Chakwal attack

An attack by a charged mob at an Ahmadi place of worship in Chakwal was yet another reminder of the perils faced by minority communities in the country. The mob was armed with batons and stones and laid siege to the place of worship. It took hours before       the police was able to disperse the crowd. In a     sense, it is fortunate that there was only one casualty – an Ahmadi worshipper who died of a heart attack – since the situation could easily have got out of hand. The police have now arrested nearly a hundred people in connection with the attack but it remains to be seen if they will follow through and prosecute these men for they did. What is most infuriating about the attack is how preventable it was. On December 5, the Ahmadi community had sent a letter to the district coordination officer asking for protection since the possibility and the threat existed that a mob might try to forcibly take over their place of worship. On top of that, just one week before the attack, a petition was filed with the police, which was signed by over 500 people and demanded that the place of worship be ‘liberated’ and handed over to them.     The police were thus aware of the possibility of an attack and should have been on high alert on the day itself.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah attempted to blame both sides by pointing out that the Ahmadis at the place of worship fought back. It is unhelpful to try and create a false equivalence here. It is the Ahmadi community which is facing the constant threat of attack and can never be sure if it will receive help from law enforcement. Sanaullah also pointed out that the dispute over the land in Chakwal goes back years but that once again is no reason for the police not to have taken pre-emptive action when they were warned of a likely attack. Governments at every level in Pakistan – be they federal, provincial or local – have shown that providing security to Ahmadis, or for that matter many other minorities, is not a priority for them. Just days after the government named the National Centre of Physics at Quaid-e-Azam University after Dr Abdus Salam, we get yet more evidence that no one is about to turn a new leaf here. The least the Punjab government and the police can do now is to identify all the attackers and their ringleaders and uphold the law.