Nearly 50 graves belonging to the Ahmadis have been allegedly desecrated by police and Muslim clerics for utilizing Islamic symbols on gravestones at a cemetery in Pakistan’s Punjab province, a member of an organisation representing the minority neighborhood stated on Monday.
Jamaat Ahmadiya Punjab spokesperson Aamir Mahmood stated {that a} group of individuals in Premkot, district Hafizabad, some 110 kms from Lahore, approached the police complaining that the Islamic verses are inscribed on the tombstones of a lot of graves within the Ahmadis graveyard.
The group threatened that the Ahmadis can not show Islamic verses/symbols on their houses or graves, he stated.
“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 informed PTI.
The enraged extremists additionally warned the Ahmadis residing within the space to take away Islamic verses displayed on their homes in any other case they may demolish them too, he added.
On the opposite hand, police stated the tombstones from Ahmadi graves have been eliminated on the appliance of a bunch of legal professionals and warned Ahmadis to not use the identical sooner or later.
Advocate Amir Nazir, Mehr Asif, Ali Raza and others additionally filed an software for registration of FIR in opposition to the members of Ahmadi neighborhood of the realm below blasphemy legal guidelines for writing Islamic verses on the tombstones. The police, nonetheless, didn’t 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 stated.
There had been a lot of such incidents in numerous components of Pakistan by which the graves of the Ahmadi neighborhood members have been desecrated by non secular zealots up to now.
Pakistan’s Parliament in 1974 declared the Ahmadi neighborhood as non-Muslims. A decade later, they have been banned from calling themselves Muslims. They are banned from preaching and from travelling to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage.
In Pakistan, round 10 million out of the 220 million inhabitants are non-Muslims. The minorities within the conservative Muslim-majority Pakistan usually complain of harassment by the extremists.
