The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has upheld the decision of the Interior Ministry not to further extend the visas of three Filipino nuns in view of “public complaints”.
The Christian missionaries– Miraflor Aclan Bahan, principal of the F-8 branch of Islamabad Convent School, Delia Coyoca Rubio, the principal of the H-8 branch, and Elizabeth Umail Siguenza, the finance officer at the H-8 branch were accused of “engaging in employment in violation of their visa category”. The nuns, who have been working in Pakistan for about a decade, were told they must leave by the end of June.
The Interior Ministry letter to the nuns stated that “as the current position of the following Philippines missionary workers involve employment and constitutes change in category of visa, hence it had been decided to cancel their visa”.
The directives of the federal government were passed to the director general of immigration and passports, the same office that had extended the visas for all three missionaries for a period of two years just last month.
On June 25, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Islamabad and Rawalpindi filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) seeking a suspension of the government’s expulsion orders.
Rana Abid Nazir, the schools’ legal adviser, said that the government orders was ‘arbitrary’ and issued without hearing out his clients. He claimed that before canceling the visa, the concerned authorities should have contacted the bishop over the matter of the missionaries’ employment status.
According to Nazir, the practice of engaging missionary workers in the convent schools had existed since 1992 and the government had never objected in the past.
However, an official of the Interior Ministry said that according to the terms and conditions of a ‘missionary’ visa, missionaries could not take on any other assignment or engage in employment.
“Since they (the missionary workers) had violated the terms of their visa, the federal government issued directions to expel them,” he added, requesting anonymity.
The petition filed by the Catholic Diocese in IHC accused Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan of nurturing a personal vendetta against the Islamabad Convent School.
According to the petition, Nisar’s wife used to work as a teacher at the school but resigned in 2011 after a dispute with the principal.
“More than 4,000 students of Islamabad Convent School, who are Pakistani nationals, have been made the scapegoat just because of (a) personal liking or disliking,” the court filing stated. “If the missionary workers will be sent back then no proper replacement will be available for the proper taking care of the 4,000 children/students of our nation.”
Reacting after the IHC decision, an Interior Ministry spokesperson told a news outfit the ministry was constrained not to respond to the ‘malicious accusations’ of a group of three nuns on account of the case being before a court of law.
“However, now that the honourable court has comprehensively given its verdict and thrown the case out, it is in the fitness of things to respond to the venomous accusations on record,” he said.
He said by dismissing the writ petition in limine, i.e., dismissed from the date of its admission, as being not maintainable and that the petitioners have no locus standi, the court has upheld inalienable right of every sovereign state to either grant permission for entry to any foreigner or to refuse or withdraw any such permission in case the terms of permission are violated.
He said ‘the petty justification’ made with reference to the minister for interior actually relates to the year 2011 which has been ‘conveniently and dishonestly ignored’.
“In co-relating an issue of resignation, which took place in 2011 with cancellation of visas, the nuns and their attorney have conveniently hidden the hard fact that the same nuns were given extension in the visas in 2013 and again in 2015 under the present government. If anybody in the present government had a personal grudge against them, their visas would have been cancelled a long time ago,” he said.
The spokesman said what the accusers have ‘conveniently hidden’ is that a serious charge of child molestation was registered against one of the employees in the nuns’ school and the parents of a six-year-old boy ran from ‘pillar to post for days’ trying to have an FIR registered but their efforts were constantly stalled by the administration of the school.
“When the issue came to the notice of the Ministry of Interior through social media and an enquiry was ordered, many parents came forward with serious allegations against the nuns on account of misuse of authority, discrimination against Muslims in the school and commercialisation and violation of their visa terms,” he said.
According to the official, it was in light of these initial findings that the Interior Ministry withdrew the last extension granted in the visas of the nuns.
“Needless to say that a thorough enquiry will be carried out on all these complaints and the school administration and its board will be held accountable for any violation thereof,” he added.
He said in case any of the nuns had any reservations over the cancellation of their visas, they should have applied to the federal government for revision of the decision.