmedis) whether in Shanti Nagar or in Gojra peaks when the PML-N is in power in Punjab.

“There are some complaints of the PML-N leaders having linkages with the sectarian and jehadi groups. Besides, the party has never denounced sectarian and religious violence or the war on terrorism in clear terms. Its leaders always use very ambiguous language whenever they talk about religious extremis and violence and terror war,” says Dr Askari.

When forced to take a stand on the increasing attacks on non-Muslims in their home province, the PML-N leaders prefer to speak in vague terms – condemning violence but defending discriminatory laws.

Apart from the sense of insecurity, Christians in rural and urban Punjab are also coping
with severest possible social and economic discrimination. “There is an increasing sense of exclusion, inferiority and discrimination in the Christian community of the province today than any time in the past,” says Jacob.

They are often subjected to public insults, humiliation and intimidation both at the community level and at work place. “(For the Muslim employers) Christian men and women are good only for the job of a sweeper. This discrimination shows even in the public sector. Just go through any city government advertisements: the job of sweepers is always reserved for Christians only while that of a cook for Muslims only,” Jacob says.

Prime Minister Gilani’s commitment last year to reserve a five per cent quota in government jobs is the first such affirmative action taken by any government in years, he says.

Dr Askari also notes that Christians have socially and economically been excluded from the mainstream life during the last couple of decades. “A few years back most nurses and medical support staff at the public (and private) hospitals used to be Christians. Today, you rarely find a Christian nurse. They just don’t get such jobs (in the public or the private sector) any more,” he says. The situation in the education sector is not much dissimilar.

“The Christian middle class in the urban Punjab has fizzled out in the past few years because of their restricted access to government and private jobs,” argues Jacob. “In the rural areas, the situation is even worse. Most Christians living in villages are migrating to the cities to protect them and their families from religious, social and economic discrimination,” he points out. Even those who own agriculture land now prefer to move to the cities for a better future because of the increasing influence of extremists there, thinking it would be easier for them to hide their identity in the urban jungles.

“But our cities have also become very intolerant of non-Muslims and most coming from the rural areas just end up in urban slums like Youhana Abad in Lahore. The increasing intolerance in society has largely squeezed the opportunities available in the past to the Christian community to grow out of poverty and hunger. And no-one seems bothered about that,” Jacob regrets.