Pak police demolish minarets of Ahmadi worship place in Punjab province

Lahore: Police in Pakistan's Punjab province demolished minarets of a 70-year-old worship place of minority Ahmadi community allegedly on the pressure of radical clerics, a spokesman for the minority community said on Monday.

The incident took place on Sunday at Kalra Kalan in Gujarat district, some 150 kms from provincial capital Lahore.

Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan official Amir Mahmood told PTI that an official of the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab police came to the said Ahmadi place of worship and told that there are strict orders from the department to demolish the minarets as the place gives a look of a mosque and under the law of the land Ahmadis cannot build minarets at their worship place.

On Sunday, a police team reached there and demolished the minarets and also painted it, removing the green colour.

Mahmood further said the Ahmadi worship place has been damaged on the pressure of local clerics who also lay claim to the place as theirs.

"A senior police officer said that this worship place of Ahmadis belongs to Muslims and you (Ahmadis) have no right to it," he said.

Minorities, especially Ahmadis, are very vulnerable in Pakistan and they are often targeted by religious extremists. Former military dictator Gen Zia-ul Haq made it a punishable offence for Ahmadis to call themselves Muslims or to refer to their faith as Islam.

Pakistan’s Parliament in 1974 declared the Ahmadi community as non-Muslims. A decade later, they were banned from calling themselves Muslims. They are banned from preaching and from travelling to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage.

Last month, a fact-finding mission led by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) underscored an alarming uptick in the persecution of members of the Ahmadi community in Punjab province.

The HRCP report found evidence to suggest that the civil administration in Gujranwala and Wazirabad districts of Punjab were directly involved in destroying minarets on Ahmadi sites of worship in the last couple of months, following objections raised against the community by a local political-religious outfit.

"The administration claims to have done so to circumvent the threat of mob violence," the report said, adding that the way authorities handled the matter only fostered growing hostility towards the community, making community members more vulnerable.

The Rights body expressed concerns on various issues faced by the minority community, including the desecration of Ahmadi graves, the destruction of minarets at their worship sites, and the FIRs filed against the members for carrying out ritual animal sacrifice on Eid.

"Of particular concern is the administration’s perception that some legal and constitutional provisions provide room for the persecution of this kind, although the report notes that, under Article 20(b) of the Constitution, this is not the case," the report said.

The mission recommended the judgments of the Supreme Court from 2014 and 2021 be implemented, which includes the establishment of a special police force to guard religious minorities’ places of worship. It also called for developing the police's capacity to deal with the threat of mob violence in such situations.

In Pakistan, around 10 million out of the 220 million population are non-Muslims. According to the 2017 census, Hindus constitute the largest religious minority (5 million) in Pakistan.

Christians make up the second largest religious minority, with almost the same number (4.5 million) and their concentration is mostly in urban Sindh, Punjab and parts of Balochistan. The Ahmadis, Sikhs and Parsi are also among the notable religious minorities in Pakistan.