Christians protest over bartering away of Church property

Karachi

A large number of Christian men and women gathered outside the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday in protest against what they called a bid to hand over to a builders’ mafia Bible Society’s land, which is part of the Holy Trinity Cathedral premises in Saddar.

The irate protesters were shouting slogans like “We shall never allow commercialisation of our sacred places”.

The protest took place three days after Sadiq Daniel, the bishop of Karachi Diocese, and Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan laid the foundation stone of a proposed Trinity University.

Inside the press club, Saleem Anjum, chief of the PML-N minorities wing, along his associates Pastor Shafqat Kanwal and retired Karachi University professor Inayat Dean, told the media that Bishop Sadiq Daniel had bartered away the Bible Society land to a builders’ mafia who ostensibly were building a university there, but in reality they were constructing a 65-storey five-star hotel. 

He regretted that the governor laid the foundation stone of such a project. The proposed structure faces another five-star hotel in the vicinity on Fatima Jinnah Road. 

Anjum said that as compensation, the builders’ mafia had given to the church seven acres on the Super Highway where a “Bishop’s Town” was to be constructed.

He made it clear that the Christian community would never allow the plan to succeed, and that the church was to be used exclusively as a place of worship and welfare activity. He said nobody was within his right to commercialise sacred property.

The PML-N leader warned that every Christian would take up the cudgels against “this vile plan” and would never allow their places of worship to be used for commercial purposes.

Besides, he said, an ordinance passed during the Musharraf era said not an inch of the minorities’ religious property could be sold or mortgaged. 

As such, he demanded of the government to take note of this “daylight robbery”. ”We shall never allow the Sadiq Daniel mafia to desecrate the church property which is a sacred trust,” he said.

Requesting the government to urgently intervene, Anjum expressed the resolve that none would be allowed to line his pockets by bartering away Church land.

After laying the foundation stone of the project on Saturday, the governor had hoped that the university would soon stand among high-standard universities and it would provide prospects of higher education to its students.  He also said the Trinity University would be the first university of the country under the missionary system of education.