Religious violence on rise in Pakistan: Report
Mar 21, 2022
Islamabad [Pakistan], March 22 : With the Imran Khan government's inability to curb religious violence in Pakistan, the cases of such incidents have risen to an alarming level in the country in recent years, according to a media report.
Notably, lynchings over offences to Islam are not new in Pakistan, where blasphemy is punishable by death and mobs exploit anti-blasphemy laws to take matters into their own hands, New York Times reported.
According to the critics and rights activists, the vows made by Imran Khan to curb violence in Pakistan is mere lip service as he, much like his predecessors, has not taken a practical step for the cause.
"The lack of political will and commitment has always stood as the biggest obstacle to prevent the abuse, misuse, and exploitation of blasphemy laws," the media outlet quoted said Tahira Abdullah, a rights activist based in Islamabad, as saying.
She added that Imran Khan's government is no different from its predecessors in promising to tackle the menace of religious violence, however, "it is too cowardly to confront" influential religious parties in Parliament "and the rampaging militant extremist groups outside Parliament."
According to a report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, instances of mob violence, and state-enforced criminal blasphemy cases, are more frequent in Pakistan than anywhere else.
Notably, blasphemy violence in Pakistan is reflected through several incidents such as vandalizing of Hindu temples and neighbourhoods, the burning of police stations by angry mobs, the lynching of a student on a university campus and the killing of a provincial governor by his own security guard.
Moreover, 90 per cent of those involved in blasphemy violence are between the ages of 18 and 30, the media outlet reported citing a senior police official's statement to a parliamentary committee.
According to the Centre for Social Justice, a Lahore-based minority rights group, at least 84 people faced blasphemy accusations in courts and from angry street mobs in 2021.
Further, the journalists in Pakistan have refrained from reporting on blasphemy cases since the rise of the extremist parties and their growing influence, The New York Times reported.
