Hong Kong diocese targeted by Chinese hacking attempts

Hyderabad, Pakistan, Feb 17, 2017 / 11:46 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pakistanis are mourning those killed and wounded in a series of terrorist attacks which have taken place this week in the country, including one on a Sufi shrine that left more than 80 people dead.

“People in Pakistan are above all sad; they are also angry with the institutions that are not able to protect citizens. Finally they feel fragile, vulnerable, helpless in the face of [a] terrorist threat that spares no one,” Fr. Inayat Bernard, director of Santa Maria Seminary in Lahore, told Fides.

“We condemn this senseless violence against innocent human beings. Before any ethnic, cultural or religious connotation, the victims are human beings,” he continued.

A suicide bomber reportedly loyal to the Islamic State attacked devotees at a Sufi shrine in Sehwan, more than 90 miles northwest of Hyderabad, on Thursday. In addition to the more than 80 killed in the attack, some 250 were wounded. Sufism is a form of Islamic mysticism which the Islamic State opposes, in part because it reveres individuals it regards as saints. The shrine in Sehwan which was attacked is devoted to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a Sufi poet and philosopher of the 13th century.

Since Monday, there have also been terrorist attacks or attempts in Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar, Mohmand, and Arawan.

In a security crackdown in response to the attacks, Pakistani forces have killed more than 100 militants. It has closed border crossings with Afghanistan, whence it claims the militants were based.

“Today we know that we are all potential targets,” Fr. Bernard commented. “Even us Christians – no one is excluded. The victims of these latest attacks are all Muslims, tomorrow it could be the turn of a Christian, a Hindu or a Sikh. This indiscriminate violence hits places of worship, such as the Sufi mosque in Karachi, or churches in the past.”

He lamented that “religious communities are forced to adopt their own security measures and cannot rely on the government. There should be more control, but it is very difficult when there is a great influx of faithful.”

“This violence profanes the name of God, profanes Islam and uses religion to try to overthrow the state. Public opinion strongly calls on the government to urgently implement the national action plan against terrorism, already outlined, but there is some hesitation on behalf of the government and this gives rise to many questions on the possible existing connections even in the institutional apparatus. We are in an impasse”.

Catholics in Pakistan are called to “pray and show deep empathy and solidarity” to the Sufi victims in Sehwan, he said.

“We brought our condolences to the police, after the massacre in Lahore; we go to hospitals to offer assistance and solidarity to the injured,” he said.

He added that interreligious meetings are being organized “to reject, in the name of God, [the] terrorism that has bloodied our beloved nation, and say yes to peace and respect for life.”

[…]

Pope Francis speaking in Our Mother of Perpetual Help Cathedral on Sept. 15, 2022 / Vatican media

Rome Newsroom, Sep 15, 2022 / 02:13 am (CNA).
Speaking to priests, religious sisters, and missionaries living in Kazakhstan, where Catholics make … […]

CNA Staff, Jun 18, 2020 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- The US Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a report Tuesday recommending a “binding agreement” between the United States and Pakistan, with the goal of encouraging Pakistan to improve its treatment of religious minorities.

Laws against blasphemy in Muslim-majority Pakistan have led to death sentences for many religious minorities, and the extrajudicial killing by mobs of many more accused of blasphemy.

This includes Servant of God Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic politician from Pakistan who the Taliban killed in 2011.

The US State Department has designated Pakistan a “country of particular concern” since 2018 for its record on religious freedom violations.

CPC designations can carry sanctions under U.S. law, but in 2018 and 2019 the State Department granted waivers to Pakistan that exempt them from any meaningful actions related to the CPC designation, USCIRF says.

USCIRF— which makes policy recommendations but does not create laws— recommended that the US set defined, concrete benchmarks for Pakistan to provide “greater clarity to a path off the CPC list and help improve religious freedom conditions, especially for the country’s religious minorities.”

Such a “binding agreement” to encourage countries to take steps to get off the CPC list has been used only once, which the US entered into with Vietnam in 2005 and which led to Vietnam’s removal from the list. 

Pakistan’s state religion is Islam, and around 97 percent of the population is Muslim.

The country’s blasphemy laws, introduced in the 1980s, are reportedly used to settle scores or to persecute religious minorities; while non-Muslims constitute only 3 percent of the Pakistani population, 14 percent of blasphemy cases have been levied against them.

USCIRF urged the repeal of these laws.

The report also report recommended eliminating the practice of listing a person’s religion on their identification documents.The forced identification of a person’s religion on their ID has led to widespread discrimination and singling out of non-Muslims.

USCIRF urged Pakistan to begin an expedited review of all blasphemy cases, and to enforce proper handling of blasphemy cases according to existing due process rights. 

It also advocated that those accused of blasphemy be treated humanely, that those accused be allowed to post bail, and enforcing criminal penalties for people who give false evidence against someone accused of blasphemy.

USCIRF said Pakistan must remove material denigrating religious minorities from educational curricula and train teachers on the importance of religious tolerance, as well as establish and train a special police task force to protect religious minority communities and their houses of worship. 

In 2015, the Pakinstani government banned Ahmadiyya religious texts. Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims, but Pakistan’s constitution does not recognize the Ahmadis as such.

There are about 500,000 Ahmadis in Pakistan. Some observers estimate the Ahmadi population in Pakistan is higher, but persecution encourages Ahmadis to hide their identity. USCIRF recommended the ban on the texts be lifted.

There are at least 80 people currently imprisoned in Pakistan for their religious beliefs. Many of those accused of blasphemy are murdered, and advocates of changing the law are also targeted by violence.

A recent high-profile case involved a Catholic woman, Asia Bibi, whom authorities sentenced to death by hanging in 2010 for blasphemy. She spent nine years on death row, but left Pakistan for Canada in 2019 at the age of 53 after her death sentence was overturned in October 2018.

Though the Pakistani Supreme Court in January 2019 upheld the decision to overturn her conviction, the verdict and her subsequent release from prison sparked protests from Islamic hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws.

In 2009, a mob of Muslims looted and burned a Christian neighborhood, killing six Christians by burning them to death. The attacks took place in reaction to a rumor that the Quran was desecrated in a nearby village.

In Punjab province last year, a mob attacked a Christian community after a mosque broadcast over loudspeaker a claim that the Christians had insulted Islam. In another incident in Karachi, false blasphemy accusations against four Christian women prompted mob violence that forced nearly 200 Christian families to flee their homes, the USCIRF said.

In 2013 the then-governing party of Pakistan, the Pakistan Muslim League, promised a quota for jobs in the educational institutes and the public sector for members of religious minorities. The Pakistan Peoples Party discussed an Equality Commission to monitor job quotas in Sindh.

Both parties are now in the opposition in the national parliament, and the proposed safeguards have not been put into action.

In May, Pakistan established a long-delayed National Commission for Minorities, which the country’s Supreme Court had called for in 2014. Hard-line Islamist groups threatened to protest the commission, while Catholic leaders called the commission “toothless.”

Catholic and other religious leaders in the country have repeatedly spoken out against the country’s treatment of minorities.

In August 2019, a number of Pakistani religious leaders signed a joint resolution encouraging the Pakistani government to adopt policies to protect religious minorities.

The conference to sign the resolution, organized by Aid to the Church in Need – Italy and by local advocate Tabassum Yousaf, was attended by Fr. Saleh Diego, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Karachi, who represented Cardinal Joseph Coutts.

Representatives of the country’s Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Baha’i communities also were present and signed the resolution.

In a Jan. 21, 2020 letter written on behalf of Philadelphia’s Pakistani Catholic community, then-Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles Chaput encouraged Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan to shape a culture of religious freedom.

[…]