Pakistan: Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) Extremists Openly Threaten Ahmadis
The International Human Rights Committee (IHRC) is again calling the attention of the international community to intensifying threats against the Ahmadi citizens in Pakistan. Enjoying virtual immunity from official sanction, and magnified by viral social media posts, hatred for Ahmadis has become a form of mass hysteria.
An example of illegal incitement to violence may be found in the following speech now widely circulated in a video[1]:
Whoever feels sympathy for Qadianis should take them to their home. If Chief Justice feels sympathy for them, he should take them to their home. If anyone from the administration has sympathy, he should take them to his home. You talk of preaching, By the God of Holy Kaba, we will make life hell for them in District Okara.
Why are you feeling so sympathetic towards Qadianis?
Preaching aside, we are compiling their data wherever the Qadianis are living and soon we will tell them how we allow them to preach!
They will be forced to leave their homes, let aside do preaching.
We are Ahl e Sunnat, we made Pakistan.
We made the English run to England.
We held the flag of moon and star.
The IHRC is receiving many heartbreaking appeals for assistance from Ahmadis in Pakistan who fear for their safety and lives and have concluded that the police and other state officials are either indifferent to their vulnerability, or complicit in their persecution.
The IHRC thus again appeals to governments and international organizations to insist that Pakistani authorities take immediate steps to punish any who threaten or harm others on the basis of their religion or ethnic background, and thus reduce the specter of massacres at the hands of extremist forces that now haunts the country.
This incitement to violence in the viral social media posts and videos are inconsistent with international norms and values concerning freedom of religion and belief, as enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), on the freedom of religion, and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which was ratified by Pakistan in 2008. Three other UN human rights treaties, as well as numerous General Assembly Resolutions and Human Rights Committee comments, prohibit religious discrimination. This viral social media posts and videos also violate Pakistan’s own National Action Plan as well as the recently enacted cybercrime laws because it fuels hatred, discrimination and persecution against members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan.
Nonetheless, the Pakistani government authorities, who continue to bring frivolous cases against Ahmadi Muslims under anti-Ahmadiyya, blasphemy, and cybercrime laws, turn a blind eye towards systematic and country-wide efforts by Islamic extremists to fan hatred and ignite violence against Ahmadi Muslims. Instead of prosecuting the makers of these social media posts and videos under cybercrime laws and the National Action Plan, the governmental authorities continue to protect and support extremists and target innocent Ahmadis.
This comes just weeks after a group of top UN Human Rights experts including UN Special Rapporteurs urged an “immediate end to discrimination and violence against Ahmadis in Pakistan, citing documented evidence of “extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, attacks on places of worship and curtailment of free expression, peaceful assembly and association.” Apparently, their pleas fell on deaf ears.
We call upon the Pakistani authorities to honor their international human rights commitments to protect religious freedom and promote religious tolerance towards the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
We respectfully request all members of the international community to urge the government of Pakistan to take urgent steps to bring its laws and practices in conformity with international standards as ordained by UDHR and ICCPR.
