RSSBaldeep Kumar decided to flee strife-torn Buner valley with his family after surviving a bombing.
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A group of displaced Sikhs at the Gurdwara Panja Sahib
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“I was heading home in a car with four other people when we were hit by a bomb dropped by a jet plane,” said the 30-year-old Sikh. “Only two survived in the incident that left a scar on my face as well as wounds on my chest and left leg.”
The cloth merchant’s family is one of the 450 Sikh families from Buner and the adjacent Swat valley who have taken refuge at Gurdwara Panja Sahib in the wake of military operation to oust Taliban militants from Malakand division. The gurdwara or Sikh worship place is one of the holy places of Sikhism in Hasan Abdal, a town in northern Punjab, 100 kilometers southeast of Swat.
Fleeing civilians have taken to the roads on foot or in buses and trucks out of this mountainous region. An estimated 2.3 million people, mostly Muslims, have fled the fighting over the last month.
But minorities, made up of Christians, Hindus and Sikhs, face particular concerns. Taliban insurgents have been attempting to impose a tax levy on minorities and in some cases have intimidated them or blown up Christian schools according to some unconfirmed reports from the area.
Some Sikhs who have fled the Taliban and the government offensive told UCA News that they were asked to pay 50 million rupees (US$620,000) as jizia, a tax levied on non-Muslims living under Islamic rule, to the Taliban.
According to Behari Lal, a Sikh member of the Swat district council, 35 Sikh families living in the restive Aurakzai tribal region took refuge at Gurdwara Bhai Joga Singh in Peshawar after paying 20 million rupees “tax” to the militants. Lal added that the militants had kidnapped a Sikh leader and forcibly occupied at least 10 Sikh homes in Qasimkhel village.
Church leaders openly condemned the tax on Sikhs at a May 22 press conference at Lahore Press club after a meeting of bishops and other Pakistani Christian. The meeting was titled “Extremism and Religious Minorities in Pakistan.”
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Children swim in a stream which
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“We are also being threatened by the Taliban,” said Church of Pakistan Bishop Samuel Azraiah of Raiwand to a reporter. “Security measures have increased at Christian institutions upon the recommendation of the government. We condemn every civilian or religious group that murders or imposes tax in the name of religion.”
Meanwhile, Peter Jacob, executive secretary of the Catholic bishop’s National Commission for Justice and Peace, told UCA News that the commission has rented a house in Rawalpindi to accommodate two Christian families till they return to Swat.
A member of one of these families, Sohail Anjum, a Christian driver, lost two of his daughters in the evacuation.
“We never thought this would happen. Together with my wife, I searched several refugee camps but in vain. We asked the Church for jobs and shelter as we do not want to sit uselessly until the war ends,” Anjum said.
Kumar shares the same uncertainty. Speaking at the health center at the
Gurdwara Panja Sahib where he is presently being treated, he said, “I have seen injured people fleeing for their lives when bombs dropped on residential areas. Many injured, like me, cannot be properly treated due to the closure of clinics due to the curfew.”
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