Eight publications launched

LAHORE
South Asia Partnership-Pakistan (SAP-PK) has launched eight different publications, which highlight how the religious minorities living in Pakistan are persecuted in different forms. These publications also suggest those steps the taking of which can help to protect and promote the constitutional rights of these minorities.
The launching ceremony was held here at a local hotel on Friday. People belonging to different walks of life, including media, human rights organisations, students, lawyers, community members and government bodies attended this event. These analysis reports include: performance of the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh and studies on forced conversion of religion, non-availability of ethics books and teachers, religious freedom of minorities and hate speech. SAP-Pakistan’s National Consultant and editor of these studies briefing the participants about these publications said that analysis reports on the business of legislative assemblies basically cover that how these legislative houses focused on the business relating to religious minorities during their last parliamentary year. She unfolded that according to the studies it was very unfortunate that during the whole parliamentary year, no specific legislation relating to the issues of minorities was made in these assemblies.
Highlighting about these studies cum analysis reports, she said that reports on assemblies reflect that what business the assemblies adopted to protect and promote the rights of religious minorities, what was the contribution of assembly members regarding the issues of minorities and what is more needed to be done in this regard.
Speaking over the study on ethics books, hate speech and forced conversion, she added that they speak about how the non-availability of alternative subjects to Islamiyat or the non-availability of ethics books and teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was creating problems for students belonging to religious minorities, how hate speech and hate material was overall affecting our society.