Lahore, Mar 25 (PTI) Police in several districts of Pakistan’s Punjab province barred the Ahmadi minority community from performing their religious rites on Eid, Jamaat Ahmadiyya Pakistan (JAP) said on Wednesday.
The JAP, in a statement issued here, cited purported government orders and said Punjab police forcibly evacuated Ahmadi places of worship in different districts on Saturday and locked them, directly violating both the Constitution of Pakistan and the Supreme Court jurisprudence.
“The police barred Ahmadis from carrying out religious practices on the occasion of Eid-ul-fitr in Gujranwala, Sialkot, Faisalabad and Sargodha districts of Punjab,” JAP spokesman Amir Mahmood said.
He said the act of not letting Ahmadis carry out their religious practices within the confines of four walls was a grave violation of the Supreme Court’s order.
He said these actions constituted a grave violation of Ahmadis’ fundamental human rights, a breach of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which guarantees freedom of religion or belief.
“It is also a direct violation of Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan, which guarantees every citizen the right to profess, practise, and propagate their religion. Most notably, these actions violate the 2022 judgment by a two-member bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan that said Ahmadis have freedom to practise their faith within the privacy of their four walls.” The spokesperson expressed deep regret that while high-ranking state officials frequently claim that extremism will not be tolerated at any cost, the ground-level administration continues to act as an enabler of such extremism.
“By barring a peaceful community from practising their faith, these officials have tarnished Pakistan’s global image and contradicted the state’s official stance on pluralism,” he said, demanding that the constitutional guarantees of religious freedom be reflected in administrative actions as well. PTI MZ PY PY PY
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