Lahore, Feb 7 (PTI) Nearly 50 graves belonging to the Ahmadis have been allegedly desecrated by police and Muslim clerics for using Islamic symbols on gravestones at a cemetery in Pakistan’s Punjab province, a member of an organisation representing the minority community said on Monday.
Jamaat Ahmadiya Punjab spokesperson Aamir Mahmood said that a group of people in Premkot, district Hafizabad, some 110 kms from Lahore, approached the police complaining that the Islamic verses are inscribed on the tombstones of a number of graves in the Ahmadis graveyard.
The group threatened that the Ahmadis cannot display Islamic verses/symbols on their homes or graves, he said.
“On Sunday, police along with local clerics and lawyers reached the Ahmadi graveyard and demolished the tombstones of 45 graves inscribed with Islamic verses,” Mahmood told PTI.
The enraged extremists also warned the Ahmadis living in the area to remove Islamic verses displayed on their houses otherwise they will demolish them too, he added.
On the other hand, police said the tombstones from Ahmadi graves have been removed on the application of a group of lawyers and warned Ahmadis not to use the same in the future. Advocate Amir Nazir, Mehr Asif, Ali Raza and others also filed an application for registration of FIR against the members of Ahmadi community of the area under blasphemy laws for writing Islamic verses on the tombstones. The police, however, did not entertain the request.
“The persecution carried out against the Ahmadi community in Pakistan is not only limited to those who are alive, but the Ahmadis that have passed away are also not safe in their graves. Police action against the Ahmadi community in Pakistan is an act of violation of basic human rights,” Mahmood said.
There had been a number of such incidents in different parts of Pakistan in which the graves of the Ahmadi community members were desecrated by religious zealots in the past.
Pakistan’s Parliament in 1974 declared the Ahmadi community as non-Muslims. A decade later, they were banned from calling themselves Muslims. They are banned from preaching and from travelling to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage.
In Pakistan, around 10 million out of the 220 million population are non-Muslims. The minorities in the conservative Muslim-majority Pakistan often complain of harassment by the extremists. PTI MZ ZH ZH
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