An opinion piece in the South Asia Channel of Foreign Policy urges the US to designate Pakistan a Country of Particular Concern.
It includes a devastating summary of the reality for minorities in Pakistan, and concludes “Unless the Pakistani state, civilian and military, puts all its efforts into reforming laws to provide equality and protection to all its citizens, Pakistan must and should be designated a CPC, for the sake of the people of Pakistan.”
The article says “What has trickled into the West’s consciousness are only bits and pieces of the deadly tales of Pakistan’s religious minorities: 93 Ahmadi worshippers killed in 2010; 80 Christians slaughtered at the All Saints Church in 2013; 60 Shiite Muslims murdered at a mosque in Sindh in January; 43 Ismaili’s gunned down inside a bus last month.
“The stories are horrific, but they hardly begin to convey the pervasive sense of dread that the nearly 40 million members of Pakistan’s religious minority communities live with on a daily basis.
“The problem has become so serious that religious minorities are fleeing the country in droves. As many as 10,000 Pakistani Christians (but official United Nations’ figures say 4,000) are now believed to be living ‘under the radar’ in Thailand, fending off arrest by Thai police for illegal entry as they cling to the hope of making it through the gruelling U.N. refugee resettlement process.
