in LAHORE Over 100 tombstones were desecrated by unidentified men at an Ahmadi graveyard in the Model Town area of Lahore early Monday morning.

Eyewitnesses said 12 to 15 masked men, carrying weapons and excavation tools, had entered the graveyard in Model Town Q Block between 1:30am and 1:45am. At least five of the men were reported to be carrying weapons, including 9 mm pistols and a bigger gun.

A heavy police contingent on Friday, on the demand of a banned organisation, removed Quranic verses and religious texts written on tombstones of Ahmadi graves to save the area from clashes on religious grounds.

An application was moved to the area police of Uncha Mangat claiming Kassoki villagers’ demands of the removal of Quranic verses and religious text from Ahmadi graves in the graveyard on Hafizabad-Sheikhupura Road.

The applicants threatened of religious clashes and bloodshed if this was not done.

The DPO Hafizabad asked the police station in charge to take appropriate steps for averting any untoward incident or clash on religious basis.

The local SHO summoned elders and notables of the Ahmadi community of the village who met him under the supervision of Nasir Javaid, acting Ameer Jamaat Ahmadiyya, Hafizabad.

The SHO, according to Nasir Javaid, asked them to remove religious inscriptions, adding that if they did not do so themselves, the police would take measures for removing them in order to maintain peace and tranquillity in the area.

When they disagreed, says Nasir, the police went on with the operation anyway and forcefully entered the graveyard and whitewashed all religious text from the graves late Friday.

Calling it a positive achievement, the SHO claimed that no case had been filed against the act as it was meant to save the locality from clashes.

Secretary Amoor-e-Aama, Jamaat Ahmadiyya Faisalabad, Syed Mahmood Ahmad Shah, however, criticized the action and said that the persecution of Ahmadis was wrong and may lead to increased hatred between the two communities.

He demanded that the government take appropriate steps to save the Ahmadi community from such “unjustified and cruel acts of other communities”.

There are about 150 Ahmadi graves located in the graveyard while about 35 graves of Muslims are also found there.

Prior to declaring the Ahmadis a minority in 1974, Muslims used to bury their dead in this graveyard. Later, the graveyard was demarcated into two parts for burying Muslims and Ahmadis separately.

 Members of an Islamic organisation removed Quranic texts and religious words from the shop of an Ahmadi family in Kot Abdul Malik, Sheikhupura, on August 14 with the help of local police. 

Factory Area Police had gone to Qamar Zia’s mobile shop with members of an Islamic organisation, Almi Majlis-e-Tahaffuz-e-Khatam-e-Nabuwat and removed two lines of Quranic texts and the word Mash’Allah from outside the shop and inside as well.

His father’s name “Muhammad Ali” inscribed on the gate of the residence, next to Zia’s shop, was also removed with the help of welding equipment and then painted over.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Zia said, “I kept on saying that this is my father’s name and not a religious expression, and it can be verified from his identification card, but they did not pay heed to my request.”

Zia added that after committing the act, a mob of residents and members of the Almi Majlis-e-Tahaffuz-e-Khatam-e-Nabuwat, congregated outside the house and spoke against Ahmadis. The police then dispersed the mob.

Zia, a 35 year old cell shop owner who has lived in the Muhalla Roshan Abad, Scheme number 3, Kot Abdul Malik since he was three year old, said that at the beginning of August, three young men from the aforementioned organisation came outside his shop and began taking pictures. When Zia asked them to stop, the men abused him, saying, “You have no right to put this text up.”

On August 6, Zia submitted an application in the Factory Area Police Station, to complain against the harassment, but the police did not take notice of his protest.

However on August 7, the organisation’s men went to the police station and filed an application for registering an FIR against Zia, to charge him under section 298-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, after which the police invited both parties to the police station on August 10 to resolve the matter.

According to Zia, at the meeting, when he was asked to remove the religious texts from the shop, he refused, saying that the law can decide whatever steps it wants to take, but he would not commit the disrespectful act.

Zia claims that the police officer had cautioned him that he would be killed if he did not comply.

“Son, even if the Khatam-e-Nabuwwat men kill you, I will not be able to do anything,” the officer had said.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Dr Abdul Kursheed, one of the members of the Majlis said, “The Ahmadi man violated the law, and we will report them again if they repeat this act, and unlike this recent incident the police will take action, not us.”

Similar to recent incidents, wherein Ahmadis were accused of “posing as Muslims”, in this case too, police officials said the steps were taken to “maintain peace.”

SHO Factory Area Police, Sami-Ullah Khan told The Express tribune, “We took all measures to resolve the issue, we did not want unrest. Anyone can take guidance from the Holy Book.”

Khan added that, “we sent our personnel because people were gathered at the spot, and we did not want any untoward incident.”

Zia said that, “there was no way for us, but to give in to the law.”

He added that he did not send his children to school after the incident on August 14, out of fear, and said that he had heard rumors that the Majlis men were involved in campaigning against his business as well.

Almi Majlis-e-Tahaffuz-e-Khatam-e-Nabuwat is known to campaign against Ahmadi business men and in promoting social boycott against the community through lectures, conferences and literature in form of stickers, banners and posters.

Zia said that such polarization had only increased in his area in the last couple of years.

In Punjab, persecution of Ahmadi citizens has been on the rise in 2012, including desecration of their places of worship.

Country spokesperson for the Ahmadi community, told The Express Tribune, “We send monthly updates to the Presidency, PM house, interior ministry, ministry of religious affairs, ministry of human rights and respective provincial governments, but have hardly ever received even an acknowledgment of our correspondence.”

On the role of the police, the spokesperson added that, “Kot Abdul Malik is next to Lahore, this is not Waziristan that the police could not control the cleric without giving into their pressure,” adding, “In a country, where our dead are not spared, how will we protect our living.”

‘The condemned’ is an endeavor to capture the persecution faced by the minority Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan – from their eyes.

The short documentary is a collection of testimonies in which those Ahmadis who have faced persecution narrate the target killings of loved ones, discrimination at the hands of fellow students and what it is like to live in jail as a blasphemy convict.

A town called Rabwah

Rabwah, is a town of District Jhang with the highest population of Ahmadis in Pakistan. The town is also home to some who have been convicted of blasphemy and under the anti-Ahmadi Ordinance of 1984, making them prisoners in this town.

A major chunk of the report was filmed in Rabwah and identities of some community members have been hidden for the sake of their security. The young man who shares the story of the horrors his family faced after his brother was accused of blasphemy has now left Pakistan. Therefore, we took the risk of showing his face on-camera. The town still provides a sense of security for the rest, so the condemned could speak with hidden faces.

They ripped his name out of books

with scissors dipped in venom
so our children wouldn’t be poisoned
with a heretic’s intellect.

They scraped his person from his
gravestone, because those in the
underworld would also object to his
being Muslim.

They bomb his places of worship,
they don’t like them being called
mosques, as if their own belligerence
was a superior form of prayer;

Our flag’s white rectangle,
the so-called symbol of the few,
flaps tattered and stained with
the blood of peripheral pariahs
like him.

They banished a man from the annals
of history for a sin so heinous
to be exiled by its own seven sisters.
It’s called genius.

While their bodies simmered with
the disgust of imposters and false
prophets, while they vigilantly clicked
the prayer beads like ticking
suicide bombs,

He presented them the Nobel like a
white flag, a fresh white rectangle.
While they thought they brought God
to the world with their self-righteous
calligraphy of hate,

He unveiled the God-particle.
And guess what, he wasn’t even ‘Muslim’.

An Ahmadi jeweller in Silanwali, Sargodha was charged with blasphemy for the second time in his life for “posing as a Muslim” and for putting up a translation of the Quranic text in his shop.

Muhammad Ashraf, who was earlier charged along with his co-workers in 2009 for posing as Muslims, was charged with blasphemy on July 23 this year under Section 298-C on the complaint of Hafiz Muhammad Imran.

Ashraf was sent to Central Jail Sargodha on July 24 and was released on bail on the exchange of bail bonds worth Rs50,000 on July 31. The case is under trial at a local magisterial court in Sargodha.

The FIR registered against Ashraf mentioned that he had put up translations of text from the Holy Quran in his shop at Kobi Market, Saeed Bazar, which was against the Section 298-C of 1984 Ordinance.

As per Section 298-C, an Ahmadi who “refers to his faith as Islam, or preaches or propagates his faith, or invites others to accept his faith, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations, or in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious feelings of Muslims” will be punished with up to three years in prison and is liable to pay a fine.

The text translation in Ashraf’s shop read, “O people of faith always speak the straight truth.”

The Station House Officer (SHO) of the Silanwali Police Station, Irfan Safdar, told The Express Tribune that, “After the complaint, our security constable Aslam and other investigation staff of police went to verify if the translation of the Quranic text was actually there at Ashraf’s shop, and it was. So we registered the FIR.”

The SHO said the security constables verified that, “Ashraf was spreading his faith and pretends to be a Muslim.” He further said that the “entire process of verification and taking Ashraf into custody took about two hours. Ashraf was taken into custody and then the FIR was registered quickly after that.”

According to details shared with The Express Tribune, on July 22, Hafiz Imran came to the jeweller’s shop which has been in the market for seven years, and asked for removal of the translation, which Ashraf refused to take off.

Ashraf recalled that Imran said to him “these are good words, but this (Ashraf’s shop) is not a good place.”

The next day, when Ashraf went to open his shop at around 11am, he met the police security constable Aslam, who according to the SHO verified the presence of the Quranic text translation in Ashraf’s shop.

Ashraf said the police security constable was followed by another man in civilian clothes from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) who picked him up and said that the SHO wanted to speak to him.

Ashraf was then taken to the police station and put behind bars. Eventually he was imprisoned for six days in the Central Jail Sargodha where he stayed in the same section as that of murderers and prisoners on death row.

In 2009, Ashraf and two other Ahmadi men who have businesses in the same market, were arrested for ‘posing as Muslims’ and for praying inside a room in the market. After spending 28 days in jail after that FIR, Ashraf and his co-accused got bail from the court.

District Police Officer (DPO) Sargodha Dr Rizwan told The Express Tribune that, “In my field of experience, the intolerance against Ahmadis has considerably decreased, over the last few years – I mean the use of violence against them by the extreme right wing. The use of legal apparatus to redress perceived transgression is indicative of improved civility.”

Spokesperson of the Ahmadi community in Pakistan, Saleemuddin asked, “Does the Punjab police have nothing better to do, than to register FIRs against peaceful citizens on complaints of every cleric? Do they not have terrorists and criminals to catch for people’s protection?”

The community says that there are a number of cases which are pending in courts against Ahmadi citizens, in which even women and children have been charged with 298-C. There is also an active FIR registered against the residents of the entire town of Rabwah with the same charges. Rabwah, or Chanab Nagar, is in district Jhang of Punjab and has the highest population of Ahmadi community in Pakistan.

‘Treated like lepers and Jews’

Leading human rights activist, former chairperson HRCP and former president Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan Asma Jahangir while speaking to The Express Tribune said that the government officials have always given a message that they do not recognise the Ahmadi community, which is “treated like lepers and Jews” in Pakistan.

Commenting on the current state of Ahmadi persecution, Jahangir said that “the situation is so bad that I, who do not support the Ahmadi faith but oppose their persecution, have been threatened.”

Jahangir added that the “politicians will only care about Ahmadi community when they are not on the separate electorate anymore.”

A well known Ahmadi schoolteacher was allegedly tortured to death while in police custody in Rabwah city of Punjab. The Chenab Nagar police has registered a case against two accused police officials.

Master Abdul Qudoos Ahmad, 43, was detained by the police in the first week of February in connection with the murder of Muhammad Yousuf, a stamp-paper seller from the Nusrat Abad area.

He was brutally tortured during interrogations, causing severe internal injuries, Ahmad’s family alleged.

“Later, the police released Qudoos and threatened us to hush up the matter. He was admitted to a local hospital where he died due to excessive loss of blood,” said Imtiaz Ahmed, brother-in-law of the slain teacher.

SHO Khadim Hussain of the Chenab Nagar police station told The Express Tribune that they have registered a case against two police sub inspectors, Sujhat Ali and Manazar Ali, under sections 302, 148, 34 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

He, however, maintained that the accused was picked up on March 24 and was released two days after as the police was convinced of his innocence. Hussain claimed that Qudoos might have died of some fatal disease.

Hussain said the body was sent for postmortem examination, adding that if the autopsy proved the cause of death to be torture, action would be taken against the accused.

Spokesperson for the Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan Saleemud Din condemned the incident, terming it “callous and inhuman”.

“The way Master Abdul Qudoos was tortured and brutalised is the lowest form of humanity. The Police should investigate the murder and whoever is involved should be brought to justice,” Din said.

Saleemud Din alleged that the real reason for the teacher’s arrest was to taint the reputation of the local Ahmadiyya administration of Rabwah. “Master Abdul Qudoos was the President of Jamaat-e-Ahmediyya’s local chapter and he was arrested to defame the administration.”