Islamic Republic of Pakistan

Figure   4: Map of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Area: 778,720 sq km 

Population: 165,803,560 (July 2006 est.)

Languages: Punjabi 48%, Sindhi 12%, Siraiki (a Punjabi variant) 10%, Pashtu 8%, Urdu (official) 8%, Balochi 3%, Hindko 2%, Brahui 1%, Other 8% (mainly English – the official and lingua franca of Pakistani elite and most government ministries - and Burushaski)

Location: Southern Asia, bordering the Arabian Sea, between India on the east and Iran and Afghanistan on the west and China in the north

Introduction

Pakistan is bordered on the south by the Arabian Sea, India on the east, and Afghanistan and Iran in the west. The violent Muslim demand for a separate homeland resulted in the carving of Pakistan from India at the time of the British departure in 1947.

At the time of Partition in 1947, the Hindu population of Pakistan was estimated at approximately a quarter of the total population. For example, the population of Karachi, Pakistan in 1947 was 450,000, of which 51% was Hindu, and 42% was Muslim.  By 1951, Karachi’s population had increased to 1.137 million because of the influx of 600,000 Muslim refugees from India.  In 1951, the Muslim population of Karachi was 96% and the Hindu population was 2%.[lxxiv]  In 1998, the Hindu population in all of Pakistan was 1.60%,[lxxv] and the most recent census would certainly be expected to demonstrate consistent demographic trends and a further diminution in the Hindu population.

Pakistan’s Constitution provides for freedom of religion.  In practice, however, the government imposes limits on this freedom.  Since Pakistan proclaimed itself an Islamic republic at the time of independence, Islam has become a core element of the national ideology.  Thus, religious freedom is “subject to law, public order, and morality.”  Actions or speech deemed derogatory to Islam or to its Prophet are not protected.  In addition, the Constitution requires that laws be consistent with Islam and imposes some elements of Koranic law on both Muslims and religious minorities, according to the U.S. State Department report on International Religious Freedom (report of 2004).[lxxvi]

Except for the surprising appointment of a Hindu as acting Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court in 2005, almost no Hindu holds any public position of significance in government, military, business, or society.[lxxvii]  Government regulations and laws shaped by Islamic Sharia injunctions discriminate against the Hindu minority as well as other minorities in Pakistan.  Section 295-C of the Pakistan penal code mandates the death sentence for blasphemy against the Prophet or desecration of the Koran.  Dozens of blasphemy cases are pending in the courts, and the accused spend long periods in jails under brutal conditions once the accusation has been made, although most such allegations of desecration are the result of personal grudges.  On March 24, 2005, Pakistan restored the discriminatory practice of mandating the mention of religious identity of individuals in all new passports.  The Pakistan federal cabinet, with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in chair, directed the Ministry of Interior to reintroduce the rule after its repeal under the Zafaraullah Khan Jamali government.  The move was seen as a concession to the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a coalition of hard-line religious parties that support the Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf. 

Status of Human Rights in Pakistan, 2005

The rights of minorities continue to erode at an alarming pace in Pakistan.  I.A. Rehman, Director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, associates this erosion with the continued Islamization of Pakistan that President General Zia-ul-Haq initiated in the 1980s.  Upon Pakistan’s declaration as an Islamic republic, the rights of religious minorities, particularly Hindus, Christians, and Ahmadiyyas, diminished dramatically.  These minorities live under the fear of threats to their lives and property, desecrations of their places of worship, and the Blasphemy Act that carries a penalty of death.  Nuzzhat Shirin of the Aurat Foundation adds, “It’s Muslims winning by intimidation.  It’s Muslims overcoming a culture by threatening it, by abducting young girls so that an entire community moves out or succumbs to the Muslim murderers.”[lxxviii] 

Violence against Women

Violence against women continues throughout the world, but more so in Pakistan, particularly against Hindu women. Violence against women is rampant in the forms of rape, honor killings, and domestic abuse.  In Pakistan, a woman is raped every two hours on average, and at least ten women a day die in honor killings.  Moreover, Pakistan’s existing Hudood Ordinance is used to imprison thousands of women who report rapes.  According to the Ordinance, a rape victim must present four male witnesses to the crime in order to prove the rape occurred.  If the victim is unable to do so, she is at risk for being whipped for adultery because she has acknowledged illicit sex, which is banned in Islam.  Despite repeated calls by women’s rights and human rights groups for the reform and repeal of the Hudood Ordinance, the Pakistan government has yet to take action.

Hindus continue to be the target of kidnappings, rape, and intimidation in Pakistan.  There are reports of desecration and destruction of Hindu temples and lands, theft and looting of Hindu property, discrimination, abuse, and abduction of Hindu females.  Unfortunately, few reports about specific and targeted human rights abuses against Hindus are available, not only due to the continued decreasing population of Hindus in Pakistan, but also because reports of such attacks are either poorly covered in the local media or completely ignored.

A worrisome trend in Pakistan, particularly in the Sindh province, is that of Muslims kidnapping Hindu girls and forcing them to convert to Islam.  One of the most egregious cases of intimidation and kidnapping of young Hindu women occurred in September 2005.  On September 14, Hindu parents alleged that four men abducted their daughter in Sindh, and forced her to marry one of the accused and convert to Islam.  The authorities arrested two of the abductors, but the court dismissed the case when the girl was forced to provide a legal statement that she willfully married and converted.  Gayan Chand Singh, a legislator in Pakistan’s Parliament, said that the kidnapping should be categorized as rape and should be registered as such an offense for the abductors.[lxxix] 

In a similar case, Sapna Giyanchand was taken to a shrine in the Shikarpur District by Shamsuddin Dasti, a Muslim married man and father.  The custodian of the shrine, Maulvi Abdul Aziz converted Sapna to Islam, changed her name to Mehek, and married her to Dasti.  When Sapna’s case was presented in court, Muslim extremists deluged her with rose petals and chanted religious sayings.  Sapna, terrified by the setting, could not manage to speak to her parents, who were also present in court.  Aziz, also in attendance, is claimed to have said, “How can a Muslim girl live and maintain contact with kafirs [non-believers of Islam]?”[lxxx]

In a recent investigative report it is described how young girls, as young as 12 or 13, have been kidnapped in Sindh, converted to Islam, and forcibly married to Muslim boys.[lxxxi] “Kidnapping Hindu girls like this has become a normal practice.  The girls are then forced to sign stamp[ed] papers stating that they’ve become Muslims,” said Laljee Menghwar, a member of Karachi’s Hindu Panchayat (council of village leaders).  At least nineteen similar abduction cases have taken place in Karachi alone, and six in the Jacobabad and Larkana districts[lxxxii]. Wasim Shahzad, the Minister of State for Interior, upset legislators in the National Assembly when he was quoted by the state-run APP news agency as saying, “These incidents are taking place to force the Hindus to leave Pakistan where they have been living for the past 5,000 years.”[lxxxiii]

In a shocking incident, it was reported that three young Hindu girls had suddenly coverted to Islam.  The three girls, Reena (21), Usha (19) and Rima (17) – daughters of Sanno Amra and Champa, a Hindu couple living in the Punjab Colony section of Karachi, Pakistan – went missing on October 18, 2005. According to a widely circulated report in the Pakistan newspaper Dawn, entitled “Conversion losses,” the London based Pakistani commentator, Irfan Hussain, described the shock experienced by Sanno Amra and Champa when they returned home after work on October 18, 2005 to discover their three daughters had unexpectedly disappeared.  Only after desperate queries to the police, the parents received affidavits stating the daughters’ conversions to Islam.  Private visits with their daughters, free from chaperones and even police officers that have supervised their only interactions thus far, have been consistently denied.  After their disappearance from home, the girls have been living at a madrassa (Islamic seminary) in the vicinity of their home and may potentially be denied the freedom to return home.[lxxxiv]

Earlier in 2005, Shazia Khalid, a doctor, reported that she was gang-raped in a government natural gas plant. Instead of providing her with medical treatment, officials drugged her into unconsciousness for three days and then transported her to a psychiatric hospital to prevent her from reporting the rape.  Due to her persistence of reporting the rape, Khalid was placed under house arrest in Karachi.  The police insinuated that the presence of cash in her house meant that she was working as a prostitute.  Although her husband has stood by her, his grandfather was quoted as saying that Dr. Shazi disgraced the family and should be killed.[lxxxv]

Although violence against women transcends their religion, it is disproportionately focused on Hindu women in Pakistan.  In May 2005, a group of middle-class Pakistani women held a demonstration for equal rights in Lahore.  In response, the police beat them and took them to police stations.  In particular, they targeted Asma Jahangir, a U.N. special rapporteur, who is also the head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.  Ms. Jahangir said an intelligence official close to General Musharraf told the police to “teach the [expletive] a lesson [and] strip her in public.”  The police tore her shirt off and tried to remove her trousers.[lxxxvi]

Hindus targeted in Balochistan

Minorities, particularly Hindus and Ahmadiyas, continue to face a wave of violations in Balochistan, the area where Pakistan conducted its nuclear tests on the orders of President Musharraf in October 1999.  The native Baluchs experience a severely degraded status since the occupation.  Although the exact number is unknown, more than 5,000 Hindus were forced to escape from the unrest in Balochistan and enter Sindh in 2005.  Militant Muslim groups have desecrated Hindu temples, set their homes on fire, and destroyed Hindu shops and property.  Here too, Hindu females, particularly school students, are forcibly converted to Islam.[lxxxvii]  

On March 21, 2005, sixty civilians were killed and one hundred and fifty were injured in Dera Bugti, Balochistan when Pakistan’s Frontier Corps attacked the town with “artillery shelling, rockets, and indiscriminate machine gun fire.”  Among those killed were innocent Hindu women and children as well as dozens of Bugti tribesmen.[lxxxviii]

Depiction of Hinduism in School Textbooks

Extracts (translated from Urdu to English) from the government-sponsored textbooks approved by the National Curriculum Wing of the Federal Ministry of Education demonstrate the derogatory and inflammatory portrayal of Hinduism to the youth of Pakistan:[lxxxix]

·         Grade IV: “The religion of Hindus did not teach them good things, [and the] Hindus did not respect women.”

·         Grade V:  “The Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam.”

·         Grade VI: “The Hindu setup was based on injustice and cruelty.”

·         Grade VII: “Hindus always desired to crush the Muslims as a nation [and] several attempts were made by the Hindus to erase Muslim culture and civilization.”

·         Grade VIII: “Before Islam people lived in untold misery all over the world.”

·         Grade X: “Islam gives a message of peace and brotherhood…There is no such concept in Hinduism.”

Pakistan-based Terrorist Groups

The United Kingdom has banned five Pakistan based militant organizations: Harakat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami, Jundallah, Khuddam ul-Islam, Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ) and Sipah-e Sahab Pakistan (SSP).  These groups are engaged in terrorist activities in Indian Kashmir and the rest of India.[xc]  The United States has also designated LeJ as a terrorist organization along with other Pakistan based organizations such as Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HuM), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT).[xci]             .

Violations of Constitution and UN Covenants

Pakistan’s Constitution at face value guarantees fundamental human rights and equality in front of the law to its citizens. However, Article 19 of the Constitution states, “Every citizen shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression, and there shall be freedom of the press, subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defense of Pakistan,” thus securing the supremacy of Islam in the country.  Freedom of religion is guaranteed by Article 20 which states, “Every citizen shall have the right to profess, practice and propagate his religion; and every religious denomination and every sect thereof shall have the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions.”  Unfortunately, Hindus, Christians, and the Ahmadiyyas continue to be persecuted in Pakistan today despite the assurance provided by the Constitution.  Temples are desecrated, deities are destroyed, and they risk persecution, particularly because of the Blasphemy Act.  

Article 25 of the Constitution maintains, “All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law…There shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex alone.”  Rape, honor killings, and domestic abuse are common types of violence that the women of Pakistan face.  Despite the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, these women are left to fend for themselves, as the Pakistani laws do not provide adequate protection.  They continue to face a myriad of inequalities in the judicial system, and will continue to do so, as long as the Hudood Ordinance is not repealed.  Article 35 mandates, “The State shall protect the marriage, the family, the mother and the child.”  Article 36 states, “The State shall safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of minorities, including their due representation in the Federal and Provincial services.”  In reality, however, neither families nor minorities are being protected by Pakistan today as kidnappings or forced conversions of Hindu girls continue to occur without convictions of the felons. 

Curiously, Pakistan has taken no action toward ratifying or signing the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR), although it did ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination on September 19, 1966.

Conclusion

HAF concurs with several other human rights organization in expressing serious concern over the government of Pakistan’s continued failure to restore democracy and tacit support for ongoing human rights violations against minorities.  Pakistan is not a free country today by internationally recognized criteria.  Freedom House rates the political rights enjoyed by Pakistan’s citizens at 6 (one above the lowest grade of 7), and civil liberties enjoyed at 5 (two above the lowest grade of 7).[xcii]  Pressure must be brought upon Pakistan to rescind discriminatory laws.  As the U.S. considers Pakistan an ally in the war against terrorism, it is important that U.S. leadership impress upon the Pakistan government the necessity for social and political reform.  Hindus in the Sindh and Balochistan provinces are subject to a variety of human rights abuses—and the egregious rape and kidnapping of women must be stopped immediately.  HAF recommends that the United States Congress increase dialogue on this issue with official hearings, investigations and site visits, and that a fact-finding committee organized by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) be dispatched to Pakistan urgently.

previous                         1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9     10     11     12                          next