Ahmadiyya Times | Staff News | Intn'l Desk
Excerpts | Pakistan | Persecution of Ahmadi Muslims
Asian Human Rights Commission Report 2009
"Continuing discrimination and violence against Ahmadis: The second amendment of Pakistan’s Constitution (1974) adopts an exclusionary definition of Islam and declares Ahmadis a non-Muslim minority. Clause C (b) of Article 260 states that “‘non-Muslim’ means a person who is not a Muslim and includes a person belonging to the Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist or Parsi community, a person of the Qadiani group or Lahori group (who will call themselves ‘Ahmadis’ or by any other name), or a Baha’I, and a person belonging to any of the scheduled castes.
The Pakistan Penal Code also contains legal provisions that institutionalize explicit discrimination against the Ahmadi sect, including Section 298-C, which stipulates that “any person of the Quadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves ‘Ahmadis’ or by any other name), who directly or indirectly, poses himself as a Muslim, or calls, or refers to, his faith as Islam, or preaches or propagates his faith, or invites others to accept his faith, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations, or in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious feelings of Muslims shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine.” This provision stands in direct contradiction to the right to freedom of speech and religion enshrined in Articles 19 and 20of the Constitution. In March, fifteen men from Sillanwali tehsil, Sargodha district, Punjab province were booked under Section 298-C for attending a place of worship that resembles a mosque, thus for the “impersonation of Muslims”.
The blasphemy laws are also widely used against the Ahmadis, with about 340 out of the 964 persons alleged under blasphemy laws from 1986 to August 2009 being members of the sect, according to a NCJP report. At present more than one thousand Ahmadis are estimated to be in Pakistan’s jails on charges of blasphemy.
At least five members of the Ahmadi sect were murdered in targeted killings in 2009, resulting in a total of over one hundred killings since the introduction of anti-Ahmadiyya laws by the Zia ul Haq government in 1984. In a conference earlier this year, held under the auspices of the Punjab provincial government, the people in the audience, many of them uneducated, were instructed by Islamic fundamentalists that they have a duty to kill Ahmadis. They were led to believe that they would be greatly rewarded for shedding the blood of Ahmadis.
In Faisalabad, a well known Ahmadi trader, Mian Laiq Ahmad, was attacked by three armed men whilst sitting in his car on May 8, 2009 [1]. The armed men blocked the road to his house and shot him to death. On August 6, 2009 an Ahmedi, Rana Ata-ul Karim, was shot to death after his wife was harassed by three Muslim extremists in Multan [2]. They were targeted for being members of a minority sect of Islam."
[1] http://www.ahrchk.net/statements/mainfile.php/2009statements/2074/
[2] http://www.ahrchk.net/statements/mainfile.php/2009statements/2168/
Read more: The State of human rights in Pakistan in 2009
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