Rights abuse in pak

 

THE report of Pakistan’s own National Commission on Rights of the Child (NCRC) about deep-rooted and widespread religious discrimination -- this time affecting children from minority communities -- only endorses the fact too well known to the world. It also brings in sharp focus the serious concern expressed by countless people across the world over rapid decline of percentage of minority populations in Pakistan in the past few decades. The report, brought to public notice by ‘Christian Daily International’, thus, serves a great cause of awakening of the global human community about the conditions in which religious minorities such as Christians and Hindus plus a few others have to live -- with their very survival at stake all the time. If the world does not wake up to this ugly reality of Pakistan, then it will do a disservice to itself in time. The Pakistan NCRC report exposes how Hindu and Christian children are pushed to a point of no return and get converted to Islam.

 

The report has cases of underage girls from minority communities getting abducted converted to Islam and then getting pushed into marriage with older Muslim men. The report asserts that few legal options are available to such girls because of what it calls “institutional bias”, lack of law enforcement, and overwhelming public pressure. The situation is worst in the most populous province of Punjab (Pakistan) where 547 Christians, 32 Hindus, two Ahamadias, and 2 Sikhs were among the victims, along with 99 others (between January 2022 and September 2024). This is nothing but a systemic rot systematically overlooked by the Pakistani authorities -- which even a blind person can ‘see’. The NCRC report states, among other things, that children from oppressed castes and minority groups are hesitant to sit on the front benches of class rooms and ask questions or even drink water from shared glasses (for the fear of getting noticed by others).

 

They are mocked at for their religious belief and told to convert to Islam to receive “divine rewards”. The fact that these details have emerged from an official report points to the ugly religious reality of Pakistan. When Pakistan was carved out of a United India in 1947, the Hindu community, for example, was known to be around 25% of the population. Now, its percentage has got reduced to somewhere between 1% and 2%. Similar statistics are available about other minority communities. In fact, the Ahamadia community is a Muslim sect, but is generally treated very badly by the Muslim majority in Pakistan. At Pakistan’s formation, fears to such effects were expressed by many who knew the ways and means of Islamic religious extremism, but hopes also were expressed that things would improve once Pakistan starts living as an independent State. Unfortunately, the hopes were proved wrong and the fears were proved right. The trouble with Pakistan is that its rulers across the political spectrum have been brazen about the situation -- uncaring and unmindful of the trauma the minority communities suffer from as a result of religious suppression and Muslim high-handedness.

 

The Nehru-Liyakat Ali Pact in early years of Independence became a document of trust the two countries gave each other about care of their minorities. While India tried its best to live up to its own sovereign promise, the authorities cared a damn -- and purposefully looked the other way when religious minority communities were given raw social deal in Pakistan. Such a situation cannot be allowed to go. India should rise in this regard and raise the issue at the United Nations by refusing to term this as Pakistan’s internal matter. This is a human rights issue and the larger world also needs to sit up and take notice and apply pressure on Pakistan to mend its ways post-haste.