While the global media turns all attention to the furious Islamic backlash to a controversial film, the ever worsening violence and killings rendered against Pakistan’s Christian community continue to go ignored.
The latest attack in the Mardan district saw St. Paul’s Lutheran Church burnt to the ground along with the homes of Christian families. The mob, totalling approximately 8,000 continued to loot the local Christian school, stealing the computers and anything of worth. It has been reported that as many as eight Christians were killed in the attack, murdered for nothing more than their devotion to their faith.
Such a heinous crime of hate strikes against the core principles of our innate human rights, the right to life and to freedom of worship. This tragic example is but one of many, a living nightmare for Pakistan’s Christians who simply wish to be left in peace.
Despite the clear, intolerable, injustice of this condition, the international community chooses to remain ignorant and silent. While the Western nations appeal to Islamic countries for greater protection of their own embassies, little thought is spared to the plight of the native Christian minorities, vulnerable to any misguided attempt of revenge, for a film not of their making.
The recent joint statement from the European High Representative, the OIC Secretary-General, the Arab League Secretary General and the Commission of the African Union, saw fit to publicly denounce the film as a message of ‘hatred and intolerance’. And yet despite this affirmation, amazingly, no reference was made to the suffering of Christian minorities within Islamic nations.
Meanwhile in Brussels, The President of the European Parliament’s Working Group on Human Dignity, Gay Mitchell MEP, called on the Pakistan government to meet its inherent obligations: “It is the solemn duty of a government to provide its citizens with sufficient protection from harm and a safe community with which to live in. Alongside the absence of violence there must also be a legitimate presence of justice.”
The Dignitatis Humanae Institute calls on the international community to hold the government of Pakistan to these commitments. In addition, the demonstrations seen throughout the Arab world against religious intolerance must also recognise that this need for tolerance must ultimately extend to all faiths, and not just their own.
Editor’s note
The joint statement can be read here:
