Banned terrorist outfits targeting minorities in Pakistan: Us report

Banned terrorist outfits are targeting minorities in Pakistan, revealed the annual report of the UnitedStates Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Banned terrorist outfits are targeting minorities in Pakistan, revealed the annual report of the UnitedStates Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

“In 2017, religious minorities in Pakistan, including Shias…continued to face attacks and discrimination from extremist groups and society at large,” the report states, adding that as many as 231 people were killed and 691 injured in such incidents in Pakistan last year.

The report states that the government of Pakistan “failed to protect these groups adequately, and it perpetrated systematic, ongoing, egregious religious freedom violations.”

It was noted that forced conversions of non-Muslims continued despite the passage of the no-Muslim Marriage Act, which grants greater rights in family law for non-Muslims citizens.

“The entry of fundamentalist and often extremist, religious parties into the political arena in advance of July 2018 national elections further threatens religious minorities’ already precarious status in the country,” it adds.

In December 2017, the State Department named Pakistan as the first, and only country on its “Special Watch List,” a new category created by December 2016 amendments to IRFA.