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Danesh Kumar, the adviser on minority affairs to the Balochistan Chief Minister, said the government had decided to hand over sacred sites of religious minorities in Balochistan to promote interfaith harmony. In February, a crowd occupied and vandalized a 100-year-old Ahmadi mosque in Punjab. On October 5, also in Peshawar, Professor Naeemuddin Khattak, a member of the Ahmadiyya community, died after being shot while driving home from work. The family was in another location, however, and survived. In July, religious and right-wing parties criticized the governments plan to permit construction of a new Hindu temple in Islamabad. The killings took place during protests sparked by twin suicide bombings outside two churches there. Members of religious minority communities stated public schools gave Muslim students bonus grade points for memorizing the Quran, but there were no analogous opportunities for extra academic credit available for religious minority students. The constitution states no person shall be required to take part in any religious ceremony or attend religious worship relating to a religion other than the persons own. Ahead of Christmas in Lahore, police deployed some 6,000 officers and officials at 623 churches. Total. The incident was the first attack on a Hindu temple in Tharparkar in more than 30 years. Hindu Dalits remained vulnerable to human rights violations and pressure by perpetrators to withdraw police cases. The Washington-based United States Institute for Peace said 3,800 Shias were murdered between 2007 and 2013, with 325 of those killings occurring in 2012. On June 25, an antiterrorism court sentenced five al-Qaida militants to 16 years imprisonment each for terrorist financing and possession of explosives. February 27, 2023 . Ahmadi community leaders said they saw the requirement to designate Mohammed as last of the prophets as directly targeting them. According to the constitution and the penal code, Ahmadis may not call themselves Muslims or assert they are adherents of Islam. The blasphemy charges against Jaffar were followed by anti-Shia rallies throughout the country and at least three rallies in Karachi by Sunni groups on September 11 and 13 attended by thousands of individuals. Smaller minorities are collectively labelled as 'other'. Minority religious leaders stated members of their communities continued to experience discrimination in admission to colleges and universities. The attackers relationship to organized terrorist groups was often unclear. Status of Government Respect for Religious Freedom, Actions of Foreign Forces and Nonstate Actors, Section III. While the Ministry of Law and Justice was officially responsible for ensuring the legal rights of all citizens, in practice, the Ministry for Human Rights continued to assume primary responsibility for the protection of the rights of religious minorities. In February, the National Assembly introduced a draft law requiring internet and technology companies to open offices in Islamabad, locate their servers within the country, and remove objectionable internet content within a specified timeframe. Non-Muslims are required to have the head of their local religious communities verify their religious affiliation. By Rafiq A. Tschannen on October 11, 2020 ( 1 Comment) Shia-Sunni rift on rise in Pakistan, but Imran Khan govt's silence may be strategic . Since 1980s, Parachinar, with majority Shia population, has seen the emergence of radical Saudi-sponsored Salafist groups, and sectarian violence has become a disturbing phenomenon, fueled by local and global terrorist organizations like the Taliban and ISIS. It is more accurate than the previous one. Twitter and WhatsApp users circulated graphic images and video footage from the courtroom, depicting Naseem slumped over a chair and crowds of men ignoring the body and seeming to congratulate the killer. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), a national NGO, expressed concern over a surge in blasphemy cases against religious minorities, particularly the Shia community, and the continued potential for sectarian violence. On July 21, the government returned a 200-year-old Sikh gurdwara to the Sikh community in Quetta. According to Shia community estimates, There are approximate . Although there continued to be no official restriction on the construction of Ahmadiyya places of worship, according to Ahmadiyya Muslim community leaders, local authorities regularly denied requisite construction permits, and Ahmadis remained forbidden to call them mosques. 11.0%. Although students of other religious groups are not legally required to study Islam, schools do not always offer parallel studies in their own religious beliefs. Ahmadiyya Muslim community representatives continued to state that Ahmadi families were unable to register their marriages with local administrative bodies, known as union councils, since those councils considered Ahmadis to be outside the authority of the Muslim Family Law of 1961. In July, Tahaffuz-e-Bunyad-e-Islam [protection of foundation of Islam bill] was passed by the Punjab assembly, which supported only the Sunni interpretation of Islam, provoking a huge backlash from the Shia community. Sunni Muslims who want to distribute zakat themselves may request an exemption, and Shia Muslims are exempted by filling out a declaration of faith form. It has quasi-judicial powers and may refer cases for prosecution but does not have arrest authority. The wafaqs operate through an umbrella group, Ittehad-e-Tanzeemat-e-Madaris Pakistan, to represent their interests to the government. AsiaNews, the official press agency of the Roman Catholic Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, reported that two members of a Christian family were shot and wounded after buying a house in a neighborhood inhabited primarily by Muslims on June 4 in the Sawati Phatak Colony of Peshawar. Christian activists also stated young women from their communities were vulnerable to forced conversions. In a recent study conducted by the Law and Society Alliance, a New Delhi-based think tank headed by N.C. Bipindra, the population of G-B is now approximately 1.5 million, with around 39 per cent Shia, 27 per cent Sunni, 18 per cent Ismaili and 16 per cent Nurbakhshi. The law bans the sale of Ahmadiyya religious literature. In November, the government finalized its Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content Rules 2020, which sought to codify the PTAs authority to regulate content the government deemed unlawful. The rules not only enhanced the PTAs ability to compel online content platforms such as Facebook, Googles YouTube, Twitter, and Wikipedia to remove content but also extended the regulators purview to include local internet service providers that could also be held liable for such content. The non-Pakhtun population of Pakistan is predominantly Barelvi. Wafaqs (independent academic boards) register seminaries, regulate curricula, and issue degrees. This requirement effectively prohibits Ahmadi Muslims from holding elected office, as they recognize a prophet subsequent to Mohammed. The year 2020 saw a rise in blasphemy charges - at least 199 people were charged, of which 70% were Shia Muslims. The Sindh Hindu Marriage Act also applies to Sikh marriages. The proposal named a prominent Hindu business owner and ruling PTI party leader as the commissions chair, along with other Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Parsi, and Kalash members. Speakers at these rallies warned Shia of dire consequences, including beheadings, if they continued to blaspheme against the Prophet Mohammeds companions. In court proceedings, the girl retracted her video statement and said she wanted to return to her parents. Bibi remained in custody at years end. In May, the Cabinet approved a proposal creating a National Commission for Minorities within the Ministry of Religious Affairs. At the conference, JUI-F national leader Fazl ur Rehman praised the lawyers who were defending the teenager accused of killing U.S. citizen Tahir Naseem, a self-proclaimed Ahmadi, in Peshawar and blamed Western nations for supporting Ahmadi Muslims. Parliament, church leaders, and advocates continued to debate the text of a draft law to govern Christian marriages nationwide, because the existing regulation dated from 1872. The constitution mandates that the government take steps to enable Muslims, individually and collectively, to order their lives in accordance with the fundamental principles and basic concepts of Islam and to promote the observance of Islamic moral standards. The Sunnis, on the other hand, nurse the fear that they have decisively lost power and things . The constitution defines Muslim as a person who believes in the unity and oneness of Almighty Allah, in the absolute and unqualified finality of the Prophethood of Mohammed the last of the prophets, and does not believe in, or recognize as a prophet or religious reformer, any person who claimed or claims to be a prophet after Mohammed. It also states that a person belonging to the Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, or Parsi community, a person of the Qadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves Ahmadis), or a Bahai, and a person belonging to any of the scheduled castes is a non-Muslim.. Ahmadiyya community members said they were surprised by this instance of a senior government official condemning anti-Ahmadi violence, but added that they do not expect it to become the new norm. According to the Center for Social Justice, a national nongovernmental organization (NGO), at least 199 individuals were accused of blasphemy offenses, a significant increase over 2019 and the highest number of blasphemy cases in a single year in the countrys history. Persons accused of blasphemy were often simultaneously charged with terrorism offenses. Bakhtawar Jaffri, a Shia rights activist in Punjab, said she had recently filed a police report for anti-Shia hate speech but it had been ignored. NGOs lobbying for amendments to permit divorce in a wider range of circumstances praised the Ministry of Human Rights efforts to consult with stakeholders and the ministrys overall efforts to accelerate progress on the bill. Civil society groups continued to express concerns about the safety of religious minorities. On October 11, unidentified militants abducted six Shia pilgrims near the Pakistan-Iran border region of Panjgur, in Balochistan. . This statistic was all taken from many independent sources for the year 1999. Hundreds of Shia Pakistanis gathered on Saturday to bury 11 coal miners from the Hazara community killed by the armed group ISIL (ISIS), ending a week of protests that sought to highlight the. At years end, he was still being held at Camp Jail, Lahore, and had not been charged. The PTA cited public complaints against an unauthentic version of the Quran uploaded by the Ahmadiyya community on the Google Play Store and information that portrayed Mirza Masroor Ahmad as a Muslim on Wikipedia, which the PTA characterized as misleading, wrong, deceptive, and deceitful. The PTA successfully removed the same Quran application from the Apple Store in July. In June, the Punjab Provincial Assembly unanimously passed the Curriculum and Text Book Board Amendment Bill, which Governor Chaudhary Muhammad Sarwar signed into law. Citing a sanitation job advertisement issued by the Sindh provincial government, HRCP stated such advertisements infringed on human dignity and violated the constitutional guarantee of equality of all citizens. At the same time, NGOs reported that sometimes lower-ranking police would file charges of blasphemy, rather than a senior police superintendent who had more authority to dismiss baseless claims, or that police would not carry out a thorough investigation. During the year, courts overturned some blasphemy convictions upon appeal and acquitted others after the accused had spent years in prison. Pakistan's Human Rights Commission reported more than 200 terrorist attacks resulted in nearly 700 Shia deaths and over 1,000 Shia injuries in 2013. the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom also reported over 600 Shias were killed for their faith between 1999 and 2003. I fear for myself and my family. With the police on their way to interrogate him, and fearing the violent fate that extremist Sunni groups in Pakistan inflict on those accused of blasphemy, last month Kareem and his family chose to disappear. Victims said their attackers singled them out as vulnerable due to their religious minority identity. In late December, the PTA publicly used this new authority for the first time to demand the removal of sacrilegious content. His ordeal began with a Facebook post in early September, where he condemned the killers of a Shia Muslim martyred centuries ago. By law, decisions of the FSC may be appealed to the Supreme Courts Shariat Appellate Bench. According to data provided by the Center for Social Justice (CSJ), authorities accused at least 199 individuals of new blasphemy offenses during the year. Thousands of anti-Shia protesters recently gathered in the city of Karachi, with many openly showing ties to Sunni extremist groups like Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and Sipah-e-Sahaba, which has documented links to the killing of hundreds of Shia Muslims over the past few years. At the end of the year, CLAAS was planning to take the case to the Federal Ombudsman. By years end, police had dropped the case due to lack of evidence and pressure from activists. Shias adhere to the teachings of Islamic prophet Muhammad, but differ from Sunni in following the religious guidance of his family (who are referred to as the Ahl al-Bayt) or his descendants known as Shi'a Imams, whom they consider to be infallible. Governor Sarwar did not sign the bill, which was promoted by the PML-Q party, noting controversy about its provisions and concerns that it could be seen as anti-Shia. Shia Muslims also fear their religious freedom is being legislated away. In February, a court in Jacobabad, Sindh, ruled that the marriage with Raza was illegal under the 2013 Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act. Among the restrictions outlined in the bill, publishers, editors, and translators would be barred from printing or publishing any book and material containing statements or anything deemed to be of a blasphemous nature. The ministrys budget covers assistance to indigent minorities, repair of minority places of worship, establishment of minority-run small development projects, celebration of minority religious festivals, and provision of scholarships for religious minority students. The government continued to prohibit citizens, regardless of religious affiliation, from traveling to Israel. Shia Numbers are in the range of 320 Millions to 350 Millions and according to some estimates its in the range of 400 Millions. According to NGOs and media reports, individuals convicted and sentenced to death in well-publicized blasphemy cases dating as far back as 2014 including Nadeem James; Taimoor Raza; Junaid Hafeez; Mubasher, Ghulam, and Ehsan Ahmed; Shafqat Emmanuel; and Shagufta Kausar remained in prison and continued to await action on their appeals. The information in the following paragraph was provided in a country report on Pakistan by the . Shia leaders, meanwhile, denounced the specific honors prescribed by the bill to Mohammeds companions, which they said risked stoking discord between Shia and Sunnis, given their fundamental disagreements over some of the companions status within Islam. The accused were mostly Shia (70 percent of cases) and Ahmadi Muslims (20 percent of cases). Although the government continued to implement elevated security measures around Hazara neighborhoods in Quetta, some Hazara community members continued to state that these measures had turned their neighborhoods into isolated ghettos. There is no option to state no religion. National identity cards are required for all citizens upon reaching the age of 18. Similar to the previous year, some Sikh and Hindu places of worship reopened during the year. According to the provisional results of a national census conducted in 2017 (the most recent), 96 percent of the population is Sunni or Shia Muslim. According to the NGOs Center for Legal Aid, Assistance, and Settlement (CLAAS) and the Pakistan Center for Law and Justice, there were also reports of religious minority women being physically attacked by men. Civil society and legal sources said judges were generally hesitant to decide blasphemy cases due to fear of violent retribution. On July 31, Hindu business owner and member of the Khairpur Chamber of Commerce and Industries Raja Kishan Chand was killed by unknown gunmen in that city. The court may suspend or increase the sentence given by a criminal court in these cases. There were a series of additional violent incidents targeting Ahmadis following the Tahir Naseem killing in a Peshawar courtroom. 3. The Hindu community in Sindh and Balochistan remained vulnerable to targeted killings and kidnappings for ransom. Many have observed that outrage against Shia. On December 15, the Lahore High Court acquitted a second Christian man, Imran Ghafur Masih, who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy in 2010. Armed sectarian groups, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the once-banned anti-Shia group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), which is connected to other organizations banned by the government as extremist, and groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States and other governments, continued to stage attacks targeting Shia Muslims, including the predominantly Shia Hazara community. According to government figures, the remaining 4 percent includes Ahmadi Muslims (whom national law does not recognize as Muslim); Hindus; Christians, including Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Protestants, among others; Parsis/Zoroastrians; Bahais; Sikhs; Buddhists; Kalash; and Kihals and Jains. The National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR), an independent government-funded agency that reports to parliament, is required to receive petitions, conduct investigations, and request remediation of human rights abuses. Leh's demand for UT status started in 1947 as the old statements of the former parliamentarian and religious leader, Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, indicate. The Shia population is spread all over Pakistan. The government requires all madrassahs to register with the Ministry of Education in addition to registration with one of the five wafaqs. Other NGOs also said that 2020 had seen an increase in blasphemy cases. Despite these problems some international organizations have researched and reported some statistics. The court also barred her alleged husband and his family from meeting her and ordered police to arrest those who facilitated the marriage. Speaker of the Punjab Provincial Assembly and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) party leader Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi made numerous statements denouncing Ahmadis and any effort to undermine the status of Mohammed as Islams final prophet. 1 These two groups have been at odds for centuries. On December 24, the PTA issued a legal notice to two Ahmadi U.S. citizens requiring them to remove their website, trueislam.com, or face fines, sanctions, or potential prison sentences. In modern times, the split has fostered battles for power and resources. Both passed the recruitment test and had successful interviews but were denied appointment by the assistant manager. The constitution provides for freedom to manage religious institutions. It states every religious denomination shall have the right to establish and maintain its own institutions. On July 13, hundreds of members of the Bheel community, including women and children, marched and demonstrated against the demolition of their homes by revenue officials whom they said were in collusion with an influential landlord of the area in Mithi, Sindh. Three suspects were arrested for the rape but were released on bail, and the girls family said they harassed and pressured the girl to withdraw the case. Inflammatory anti-Ahmadi rhetoric continued to exist on social media and was at times spread by senior members of mainstream political parties. I am being targeted because I am from a Shia religious minority. According to the SATP, at least 10 persons were killed and three injured in 10 incidents of sectarian violence by extremist groups during the year. 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