Basharat Mughal, the president of a group of minority Muslims — the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Halqa Manzoor Colony in Karachi, was murdered on the 24 February 2008. The forty five year old was shot on his way to Fajr, the first of the Muslim morning prayers, becoming, says the group, the 88th person from the sect to be killed in Pakistan since 1984. He was shot in the back, neck and hand, and according to newspaper reports a case has been registered at the Mehmoodabad Police Station, but no suspects have so far been arrested.
The Ahmadiyya sect is fiercely disapproved of by mainstream Muslims that remain a direct threat to the political parties who also cannot provide protection to the minority religious community. In a previous statement (AS-153-2007) the AHRC condemned the fact that sect members are denied the right to vote in Pakistan, since they are listed separately from other Muslims and non-Muslims in electoral lists and other civil records. Ahmadiyyas are regularly persecuted in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia (see ALRC-CWS-07-003-2008) and other predominantly Muslim countries, and they are targets of harassment and violence from fundamentalist Muslims. They are not allowed to burry their relatives in the Muslim grave yards. In Punjab province, the mainstream religious groups with the help of local administration disinterred buried persons belonging to Ahmedi sect.
Ahmadi Muslims receive no protection from the police or parliament in Pakistan. Crimes against them go without investigation, and in some situations, are openly encouraged. Police are too afraid of the power held by fundamentalist Muslims to adequately investigate human rights abuses against members of the Ahmadiyya. As a member of the UNs Human Rights Council Pakistan needs to start openly protecting all of its minority groups from harassment, integrating them into the wider community, and offering redress to those harmed — or the families of those killed — as a result of discrimination.
