Activists of the Rawadari Tehreek party hold placards as they march to mark National Minorities Day in Lahore on Aug 11, 2023. (Photo: AFP)
Six Christian youths have been released and a case against them was dropped after they clashed with police during a Minorities Day rally in Islamabad on Aug. 11.
Nearly 500 activists from the Minorities Alliance Pakistan (MAP) clashed with police in the evening when their rally from National Press Club in the capital Islamabad headed towards Democracy Chowk, a town square in the vicinity of important buildings such as the Prime Minister’s Office.
“Two were released at 3 a.m., while four were released in the afternoon the next day,” said Akmal Bhatti, Catholic chairman of the MAP who led the rally.
“The charges of assaulting police were dropped and no first information report was registered. The case is closed now,” Bhatti told UCA News.
Fifteen protesters and a few policemen were injured in the clash. Live television coverage showed Bhatti being grabbed by his collar by police.
“There was no police warning. They are biased against religious minorities. They pushed our women with plastic shields and started the scuffle. It was police brutality,” Bhatti said
Shafqat Fayyaz, station house officer at Islamabad's Model Police Station Kohsar, refused to comment, citing warnings from his superiors.
“We have instructions ... against sharing comments directly,” he told UCA News.
For three years, the MAP has been holding rallies in Islamabad to mark Aug. 11 as “Minorities Day” to safeguard the religious freedom championed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of the world’s fifth most populous nation with 235 million inhabitants.
"You are free. You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan," Jinnah said in his first address to the Constituent Assembly on Aug. 11, 1947.
According to the last national census in 2017, Pakistan had 2.6 million Christians who made up 1.27 percent of the population. Hindus were at 1.73 percent.
Minorities in Muslim-majority Pakistan say they are treated as second-class citizens. The government’s anti-minorities policies have made it difficult for them to prosper in life. Draconian laws, including the infamous blasphemy law, are often used to target them. Hindu and Christian teenage girls are forced to convert to marry Muslim men.
Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic federal minister for minorities, led the campaign to declare Aug. 11 as Minorities Day in 2009. However, he was assassinated two years later.
“Police violence at the rally was a sign that impoverished minorities are not equal citizens,” said former lawmaker Mary James Gill.
They [minorities] are not owners of this country. Therefore, they should not go on roads for their constitutional and legitimate rights,” said Gill who acts as director of the Center for Law and Justice, a non-government organization.
“It is a message that minorities are weak and helpless; they should silently strive to feed their children or find another safe refuge if possible. Religious minorities risk their lives in the war for their rights.”
Critics like Gill alleged that Jinnah’s 1947 call to foster secularism went unheeded.
“We should stand with each other” given the current plight of minorities. “We demand the citizen’s rights to protest must be respected,” said Samson Salamat, chairman of the Rwadari Tehreek (movement for religious tolerance) party.
Salamat organized an “equality march” in Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city, on Aug. 11.
“We are challenged by the deep-rooted religious discrimination and forms of inequality, trends of hate speech, and provocation against minorities on the pretext of false blasphemy allegations,” Salamat noted.
“Minority communities are compelled to feel insecure as their voices remain unheard and unattended despite the deteriorating situation of their rights.”
