What lies ahead?: ‘Pakistan unable to protect minorities’

SDPI report highlights decades of discrimination faced by minorities.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan was created to protect a minority in the subcontinent but it has constantly been lacking spaces for the minorities present in itself. It has been unable to extend the same kind of protection to citizens of other faiths, discussed experts in the Sustainable Development Policy Institute’s (SDPI) seventeenth sustainable development conference.

Dr Sukhadeo Thorat of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, Dr Nathalène Reynolds of the French Institute of Research on Africa and Kenya, and Ahmad Salim, Mome Saleem and Dr Humaira Ishfaq of SDPI were sharing their views on Tuesday at the launch ceremony of a report titled, ‘Searching for security, the rising marginalisation of religious communities in Pakistan’ in a session on the first day of the conference.

“The report provides a baseline for minority issues,” said Dr Abid Suleri, the executive director of the SDPI, adding that future of minorities could only be discussed in the presence of a baseline.

The report states that though religious communities have suffered discrimination in Pakistan for decades, their persecution has intensified in recent years and has now reached critical levels.

Ishfaq added that this includes significant barriers to political participation, failure to grant legal recognition to non-Muslim marriages, unequal judicial procedures and the unwillingness of law enforcement agencies to uphold legal protections against discrimination.

“Political participation of minorities will enable them to perform to the fullest. At present, they come to parliament on reserved seats, which confines them to work within party lines,” said Mome Saleem of the SDPI.

The country’s blasphemy laws continue to be applied against many Pakistanis, including disproportionate numbers from religious minorities, with little respect for the rights of those accused and in violation of Pakistan’s international legal commitments, the report states.

The environment in which minorities find themselves is characterised by hate speech, frequent invocation of blasphemy laws and increasingly violent attacks on places of worship, it adds.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10^th, 2014.