FAISALABAD: Hundreds of Muslim men set fire to four churches and vandalised a cemetery during a rampage in eastern Pakistan on Wednesday, officials said, after a Christian family was accused of blasphemy.
The attacks broke out in Faisalabad city after the Christian family was accused of desecrating the Koran.
“There is a stand-off between the police and the crowds. The crowds are not backing down. Police and Rangers have been deployed to control the situation,“ Ahad Noor, a district government official, told AFP, referring to a paramilitary force.
Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or Islamic figures can face the death penalty.
According to videos posted on social media, local Muslim leaders used mosque loudspeakers to urge their followers to demonstrate.
“Christians have desecrated the Holy Koran. All the clerics, all the Muslims should unite and gather in front of the mosque. Better to die if you don’t care about Islam,“ one cleric is heard saying in a video.
In another, crowds cheer and demand punishment for the accused blasphemers as a cross is torn from the top of a church.
Images on social media also showed crowds of people armed with sticks and rocks storming through the predominantly Christian area of the city, with smoke rising from church buildings and charred furniture in the streets.
A Christian cemetery was also vandalised, as well as the local government office, as crowds demanded action from the authorities.
Rana Imran Jamil, a spokesman for the city’s 1122 rescue service, told AFP that four churches had been set on fire. There were no reports of injuries.
“Photos and video clips of burnt pages of the Koran were shared among the locals, which created an uproar,“ he said.
The district government office also said at least four churches had been set alight.
A police report said charges would be filed against two Christian men who have fled the area.
Pakistani bishop Azad Marshall, in the neighbouring city of Lahore, said the Christian community was “deeply pained and distressed” by the events.
“We cry out for justice and action from law enforcement and those who dispense justice and the safety of all citizens to intervene immediately and assure us that our lives are valuable in our own homeland,“ he posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has warned that the South Asian country’s blasphemy laws are weaponised to target religious minorities and settle personal vendettas.
Christians, who make up around two percent of the population, occupy one of the lowest rungs in Pakistani society and are frequently targeted with spurious and unfounded blasphemy allegations.
Islamist right-wing leaders and political parties across Pakistan frequently rally around the issue, while politicians have been assassinated, European countries threatened with nuclear annihilation and students lynched over accusations of blasphemy.
Christian woman Asia Bibi was at the centre of a decade-long blasphemy row in Pakistan, which eventually saw her death sentence overturned and she was later allowed to leave the country.
Her case sparked violent demonstrations and high-profile assassinations while spotlighting religious extremism across wide sections of Pakistani society. – AFP
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