Imran Khan ignores state of minorities in Pakistan, tries to provoke Indian Muslims

By Anish Kumar | First Published Jan 10, 2022, 10:02 PM IST

Islamabad has itself failed spectacularly to deal with the cases of human rights violations, forced conversion, and kidnapping of minorities’ girls despite being called out by the international community.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has once again tried to interfere in India's internal affairs, this time over the recent fringe statements against minorities in the country. This, despite the fact Islamabad has itself failed spectacularly to deal with the cases of human rights violations, forced conversion, and kidnapping of minorities’ girls despite being called out by the international community.

In a tweet on Monday, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan attacked the Indian government and asked the global community to take note of the incident of Dharma Sansad that was held in Haridwar last month. He claimed that the continuing silence of the Modi government on the alleged call for genocide of minorities, especially the 200 million Muslim community, begged the question of whether the BJP government supported this call.

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Appealing to the international community to take note and act, Khan further claimed that under the 'extremist ideology' of the BJP-Modi govt, all religious minorities in India have been targeted with impunity by Hindutva groups. He termed the Modi government's agenda as a real and present threat to peace in the region.

However, while making the ludicrous claims, Imran Khan chose to willfully ignore the observations made by the United Nations in 2020 about the miserable state of religious minorities in Pakistan. In 2021, the International Commission of Jurists noted that the Pakistan government should urgently take action against the ongoing persecution of individuals from religious minority groups by state and non-state actors.

Sam Zarifi, ICJ's Secretary-General, said that Islamabad had shamefully failed to deal with repeated demands for curbing longstanding violations of the right to freedom of belief or religion, including many instances of persecution of religious minority groups.

Currently, Pakistan constitutes 96.28 per cent of Muslims, except Shias, Hazra and Ahmedias. The minority community comprises merely four per cent of the total population, including 1.60 per cent of Hindus and 1.59 per cent of Christians. As per an international report, these minorities communities are not only subjected to discrimination but are also prone to violence and misuse of blasphemy laws.

Over 1,000 girls belonging to the non-Muslim faith are being abducted and converted to Islam every year. Even minor girls of minority communities are kidnapped and forced to marry Muslim men who are even senior citizens.

In one of its reports, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had found that religious minorities are unable to enjoy the freedom of religion granted to them by the constitution. The cases of forced conversion are frequent in the provinces like Sindh and Punjab. The indiscrimination is so deep-rooted in Pakistani society that the parliamentary committee even rejected the anti-forced conversion bill. The bill was being brought to protect the minorities from forced conversion. Religious Affairs Minister Noorul Haq Qadri went to the extent of admitting that the environment was unfavourable for bringing the law against forced conversions.

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