Minority rights: ‘Lawlessness causing religious intolerance, sectarian violence’

HRCP brings representatives of minorities together

KARACHI: Hate speech and lawlessness are the main reason why there is an increase in sectarian violence in Pakistan, claimed Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) secretary general IA Rehman on Tuesday.

He said this while addressing a meeting of the HRCP expert group on 'Communities vulnerable because of their belief.' The meeting focused on the various aspects of sectarian strife in the country.

Rehman said that the government has not done anything important to resolve these issues, except for making laws that are not being implemented. He said that the state makes the laws, but they are misused and people are implicated in false cases.

Referring to the civil society's role, he said whenever any such incident takes place, the civil society protests but many of them are reluctant to speaking out.

A representative of the Christian community said they face many issues but they also have proper networking among all the representatives of every community. "Best solution is to talk, resolve and finish any misunderstanding that starts developing."

Lawyer Syed Ali Ahmed Tariq claimed that in the last few years, 250 Ahmadi doctors have been killed in Pakistan, out of which 28 were from Karachi. He believes that the word 'minority' should be erased from the minds of the people, in order to give equal rights to everyone. "We are only 3.5% of the total minorities in Pakistan, why does the majority fear us," asked a representative of the Zikri community, Javed Ghufran. He was of the view that no action is taken against those who have negative attitude towards the minorities. "People are only killing Shias because of their religion," claimed Alia Naqvi, whose husband was a publisher and was killed in 2009. Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research communication manager Abida Ali said that if the state is aware about the people who spread hate speech, then why don’t they ban them.

Piler executive director Karamat Ali said that in the past few years, considerable migrations have taken place on the basis of caste, ethnicity and sect.  “State has a big role in [handling] all these issues and so do the political parties.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 30^th, 2016.