Where was the teargas when Joseph Colony was burnt down?
Another harrowing attack on a religious minority has taken place. 200 houses, 80 shops torched, 200 families in hiding. It was reminiscent of the Gojra mob violence in 2009. But what has chilled the citizens of the country is that the mob attack took place in Punjab’s provincial capital – the home of the Chief Minister – and under watchful gaze of the Lahore police force.
Trouble was brewing in Joseph Colony, Badami Bagh since Wednesday night. Two men, one Muslim, one Christian, got into a verbal scuffle at a shop. No one knows what was – or was not – said. But after a quiet Thursday, a mob turned up on Friday, ready to ‘kill the blaspheming’ Christian. The Christian’s father was arrested in his absence to ‘force his surrender’ and so the alleged blasphemer did indeed turn himself in. Despite this, police told the Christian families to ‘evacuate’ due to a security threat, which was duly done. On Saturday, the ‘expected’ happened. Between 2,000 and 3,000 Muslims descended onto the community, broke locked homes, ransacked them and set them on fire. The photographs of the incident sent a chill down one’s spill. Amongst these was a glaring image that made it onto the front page of an English daily showing a protestor burning a cross.
Ominous was the silence of the Punjab government, police force and mainstream political parties as the incident was in the pipeline. The chief minister’s tokenism after the incident was to promise “reconstructed houses and Rs 200,000 per family”, as if this was enough, while the former minorities minister Kamran Michael and others remained absent from the public gaze. The fact that the incident had occurred in the ruling party’s stronghold suggests it was guilty by implication.
The Christian community brought hope by not taking the government’s inaction on the chin and took to the streets: the Punjab Assembly, press club and Youhanabad in particular were host to mass protests. Police, for some reason yet to be known, chose to clamp down on the Youhanabad protest, on which it used 500 teargas shells. The police clampdown was not on the Muslim mob that ransacked and burnt 200 houses in Badami Bagh – but on the Christian protestors at Youhanabad, the city’s largest Christian settlement, for protesting against the incident and allegedly “damaging the CM’s pet project, the Metro Bus System (MBS)”.
Who are we lying to when we claim “religious minorities have equal protection” under the constitution of our Islamic Republic of Pakistan?
Organised mob attacks on the Christian community have continued under the ‘safety’ provided to rioters by the much criticised – and much valourised – Blasphemy Laws. Are religious minorities not equal citizens? Moreover, why do we even call anyone a ‘religious minority’?
Most importantly, where was the teargas when Joseph Colony was burnt down? This question will ring long in the memory of religious minorities and those who wish for a more progressive Pakistan.