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The Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan regularly fell prey to atrocities from the Muslim community, private thugs, and even the police. These incidents keep happening even after a Supreme Court's order to stop them, reported the Bitter Winter.
The latest of such events happened on January 18, when three thugs entered an Ahmadiyya community mosque on Martin Road in Karachi and desecrated two of its minarets. "The upper portion of the minaret has been smashed to bits. The attackers left behind the ladder and a sledgehammer. They fled as soon as the police arrived. This is the third desecration of an Ahmadi Muslim Mosque this month," The Bitter Winter stated quoting the International Human Rights Commission (IHRC) report. Another IHRC report mentioned that "last month police destroyed minarets at the Ahmadiyya Mosque in Baghbanpura, Gujranwala and few days ago, a 108-year-old Ahmadiyya Mosque in Moti Bazaar Wazirabad was desecrated by the police." In another incident reported by Bitter Winter, an online magazine on religious liberty and human rights,"Police officers in Adda, Tehsil Gojra, District Toba Tek Singh, forced Ahmadis to demolish Minarets from their own Ahmadiyya Mosque by themselves." The report by Bitter Winter states that for the Muslim Pakistani government, the Ahmadis are in fact non-Muslim heretics. In addition to this, Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan has a long history of state-sponsored politics of bigotry in a Muslim country against a Muslim community. Again on February 2, vandals attacked the Ahmadiyya Hall, built in 1950 in Saddar Karachi and razed its minarets to the ground. A video circulated widely on Pakistan's social media showed that around 5-10 persons climbed up the wall and hit the structure with a hammer, the Bitter Winter report claimed. Yet another such incident happened on February 3, late at night in the province of Sindh. Two Ahmadi mosques were attacked. In Noor Nagar, a village in the Umerkot District, unknown assailants climbed the boundary walls of the local Ahmadi mosque, poured gasoline, and set it on fire. In Mirpur Khas district, the minarets of the Ahmadi mosque were ravaged by a group of unidentified aggressors before the whole building was set on fire. Similarly, on February 4 a group of fanatics opened fire near the Prayer Centre of the Satellite Town neighborhood of Mirpur Khas City, the capital of the homonymous district. Ahmadis believers were inside the Centre. Bullets were found on the gate and the boundary walls. This is not the first time that the country's Ahmadi Muslims have been killed in targeted killings. Earlier a 60-year-old man from the Ahmadiyya community was stabbed to death in Chenabnagar city of Punjab province. Naseer Ahmad and his brother Munir were going for shopping in the morning when an unidentified man, who was standing at the Chenabnagar bus stand, stopped them and asked them questions about their religion. Police said that the suspect pulled out a dagger from his bag and attacked Ahmad. He died on the spot. (ANI)
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