Embedded hatreds

Minority faith groups are increasingly at risk, not only of marginlisation but of murder, and few more so than the Ahmadi community. This is a community that is peaceful and has a long history of public service, in particular as doctors. It was yet another doctor who was shot dead in a targeted killking on June 20. Khaliq Bashir was standing outside his clinic when he was gunned down by two men on a motorbike. A month ago, another Ahmadi was killed in the same area in the same way. A few weeks before that another and the list goes on. At least 30 individual Ahmadis have been killed in Karachi since 1984 but it is significant that in not a single case has there been an arrest or prosecution.

Indeed, it is difficult to find a case anywhere in the country where anybody has been prosecuted for an offence against a member of the Ahmadi community. They are attacked in their homes, as they walk the streets or in the workplace.

The attacks are frequently seen by multiple witnesses who are able to identify the attackers but all to no avail. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the state is tolerant of such attacks, and is if not complicit directly then willing at an institutional level to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. Anybody that questions this assumption rapidly finds himself in hot water.

Many Ahmadis have fled the country, but even when they have reached what they believe to be a place of safety, the hatred follows them as evidenced by the murder of a man in Glasgow in April this year. The man arrested for the murder allegedly travelled nearly 200 miles specifically to carry out the killing of a man who had done no more to cause offence than wish a happy ‘Good Friday’ to Christians celebrating Easter. A fatal mistake. The man who died this week made no public pronouncements on anything; he just served his fellow men. Two men on a motorbike killed him, but the state had its finger on the trigger.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 22^nd, 2016.

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