What happened on 28th of May, 2010 in Lahore?

Ahmadiyya Times Note: There are some factual oversights in the following article likely due to the inaccurate reporting in the media.  The two main errors are about the presence of a large number of police personal before the attacks and about celebration of some event other than the Friday prayers.  There were no large police guards assigned to protect the Ahmadiyya mosques nor were their special functions going on at any of the two locations except for the regular Friday prayers.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Staff | Opinion
Source & Credit: Christian Post
By Ata Us Salam | June 24, 2010

Terrorism is not a new thing for Pakistanis but the recent terrorist attacks at Ahmadiyya Mosques of Lahore left many questions for every person especially for Ahmadiyya community. I want to highlight these questions so that international as well as national community could know some hidden realities of this miserable incident.

This was the noon of 28th of May when people of Ahmadiyya community were gathered in their mosques named as “Dar-Uz-Zikar” and “Bait-Un-Noor” to offer Juma prayer and to celebrate an important day of their faith. Dar-Uz-Zikar is located in the area of Garhi Shahu and Bait-Un-Noor is located in the area of Model Town. Both of these above mentioned mosques are the largest mosques of Ahmadis in the city of Lahore.
At that time a large number of Police officials were deployed at both of the mosques because of many threats from different terrorists groups. At about 01:35 of noon, fully armed terrorists arrived at the gates of both of the mosques and martyred all Ahmadis security guards by throwing Grenades and by gunfire. After killing them, these terrorists entered inside mosques but surprisingly not even a single Police Guard killed during whole of this process, despite the fact that police personnel were positioned both inside and outsides of these mosques. When extremists entered inside, the police guards who were present inside the mosque started to run outside. When Ahmadis asked them to open fire on terrorists, they replied that they were not permitted to use weapons. When Ahmadis requested them to give their weapons to them so that they could fight with killers, they refused to handover their guns and ran away from mosque. Police security guards did not fire even a single bullet towards these terrorists and terrorists fired no bullet towards police while they were entering into mosques, why?

Some months ago, terrorists have attacked in the same way at Police and Elite force training centers, which were also located in Lahore. In both of these training centers a large number of Police commandos were made hostage. At that time, provincial government of Punjab had called for army to liberate the young police commandos but when terrorists attacked mosques of Ahmadis, the Chief Minister of Punjab did not call army to free Ahmadi worshippers from these fanatics. These terrorist remained there for hours and killed Ahmadis without any outside interference. American government had gifted many army Helicopters to combat with terrorists, which have been used in past to free army and police hostages, but the incident of 28th was a strange kind of incident that no Helicopter called for to escape more than thousand of innocent men, women and children.

Terrorists remained at the roof of Dar-Uz- Zikar for a long time and they were clearly visible from outside but none of them was targeted by any law enforcing agency. Ahmadis themselves captured one terrorist and injured other at the mosque of Model Town while performance of police was zero. Police entered into mosque after safely escape of killers from there. Police officials claim that they found three heads of suicide bombers, where are those three heads? Have the mobile calls record of police security guards was check by any agency? Police has shown the same kind of negligence when dozens of Christians were burnt alive in “Gojra” in the presence of police employees. Chief Minister reaches every part of province, but after this incident, he could not reach at both of the mosques that were located within ten minutes drive from his home. Mr. Prime Minister could not find even a single minute to speak some sympathetic words on TV screen where he appears daily.

Questions do not only arise on the character of political leadership and police but the role of media also remained very painful during whole of this drama. No doubt media reported this incident throughout the day to make their stories but it never ever felt that it was a fair media. They did telecast interviews of those persons who were passerby or from their own TV cameramen to ask about this terrorism, but they avoided interviews of those who had suffered everything. Different private TV channels took interview of leaders of Ahmadia community of Pakistan but none of them broadcasted those interviews at their channels except “Express News”.

During the coverage, all TV channels have been calling Ahmadiyya mosques as their worshipping places and not even a single of them discussed them as mosque. The same situation was of print media of Pakistan. The names of two mosques which came under attack are Dar-Uz-Zikar” and “Bait-Un-Noor” but all media called them from the names of that area in which they are located. Ahmadis were gathered in these mosques to offer prayers but no one could courage to use the word of “Prayer” as the reason of their gathering. I know that my above-mentioned criticism on our media would be non-understandable for most of non-Pakistanis that is why I think it as my responsibility to make it clear to all of readers. In fact all of these above mentioned words are considered as Muslim words and Ahmadis were declared as Non- Muslims by the Parliament of Pakistan.

This parliament has passed many non humanitarian laws for Ahmadis. For example, if any Ahmadi says “Aslam-O- Alaikum” (translation: wish you good luck) to any person he can be sent to Jail. Many Ahmadis have been imprisoned for many years by writing “Bismillah ar Rehman ar Raheem” (translation: I start with the name of God) at their marriage cards. These are just two examples of constitution of Pakistan which is filled with dozens of such kind of discriminatory laws. Hon’ble Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Pakistan never took any notice of such kind of rubbish laws but he has made a full court to listen to the recent amendments in which parliament made a way of selecting Judges through a Judicial Commission. Ahmadis are called with hate as “Qadianis” in Pakistan and almost all print media and some electronic media as well have been reporting them as Qadianis during this horrible time.

In the end I want to write a very clear example of this biased media coverage. “Geo” is considered all over the world as a free and fair TV channel of Pakistan. Name of one of its renowned host is Kamran Khan, whose program is telecasted at night. He told his viewers in his specific dramatic style that in past such kind of terrorist acts have been happening with Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims and now on Ahmadis. He used these words very cleverly to inform his viewers that Ahmadis are Non-Muslims. On one side Ahmadis were dying and on the other side he was showing his prejudice for them. Another anchor of the same channel, who portrays himself as a Muslim scholar, has been encouraging Muslims to kill Ahmadis and have been abusing Ahmadiyya leaders at the same channel. Mr. Hamid Mir is also one of the renowned anchorperson of this channel. Many times he takes interviews of foreign high officials. His call has traced by intelligence agencies, which confirmed his relations with some mutinies. I hope these Pakistani anchor persons would give long lectures in foreign countries on fair policies of their TV channels and their faiths after arriving at America and Europe in these summer holidays.



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