Tragic Eid for Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya community as police desecrate graves

INTERNATIONAL DESK: At a time when the world was celebrating Eid-Al-Adha, Pakistan’s discriminated Ahmadiyya community was being subjected to grave horror as the police forces to whom they could turn for protection, themselves desecrated 53 graves in Gujranwala in the Majha region in Punjab, Pakistan.

The police targeted two graves and what is abhorring is that this was not an isolated incident where their sentiments were brutally hurt. This was the fourth such case this year, the community leaders alleged, according to a report in The Friday Times, Pakistan’s newsweekly.

Tragically, in Peshawar, the grave of an Ahmadi man was dug out and his remains were thrown out. On the night between July 6 and 7, Gujranwala police as well as some local citizens raided two graveyards in the Talwandi Khajurwali district of Gujranwala.

The photos of the aftermath of police actions on the scene clearly show that the headstones were all left shattered and broken, reported Islam Khabar.

In another similar incident earlier in the month of February, this year, the Punjab Police desecrated almost 50 Ahmadi graves in Hafizabad, by removing plaques and destroying tombstones.

There is no clear indication of the Ahmadiyya population that is estimated to be the world’s largest residing in Pakistan. It is estimated at anything from 0.22 per cent to 2.2 per cent of the 220 million population.

Similarly, in May this year, a 36-year-old Ahmadi man was stabbed to death by a Madrassa student in Okara. As per the reports, the murderer was a member of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a Sunni militant body that is proscribed, but in talks with the government.

Earlier this year, a 70-year-old Ahmadi man who was on trial for blasphemy died in Bahawalpur Jail due to alleged mistreatment despite his ill health. He was awaiting his bail hearing scheduled for later this year.

Notably, the Ahmadiyyas were declared as non-Muslim under the law in 1974 in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Constitution officially declares the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam to be “infidels” and bars members of the community from “posing as Muslims,” which the vandalized graves were found guilty of, as per the portal.

Moreover, a recent incident of the arrest of three members of the Ahmadiyya community for sacrificing animals on Eid-al-Adha in Pakistan once again highlighted the atrocities being committed against the minorities and the country’s deep-rooted disdain for them.

According to the Dawn newspaper, three members of the Ahmadiyya community were arrested on Sunday for sacrificing animals on the festival of Eid-al-Adha right after an FIR was filed against five people for “hurting Muslim sentiments”.

The FIR stated that complainants were present in a mosque after Eid-al-Adha prayers when they came to know through verified sources that residents of the Ahmadi community were sacrificing animals inside their homes.

“The complainants then reached the area and climbed the roofs of nearby houses, to find that the members of the Ahmadiyya community were sacrificing a goat at one place while the other members were cutting the meat of another animal at a different place,” the report said.

“The Islamic sentiments of the complainants and other Muslims were hurt by this and [the complainants] recorded a video which can be presented as evidence,” it added.

“By performing a ritual in line with Islamic beliefs and presenting themselves as Muslims despite being Ahmadis, they have committed a cognisable offence, according to Muslim ummah’s belief, and this has grievously hurt Muslim sentiments,” the complainants stated in the report. (ANI)