Document #1326428

ACCORD – Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation (Author)

Query response on Pakistan: Situation of Ahmadis [a-8431]

24 June 2013
This response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to ACCORD within time constraints and in accordance with ACCORD’s methodological standards and the Common EU Guidelines for processing Country of Origin Information (COI).
This response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status, asylum or other form of international protection.
Please read in full all documents referred to.
Non-English language information is comprehensively summarised in English. Original language quotations are provided for reference.
 
In its Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs of Religious Minorities from Pakistan, dated May 2012 and based on a variety of sources, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offers the following general information on the Ahmadiyya community of Pakistan:
“There is a well-documented history of violence and discrimination against Ahmadis in Pakistan. According to conservative estimates, circa 600,000 Ahmadis currently live in the country. They represent over 97 percent of the population of Rabwah, Punjab province, the headquarters of the Ahmadi community in Pakistan. The Ahmadiyya Jama’at (i.e. Ahmadi movement) was officially established in 1889 in India as a reform movement within Islam. Although they consider themselves Muslim, Ahmadis hold beliefs that are different from mainstream Sunni interpretations of fundamental Islamic concepts, including the finality of Prophethood. These doctrinal differences are considered by mainstream Muslims as un-Islamic and blasphemous.” (UNHCR, 14 May 2012, p. 20)
According to the 2013 annual report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) (covering events from 31 January 2012 to 31 January 2013), the “Ahmadis are estimated to comprise 3-4 million Pakistanis, and the community considers themselves part of the Muslim majority” (USCIRF, 30 April 2013, p. 119).
 
The 2012 annual report (published December 2012 and covering the year 2012) of the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), an independent, non-governmental body to promote human rights in the Asian region, indicates with regard to the situation of Ahmadis in Pakistan:
“The Ahmadis, belong to a sect that believes in Islam and claims to be an ardent follower of it. But, they have been declared as non-Muslim under Pakistani legislation. Evidently, the Government of Pakistan has not only confiscated their freedom to faith, belief and practice, but also proactively victimised them socially, economically and educationally.” (AHRC, 10 December 2012, p. 59)
In its annual report on religious freedom dated May 2013 (covering 2012), the US Department of State (USDOS) informs that “Ahmadi Muslims consider themselves Muslim”, but that “the law prohibits them from identifying as such” (USDOS, 20 May 2013, section 1).
 
With respect to the legal status of Ahmadis, the same source specifies that a 1974 constitutional amendment classified them as non-Muslim and that sections 298(b) and 298(c) of the penal code curtail their freedom of religion and expression:
“A 1974 constitutional amendment declared that Ahmadis are non-Muslims. Sections 298(b) and 298(c) of the penal code, commonly referred to as the ‘anti-Ahmadi laws,’ prohibit Ahmadi Muslims from calling themselves Muslims, referring to their religious beliefs as Islam, preaching or propagating their religious beliefs, inviting others to accept Ahmadiyya teachings, or insulting the religious feelings of Muslims. The punishment for violation of these provisions is imprisonment for up to three years and a fine. Most politicians oppose any amendments to the constitution affecting its Islamic clauses, especially the ones relating to Ahmadi Muslims.” (USDOS, 20 May 2013, section 2)
Similarly, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) notes in a May 2013 article:
“In the 1970s, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto passed an amendment to the Pakistani Constitution declaring that anyone who does not believe Muhammad was the last prophet would be deemed a non-Muslim. Under the rule of military dictator Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s, practicing the Ahmadi faith was declared a ‘blasphemous’ criminal offense.” (RFE/RL, 21 May 2013)
The above-cited USCIRF 2013 annual report states that “Pakistan’s Ahmadi community is subjected to the most severe legal restrictions and officially-sanctioned discrimination” (USCIRF, 30 April 2013, p. 126). The report further details:
“Ahmadis are prevented by law from engaging in the full practice of their faith and may face criminal charges for a range of religious practices, including the use of religious terminology. In 1974, the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto amended Pakistan’s constitution to declare members of the Ahmadi religious community to be ‘non-Muslims,’ despite their insistence to the contrary.
Basic acts of worship and interaction also have been made criminal offenses. In 1984, during General Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorship, sections B and C of Article 298 were added to the penal code, criminalizing Ahmadis ‘posing’ as Muslims, calling their places of worship ‘mosques,’ worshipping in non-Ahmadi mosques or public prayer rooms, performing the Muslim call to prayer, using the traditional Islamic greeting in public, publicly quoting from the Qur’an, or displaying the basic affirmation of the Muslim faith. It is also a crime for Ahmadis to preach in public, seek converts, or produce, publish, or disseminate their religious materials. Ahmadis are restricted in building new houses of worship, holding public conferences or other gatherings, and traveling to Saudi Arabia for religious purposes, including the hajj.
During the reporting period, USCIRF received reports of 10 Ahmadis being charged under Article 298. In many of these cases, police were pressured to act by local religious leaders who are opposed to the Ahmadi faith. Many of the individuals arrested were released on bail, but will likely spend years in the backlogged Pakistani court system as their cases are tried and possibly appealed.
In 2002, then President Musharraf issued an executive order that abolished Pakistan’s separate electorate system. However, he soon thereafter issued Chief Executive’s Order No. 15 mandating that Ahmadis register in a separate voter registry, therefore keeping a separate electoral system for this religious community alone. In addition, obtaining a Pakistani national identity card or passport requires the applicant to sign a religious affirmation denouncing the founder of the Ahmadi faith as a false prophet. Because Ahmadis are required to register to vote as non-Muslims and national identity cards identify Ahmadis as non-Muslims, those who refuse to disavow their claim to being Muslims are effectively disenfranchised from participating in elections at any level.” (USCIRF, 30 April 2013, pp. 126-127)
According to the AHRC, Pakistan’s Ahmadis are denied their right to vote and all Pakistani Muslims wanting to apply for ID cards are required to “make a mandatory declaration pronouncing the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Community as an imposter and a liar”:
“Ahmadis are one such group which is denied their right to vote; they cannot register as a voter in Pakistan. It is a most shameful and horrifying fact that all Muslims in Pakistan in order to get their I.D cards which are essential for registering as a voter, have to make a mandatory declaration pronouncing the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Community as an imposter and a liar.” (AHRC, 10 December 2012, p. 60)
In its annual report published January 2013 (covering events of 2012), Human Rights Watch (HRW) provides the following information on the situation of Ahmadis, including their legal status, social discrimination and anti-Ahmadi violence:
“Members of the Ahmadi religious community continued to be a major target for blasphemy prosecutions and subjected to specific anti-Ahmadi laws across Pakistan. They faced increasing social discrimination as militant groups used provisions of the law to prevent Ahmadis from ‘posing as Muslims,’ forced the demolition of Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, barred Ahmadis from using their mosques in Rawalpindi, and vandalized Ahmadi graves across Punjab province. In most instances, Punjab provincial officials supported militants’ demands instead of protecting Ahmadis and their mosques and graveyards.” (HRW, 31 January 2013)
Under the heading “Freedom of thought, conscience and religion”, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to monitoring and defending human rights in Pakistan, notes in its annual report for 2012:
“Hate speech continued unchallenged with the Ahmadis being the most common target. Posters and stickers exhorting the faithful to at the very least boycott the Ahmadis socially were not an uncommon sight on the walls of main cities and in public and private intra-city buses. Destruction or desecration of places of worship and graveyards of religious minorities was hardly an anomaly. As in previous years, several cases of land grabbers trying to occupy graveyards of religious minority communities were reported. The investigation of sectarian violence or violence against religious minorities in general appeared to go into cold storage as soon as there was a claim of responsibility by a militant / terrorist group. The perpetrators were not apprehended in any of the main sectarian attacks in 2012.” (HRCP, March 2013, pp. 100-101)
The executive summary of the above-cited USDOS 2013 annual report mentions that in 2012, “[t]here were scores of attacks on Sufi, Hindu, Ahmadiyya Muslim, Shia, and Christian gatherings and religious sites, resulting in numerous deaths and extensive damage” (USDOS, 20 May 2013, Executive Summary).
 
The above-cited HRCP annual report for 2012 also gives an account of anti-Ahmadi violence, indicating that “[t]he hate campaign and violence against Ahmadi citizens continued without any obvious challenge across the country”. According to the HRCP, as many as 20 Ahmadis were killed due to their religion while eleven others were injured in targeted attacks:
“The hate campaign and violence against Ahmadi citizens continued without any obvious challenge across the country in 2012. As many as 20 Ahmadis were killed on account of their religious identity or belief in the year under review. The incidence of murderous attacks was the greatest in Karachi where 10 Ahmadis were assassinated in 2012, four of them in the space of 10 days in September and another three in October. A fourth Ahmadi man injured in an attack in the city in October died in November. Two Ahmadis were killed in Nawabshah, Sindh, and another two in Quetta, Balochistan. The other six Ahmadis were killed in Layyah, Sargodha, Chiniot and Sialkot districts of Punjab, Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Harnai district of Balochistan. Another 11 Ahmadis were injured in targeted attacks.“ (HRCP, March 2013, p. 103)
According to the USCIRF, 23 individuals were killed in attacks targeting Ahmadis between 31 January 2012 and 31 January 2013. Due to the “poor legal standing of Ahmadis under Pakistan’s constitution and criminal code”, the perpetrators of such attacks have only “little or no fear of arrest or prosecution”:
“In recent years, scores of Ahmadis have been murdered in attacks which appear to be religiously motivated. During the reporting period, USCIRF received reports of 44 different attacks targeting Ahmadis, with 22 incidents resulting in the death of 23 individuals. Attacks occurred across the country, including major cities such as Lahore, Quetta, and Karachi. For instance, the president of the local Ahmadi community in the Orangi Town section of Karachi, Mr. Naeem Ahmad Gondal, was killed in July in a drive-by shooting as he left his home for work. Many of the targeted Ahmadis were professionals, such as doctors or businesspersons, with drive-by shootings a common tactic. In addition, an Ahmadi schoolteacher, Mr. Abudl Qudoos Ahmad, died while in police custody in Punjab province, with his body showing signs of torture. The poor legal standing of Ahmadis under Pakistan’s constitution and criminal code (discussed below) fosters a climate of impunity, where perpetrators feel empowered to attack them with little or no fear of arrest or prosecution.” (USCIRF, 30 April 2013, p. 122)
The HRCP reports as follows on religion-based harassment of Ahmadis in 2012, including by the police:
“In a number of cases, the police in Punjab either removed the Kalima (Islamic creed) from Ahmadi worship places or demolished the minarets of the structures. This happened in Kharian in July, in Lahore’s localities of Garhi Shahu and Sultanpura in May, and in Mughalpura (Lahore) and Khushab in September. Ahmadis in Lahore and Sargodha also complained that in some places the police had barred them from offering animal sacrifices on Eidul Azha. Several incidents of religion based harassment of Ahmadi students were reported from different places.
The targeting of the Ahmadis was not confined to the living alone. A number of Ahmadi graveyards were attacked, including one incident in Lahore where around a dozen armed men vandalised 120 tombstones in the Ahmadi graveyard at Model Town in December. Police removed Quranic verses and religious texts from tombstones in an Ahamdi graveyard in Hafizabad in August. In the same district, unidentified men erased Islamic inscriptions from gravestones in another Ahmadi cemetery in October.
The Ahmadis complained that while the authorities banned their conferences, rallies and major sporting events in Rabwa, the centre of the Ahmadi community in Pakistan, anti-Ahmadi clerics were given a free hand to hold a number of provocative rallies in and around Rabwa.
Ahead of the forthcoming general elections in 2013, Ahmadis remained the only community on a separate electoral list in a country where the name of every other registered voter was included in a joint list.” (HRCP, March 2013, pp. 103-104)
On the issue of police harassment of Ahmadis, the USCIRF 2013 annual report provides the following information:
“In addition to attacks on individual Ahmadis, local police repeatedly forced Ahmadis to remove Qu’ranic scripture from mosques and minarets. USCIRF is aware of nine such incidents over the past year, including the following examples. On January 18, 2013, local Punjab police ordered scripture to be removed from an Ahmadi owned property. When the president of the local community refused, police destroyed the tiles with chisels. In September 2012, local police, at the insistence of imams from the town, removed Islamic scripture from an Ahmadi mosque in Punjab province. In March, local police removed Islamic scripture from within an Ahmadi mosque in Lahore.
There were also at least seven instances of Ahmadi graves being desecrated, some by local police. Graves often have inscribed passages from the Qu’ran. On September 4, 2012 in Faisalabad, police demolished 23 Ahmadi gravestones to remove Islamic inscriptions at the request of local Islamic leaders. A similar event occurred in Hafizabad in Punjab in August, with police removing religious text from Ahmadi graves.” (USCIRF, 30 April 2013, p. 122)
In a press release dated June 2013, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) states:
“The newly formed government of the ruling party, PML [Pakistan Muslim League] [sic], has 53 tickets to sectarian leaders and the ultimate result of this will be an upsurge of religious violence in the country. The new government will not take any steps to prevent this violence and the people can expect no assistance in the way of protection, fair trial or freedom of expression.” (AHRC, 4 June 2013)
The Ahmadiyya Times, an independently run and privately managed news website that “does not claim to speak for or represent the official views of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community” (Ahmadiyya Times, undated), writes in an article dated June 2013:
“Since the new government lead by Mr Nawaz Sharif of PML-N [Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz] has taken over, observers say, there again has been a marked increase in attacks on Ahmadis in Pakistan.” (Ahmadiyya Times, 17 June 2013)
For further information on the treatment of Pakistan’s Ahmadis, please refer to the UNHCR Guidelines of May 2012 (pp. 16-18 and pp. 20-25) and the USDOS 2013 annual report on religious freedom, both already quoted above:
  • UNHCR - UN High Commissioner for Refugees: UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs of Members of Religious Minorities from Pakistan, 14 May 2012 (available at ecoi.net)
http://www.ecoi.net/file_upload/90_1337326697_unhcr-pakistan-20120514-religious-minorities.pdf
 
A January 2013 query response by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) also provides information on the situation of Ahmadis (including legal status, rights pertaining to political participation, education and employment, and societal and governmental attitudes towards Ahmadis):
  • IRB - Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada: Pakistan: The situation of Ahmadis, including legal status and rights with regards to political participation, education, and employment; societal and governmental attitudes toward Ahmadis (2009-December 2012) [PAK104254.E], 11 January 2013 (available at ecoi.net)
    http://www.ecoi.net/local_link/237366/346393_en.html
 
 
 

References: (all links accessed 24 June 2013)
 
 
 
 
ecoi.net description:
Query response on Pakistan: Situation of Ahmadis
Country:
Pakistan
Source:
ACCORD – Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation (Author)
Published:
24 June 2013
Document type:
Response
Language:
English
Document ID:
1326428 (former ID 252922)

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