Land row: Church vandalised in Pak

Lahore, May 9: A church in Pakistan’s Punjab province was allegedly vandalised by a group of armed men over a land dispute on Saturday, police said. The incident came at a time when the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in its latest report has pointed out that religious minorities in Pakistan, including the Hindu and Christian communities, continued to suffer in 2019, facing forced conversions and persecution under blasphemy laws.

The minorities remained unable to enjoy the freedom of religion or belief guaranteed to them under the country’s Constitution, the HRCP had said in its annual report — State of Human Rights 2019 — released recently in Islamabad. Local Christian leader Aslam Parvez Sahotra said that a group of armed men led by a person named Malik Aun Abbas

demolished the gate and boundary wall of the church in Kalashah Kaku, some 40 km from Lahore, over a land dispute. Following the incident, community leaders lodged a police complaint.

Ferozwala Station House Office Aamir Mahmood said that police reached the spot and recorded the statements of the local Christians. An FIR will be registered and raids will be conducted at the whereabouts of the culprits, he said.

Sahotra, who is also the chairman of the Massiha Milat Party — a local political outfit for safeguarding Christians’ rights, said, “Abbas and his armed men stormed into the church on Saturday and asked the devotees present there to vacate the land, claiming that it belongs to them.” Christians constitute around 2 per cent of the population in Pakistan.