Annex to Complaint to the UNHRC To Urgently Stop Genocide of Minorities in Pakistan

A COMPLAINT TO THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL TO ACT URGENTLY TO STOP THE SLOW BUT RELENTLESS “DRIP, DRIP” GENOCIDE OF HINDUS, CHRISTIANS AND SIKHS IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF PAKISTAN.

This is an urgent complaint to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council to act decisively and enforce accountability in the ongoing but neglected issue of the genocide of Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

STRUCTURE: 

This annex to the complaint consists of:

• Section A: Nature of Complaint, methodology, scope, and standing
• Section B: The UN’s failure to prevent the Rwanda Genocide and its continuing ineffectiveness in the case of Pakistan
• Section C: The International Legal Framework
• Section D: The evidence for the physical element of genocide in Pakistan
• Section E: The evidence of genocidal intent in Pakistan
• Section F: Conclusion
• Section G: Action Requested
• Appendix 1: UN Member States call out Pakistan’s religious tolerance towards its minorities

SECTION A

NATURE OF COMPLAINT

This complaint is not “Islamophobic, hate speech, or racism” as (a) UN documents analyzing this issue in Pakistan repeatedly refer to Islam.  (b) No country is exempt from international law that prohibits genocide (c) According to the UN, “criticism of the ideas, leaders, symbols or practices of Islam“^[1] is not in of itself Islamophobia, and that “international human rights law protects individuals, not religions” and (c) Presenting history evidence how a country treats its minorities cannot be ‘Islamophobic.’ Consequently, we preemptively reject any such characterization that may be attributed to this good-faith complaint.

METHODOLOGY

This document draws upon a variety of inherently reliable data sources.  A non-exhaustive list includes UN documents, human rights organizations like Amnesty International, academics writing on Pakistan, who, in turn, have based their work on multiple inherently reliable sources; opinions by Pakistani authors, news reports in Pakistani media; Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission; international press including the New York Times; US media; Islamic websites; speeches by historical figures in Pakistan freely available on the internet, Indian and Christian news sources that focus on the plight of Hindus and Christians in Pakistan respectively.   The experience of individuals who are working to alleviate the plight of Pakistani Hindus has also been considered.

It also uses the  UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes¹⁰ (henceforth ‘Framework’).  This Framework has risk factors that are specific for genocide: Factor 9 relates to ‘Intergroup tensions or patterns of discrimination against protected groups, and Risk Factor 10 relates to ‘Signs of intent to destroy in whole or in part a protected group.

SCOPE

The complaint’s scope is largely restricted to acts that have occurred in what is currently Pakistan and with references to the movement that created Pakistan relevant to the issue.

STANDING

We are competent to raise the issue of genocide, as according to the UN, civil society can “advocate with States that have ratified the Convention to domesticate and implement it, including through developing mechanisms and structures for the prevention of genocide.”

SECTION B

THE UN’S FAILURE TO PREVENT THE RWANDA GENOCIDE AND ITS CONTINUING INEFFECTIVENESS IN THE CASE OF PAKISTAN

After the “crime without a name” acquired the nomenclature of ‘genocide’ in 1948, when UN Member States approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, there have been many occasions when the words “never again” have been repeated in seeming determination that the atrocities inflicted by the Nazis during the Holocaust would not befall other communities.

But the passing decades have revealed that the words “never again” have been replaced by “time and again.”¹¹ The fact is the UN has ignored the massive and unconscionable genocide of Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs in Pakistan from 1947 till now.

Experts acknowledge that more than seventy-five years “after the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into force, its effectiveness is disputed.” Consider the UN’s failure in the case of Rwanda.  The words spoken by Miroslav Lajčák, President of the General Assembly, are a typical example of the UN’s belated reaction.

There are many things to say today.  But I want to start with the simplest and hardest message of all: We failed.  We failed Rwanda.  We failed to keep our promises.  And, simply, we failed to do our jobs.

The UN Secretary–General¹² echoed the sentiment, saying, “And we remember – with shame – the failure of the international community.  The failure to listen and the failure to act.  It is a core duty of the United Nations [to] sound an early warning before abuses turn into atrocities.”

These words inspire no confidence, for there has been no shortage of “early warning” concerning what was being done to Pakistan’s Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs from 1947 till now.  In addition to the UN failure, Pakistan, as a Member State of the UN, has also failed in its responsibility to protect its Hindu, Sikh, and Christian population and, indeed, continues with this genocide.

SECTION C

THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK

Pakistan’s treatment of its Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs falls squarely within the definition of genocide as provided in  THE CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE (1948).¹³ (hereafter, the Genocide Convention).

Article 2 of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The UN recognizes that “genocide is a crime that can take place both in time of war as well as in time of peace” and “history has shown time and again that genocide is a process and that throughout this process there are warning signs that mark the road to genocide.” Furthermore, all perpetrators are to be tried regardless of whether they are private individuals, public officials, or political leaders with sovereign immunity.

As “affirmed at the 2005 World Summit,¹⁴ States have the primary responsibility for protecting their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.  The international community has committed to support each State in this endeavour and, should States manifestly fail in meeting their responsibilities, to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner in line with the United Nations Charter.”

According to the UN, the definition of genocide consists of two elements: “the physical element— the acts committed; and the mental element—the intent.”

With respect to the ‘intent to destroy’ the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and International Court of Justice (ICJ) have ruled that, in the absence of a confession, genocidal intent can be proven with circumstantial evidence, especially “the scale of atrocities committed, their general nature, in a region or a country, or furthermore, the fact of deliberately and

• https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide_Convention_FactSheet_ENG_2023.pdf
• https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/publications–and–resources/Genocide_Framework%20of%20Analysis–pdf

systematically targeting victims on account of their membership of a particular group, while excluding the members of other groups.”

The UN has emphasized the need to understand the “root causes and precursors” and identify “risk factors and precursors” that can lead to genocide.

The US has designated Pakistan as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) since 2002¹⁵ under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, as amended, for having engaged in or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom.

SECTION D

THE EVIDENCE FOR THE PHYSICAL ELEMENT OF GENOCIDE

Pakistan’s Hindu, Sikh, and Christian populations have suffered what a Pakistani expert calls a “drip, drip” genocide.  

Genocides can often be characterized by an explosion of extreme violence that is limited in time.  What happened to the Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs in Pakistan was somewhat different but nevertheless as lethal as they faced a slow but relentless genocide.  The Pakistani American writer Farahnaz Ispahani¹⁶ wrote:

I call it a ‘drip, drip genocide’ because it’s the most dangerous kind of wiping out of religious communities….  It doesn’t happen in one day.  It doesn’t happen over a few months.  Little by little by little, laws and institutions and bureaucracies and penal codes, textbooks that malign other communities, until you come to the point of having this sort of jihadi culture that is running rampant.

The writer is correct.  What happened in Pakistan is a ‘Whole-of-Society Genocide’ implemented by the Pakistani State and made worse by the participation and tacit approval of a genocidal citizenry comprising millions.

Against the backdrop of a massive increase in Pakistan’s Muslim population, various sources are unanimous about the steep decline in Pakistan’s Hindu population. 

The Muslim population of Pakistan has ballooned¹⁷  from 33.7 million in 1951 census to 243 million in 2024,¹⁸ which is an increase of 636 %.

The discriminatory treatment of Hindus in Pakistan has been evident to the Indian government for decades.  In her address to the UN on 30 September 1963, India’s representative Vijaya Laxmi Pandit ¹⁹said, “The government of Pakistan, ever since its creation, has followed a communal

policy based on the pernicious two-nation theory.  Hindus from West Pakistan having been already practically eliminated.”

According to Farahnaz Ispahani, ^[2][3][4]a Pakistani-American who wrote Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Religious Minorities²¹ and  quoted in a 2016 article entitled, Slow Genocide of minorities in Pakistan,²²

Right before the Partition of India and Pakistan, we had a very healthy balance of religions other than Islam.  Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians.  [Now] Pakistan goes from 23 percent [non-Muslim], which is almost a quarter of its population, to three percent today.  So there has been a purification of minorities.  So my big question was where have they gone?

According to an article in The New York Times,^[5] entitled, ‘Poor and Desperate, Pakistani Hindus Accept Islam to Get By’ At independence in 1947, Hindus comprised 20.5 percent of the population of the areas that now form Pakistan.  In the following decades, the percentage shrank rapidly, and by 1998—the last government census to classify people by religion—Hindus were just 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s population.  Most estimates say it has further dwindled in the past two decades.

According to Ayesha Siddiqa,^[6][7] exiled analyst and writer,  ‘Hinduism in Pakistan’s Punjab province is almost finished.’ In June 2016, The Express Tribune, a Pakistani newspaper, stated in an article entitled, ‘Our vanishing Hindus’²⁵

At the time of the establishment of Pakistan, the non-Muslim population of West Pakistan was about 24.6 percent, while non-Muslims formed about 30 percent of East Bengal and Sylhet.  When the assemblies for Pakistan were set up, 18 members of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan were non-Muslim out of a total of 69, meaning about 26 percent.  Even in the West Punjab assembly after Partition, around 10 members [10 percent] were non-Muslims.  Hence, when Pakistan was established, not only were non-Muslims in substantial numbers, [but] they were also reasonably well represented in the assemblies too.  However, very soon, conditions changed, and the non-Muslim percentage decreased to less than five percent in West Pakistan.  And if conditions do not change, even this percentage will disappear.

According to the Voice of America,^[8] “Pakistan’s Hindu population has significantly decreased in recent years, with many migrating to India to seek refugee status, citing religious persecution in Pakistan.  They have long complained of prejudice against them both from the government and society.”

The Dawn,²⁷ a newspaper in Pakistan stated, “Religious minorities have been made invisible in our electoral politics.  This is no longer ‘news’ in our neck of the woods.  Many are scared of a public discussion on the issue of Pakistan’s minorities.  The above evidence conclusively proves the physical element of the genocide as required by the Genocide Convention.

SECTION E

THE EVIDENCE OF GENOCIDAL INTENT

UN documents refer to the role of Islam repeatedly while referring to the plight of minorities

The UN Framework²⁸ addresses the issue of ‘reasons, aims or drivers that justify the use of violence against protected groups.  Indicator 4.7 requires considering ‘Ideologies based on the supremacy of a certain identity or on extremist versions of identity.’

Applying the above guidance, one finds that UN documents repeatedly refer to Islam in the discriminatory treatment meted out to Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs.  Some examples are:

• In April 2024, UN experts,²⁹ “expressed dismay at the continuing lack of protection for young women and girls belonging to minority communities in Pakistan. Christian and Hindu girls remain particularly vulnerable to forced religious conversion, abduction, trafficking, child, early and forced marriage, domestic servitude, and sexual violence.
• In 2023, UN experts,³⁰ stated, “girls as young as 13 in Pakistan…are forced to marry and convert to Islam.  They also implicated “religious authorities and the complicity of security forces and the justice system.
• In 2023, Mexico³¹ recommended that Pakistan “Adopt all necessary measures to eradicate the forced conversion to Islam of women and girls belonging to religious minorities.
• In 2023, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland recommended³² that Pakistan “ensures that school textbooks are inclusive of all religions and ensure that minorities can access suitable alternatives to compulsory Qur’anic studies.

In 2022, several Special Rapporteurs of the UN³³ issued a public communication that, in part, stated:

•  The practice of abducting young women and girls who belong to religious minorities and forcing them to marry and convert to Islam against their will is reportedly widespread in Pakistan, particularly impacting the Hindu and Christian minorities.
• Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif³⁴ has acknowledged that minorities are facing “targeted violence in the name of religion. Every day, minorities are being killed. They are not safe under the guise of Islam.”

Pakistani writers identify Islamic concepts that are relevant to the violation of  minority rights in the country. 

Following the UN Framework, it is necessary to turn to Pakistani experts as to what causes this hostility towards its minorities.  In 2019, a Pakistani journalist ³⁵ wrote on extremism in Pakistan, which he defined as:

Irreconcilable hostility to other people’s religion or sect, their culture and customs, rejection of the rights of minority communities and women, and determination to convert them through inducement or intimidation or eliminate them through physical violence, including terrorist acts.

He stated, “Non-Muslim women and girls suffer greater violence than their Muslim counterparts.”  Another expert, Pervez Hoodbhoy, in a book by Pakistani experts, questioned, ‘Could Pakistan have remained pluralist?  His obvious implication was that Pakistan had been unable to do so.  He categorically states, ‘considering matters related to the Islamic faith is absolutely essential.” Asking whether Islamic doctrine can accommodate pluralism, he writes, “No arguments from outside Islam have validity because, as a faith, Islam is a set of immutable principles that does not need compatibility with anything else other than itself.”  He asserts that without the explicit rejection of three important elements of Islamic faith, “pluralism is impossible to achieve within a state that purports to be run by Qur’anic principles.  They are the concepts of jizya (penalty), zimmi (nonMuslims), and but-shikinee (destruction of idols).” Drawing on the authority of Maulana Abul Ala Mawdoodi, a sub-continental Islamic cleric of Indian origin whose influence extends deep into the Middle East, he writes,

Jizya is a symbol of humiliation and submission because zimmis should not be regarded as full-fledged citizens of the Islamic State even if they are natives to the country.  Zimmis are not allowed to build new churches, temples, or synagogues.  They are allowed to renovate old churches or houses of worship, provided they do not add any new construction.  Yet, Muslims, if they wish, are permitted to demolish all non-Muslim houses of worship in any land they conquer.  As a monotheistic religion, Islam does not tolerate idol worship.  The destruction of idols (but-shikinee), considered mandatory for Muslims, puts Islam at odds with religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

Furthermore, “textually and formally, literalist Islam does not appear to permit any real degree of integration of non-Muslims into a Muslim society.” Hoodbhoy also quotes from the Qur’an.

• Qur’an 9.05:³⁶ When the sacred months are past [in which a truce had been in force between the Muslims and their enemies], kill the idolaters wherever you find them, and seize them, besiege them and lie in wait for them in every place of ambush; but if they repent, pray regularly, and give the alms tax, then let them go their way, for God is forgiving, merciful.
• Qur’an 9.29³⁷: Fight those who do not believe in God or the Last Day, and who do not forbid what has been forbidden by God and His Messenger [Muhammad], and those among the People of the Book who do not acknowledge the religion of truth until they pay tribute [jizya] after they have been brought low.

Two authors, Edwina Pio and Jawad,³⁸ in the same book state that a point to consider regarding the position of Christians in Pakistan is the Islamic notion of dhimmi.  This refers to the unbeliever who pays the jizyah tax and accepts a lower status in an Islamic society/state for the privilege of living there and following their own religion.  The status is generally that of a second-class citizen with restricted freedoms.  These include inequalities with regard to taxes and penal law and the refusal of their testimony by Muslim courts.  Dhimmi also means that the individual accepts subjugation and that they are allowed to reside in a Muslim country even though they are unbelievers.

Furthermore, this book also refers repeatedly to the Islamic concept of kaafir,³⁹ who is a disbeliever, or someone who rejects or does not believe in Allah as the one and only God and Muhammad as the final messenger of Allah. Surah 98: 6 ⁴⁰ states “they are the worst of ˹all˺ beings.”

Also relevant is the concept of Dawah⁴¹, an Arabic term largely understood to signify an invitation [to Islam].  Dawah activities can include acts of charity and proselytization.  Converting nonMuslims to Islam is considered a meritorious activity⁴².  In 2004, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations published a report ⁴³describing ‘Dawah’ as a tactic of ‘radical Islam.’ According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of ‘The Challenge of Dawa’⁴⁴ “Islamist Dawa is a process of methodical indoctrination, brainwashing, that rejects assimilation.”

The intent to commit genocide is corroborated by Pakistani sources who identify religious ideology as the motivating force in what was done to the Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs of Pakistan. 

The Pakistani political scientist Ishtiaq Ahmed⁴⁵ has stated, “Pakistan was born because of hatred, and the country is still alive because of hatred.”

Farahnaz Ispahani, a Pakistani-American who wrote Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Religious Minorities, stated, “As the author of a book on the history of Pakistan’s religious minorities, let me state clearly that the real culprit in the widespread persecution of religious minorities in the case of Pakistan was the desire of some to create a purer Islamic state.” Interviewed and quoted in a 2016 article entitled, Slow genocide of minorities in Pakistan, she said:

When Pakistan was being formed in 1947, Pakistan’s population of non-Muslims was 23%, today we are somewhere between 3%-4%.  So there has been a purification of minorities.  So my big question was where have they gone?  What I have uncovered is quite devastating because it has not been one government or one man who has been culpable.  It’s not only (former president) General Zia ul Haq.  It has been from the time of Mr. (Mohammed Ali) Jinnah, the Qaid-e-Azam of Pakistan, as he lay dying, already the political and bureaucratic wheels were moving towards a more Muslim state.  I am saying that for all religious minorities—Muslim and non-Muslim—there has been a purification.  This is what I call drip-drip genocide.  Normally when people talk about genocide, they talk about Nazi Germany, or they talk about Yugoslavia.  In the case of Pakistan, this is slow genocide, this drip, drip, drip over 76 years.

She noted the four stages by which minorities were affected;

• In the first stage, there was ‘Muslimization’ between 1945 and 1951, which saw “a massive decline in Hindu and Sikh populations and therefore Pakistan became more Muslim demographically.”
• Stage two involved ‘Muslim identity’ from 1958 onwards, in which state-sponsored textbooks rejected pluralism and painted religious minorities very negatively.
• Stage three involved ‘Muslimization’ during President Zia-ul Haq’s time, when legislation attempted to “make the country’s laws more Islamic resulted in creating a legal framework against the minorities.”
• Finally, stage four was ‘militant hostility’ towards minorities, including terrorism and organized violence.

The US-based Wilson Centre⁴⁶ commented upon the book:

General Zia-ul-Haq’s […] military regime promoted Sunni Islam at the expense of other denominations so that by the end of his reign, Pakistan was no longer a welcome place for minorities.  Many fled, but those who remained faced escalating persecution from both state and non-state actors.  Tens of thousands died in the ensuing “purifying” attacks.

The intent to commit genocide is demonstrated by the deep animosity towards Hindus in the movement to create Pakistan. 

The Hindu genocide in Pakistan flows directly from the ‘two-nation theory’ declared by Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who stated, “It is a dream that Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality.”   Jinnah’s own words show his all-encompassing conception of Islam in action.  In his Eid message in 1945,⁴⁷ he said,

Everyone, except those who are ignorant, knows that the Quran is the general code of Muslims.  A religious, social, commercial, military, judicial, criminal, penal code, it regulates everything from the ceremonies of religion to those of daily life; from the salvation of the soul to the health of the body; from the rights of all to those of each individual; from morality to crime, from punishment here to that in the life to come, and our Prophet (PBUH) has enjoined on us that every Musalman should possess a copy of the Quran and be his own priest.  Therefore, Islam is not merely confined to spiritual tenets and doctrines or rituals and ceremonies.  It is a complete code regulating the whole Muslim society, every department of life, collectively and individually.

In his statement, there was no mention of the rights of any minority group.  Rejecting attempts to portray Jinnah as ever favoring secularism, a Pakistani blogger⁴⁸ noted,

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah made several thousand speeches and statements spread over a period of about forty years (1908 to 1948), and there is not a single speech or statement in which he has said anything in favour of secularism.  On the contrary, there are over two hundred (200) speeches expressing his Islamic orientation.  The speeches contradicting secularism quoted above were made both before and after 11 August 1947; therefore, it would be unreasonable and illogical to give an interpretation in favour of secularism to his speech of 11 August 1947.

The blogger’s reference to Jinnah’s speech of 11 August 1947,⁴⁹ is much quoted in which Jinnah said,

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan.  You may belong to any religion or, caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state.  We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another.

These words by Jinnah were in stark contrast to the tenor of all his speeches, in which he showed himself to be obsessed with Islam and Muslims only.  Stanley Wolpert⁵⁰ who authored a favourable biography of Jinnah’s, expressed bewilderment wrote “What was he talking about? Had he simply forgotten where he was? Had the cyclone of events so disoriented him that he was arguing the opposition’s brief? Was he pleading for a united India – on the eve of Pakistan – before those hundreds of thousands of terrified innocents were slaughtered ….?”

In his 11 August 1947 speech, Jinnah also displayed a remarkable lack of self-awareness as he had worked ceaselessly emphasizing the “distinction” between Hindus and Muslims.  In any event, one speech could not override the centrality of his message that Hindus and Muslims were two nations.

Expectedly, the plea in this speech vanished without a trace and was ignored by Pakistan’s rulers and citizens.   Rather, his emphatic declarations that Hindus and Muslims could never co-exist infected Muslims who wanted Pakistan.  According to Pakistani media ^[9][10][11]

“Pakistan Ka Matlab Kya, La Ilaha Illa-Allah” [What does Pakistan mean?  Nothing worshipped is worthy of worship except Allah”] was probably the most famous national slogan.  This “poem proved to be the most influential piece of poetry ever written for Pakistan and shaped the country’s ideology.” Other religious slogans, such as “Muslim hai tau Muslim League mein aa” [If you are a Muslim, join the Muslim League] and “Pakistan mein Musalmaanon ki hukumat hogi” [Muslims will rule Pakistan], were freely used.

This fervent politico-religious and supremacist orientation among the Muslims who wanted and created Pakistan meant there was no room for Hindus and followers of other faiths.

After the Partition on 15 August 1947 and the creation of Pakistan, when a massive and bloody exchange of population was taking place between the two countries, a vivid example of how this virus of hatred infected Muslims has been recorded by a Pakistani historian.

On the allegation that Hindus and Sikhs attacked the trains coming from India bearing Muslims and that “No Muslim was left alive,” Mubarak Ali,⁵² author of several books on India-Pakistan history, says, “This is a one-sided account of events and an exaggerated version of the truth.  In fact, it was the Pakistani side where the communal riots started, and in reaction, Indians responded.  Very few trains were attacked.  And many more made it alive.”

Things continued to get worse for Hindus once Pakistan became a reality.  The famous ‘Objectives Resolution’⁵³ passed by Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly on 12 March 1949 declared, “The sovereignty of the entire Universe belongs to Allah alone” and established that “Authority should be delegated to the State through its people under the rules set by Allah.”^[12]

While paying lip service to the rights of minorities, all objections of the Hindus in the Constituent Assembly were ignored.  As reported on a Pakistani website:^[13]

While discussing the rights of religious minorities, Chandra Mandal opposed the resolution by saying that ‘why ulemas are insisting on this principle of Islam whereas India has Pandits, but they did not demand things like that.  Individuals do have a religion but the state had not.  So we think it a great deviation in our beloved Pakistan.’ Kumar Datta opposed it by saying that ‘if this resolution came in the life of Jinnah, it would not have come in its present form.  Let us not do anything which leads our generation to blind destiny.’ Other Hindu members also proposed some amendments in the resolution and recommended that some words like ‘…sacred trust”, “…within the limits prescribed by Him”, and “… as enunciated by Islam” should be omitted.  Some new words should be inserted like “as prescribed by Islam and other religions,” and “National sovereignty belongs to the people of Pakistan, etc.”

However, this resolution created a division on the communal lines.  The Muslim members, except for Mian Iftikharuddin, voted in favor of it, and the non-Muslims opposed it.  It created suspicion in the minds of minorities against the majority.  Since the resolution has yet not been implemented in Pakistan in its true spirit, the doubts in the minds of the minorities still exist.

The steamrolling and disregard of the sentiment of the Hindus who had chosen to stay back in Pakistan despite the massive communal blood-letting told them they counted for nothing.

The intent to commit genocide as demonstrated by Pakistan’s gross failure to protect minority rights as agreed in 1950 between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan. 

On 8 April 1950, a document⁵⁶ bearing the title, ‘Agreements between the Governments of Pakistan and India regarding Security and Rights of Minorities (Nehru-Liaquat Agreement) was signed in New Delhi.  This was an agreement between Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India, and Liaquat Ali Khan, prime minister of Pakistan.

Time shows Pakistan has made a mockery of what it had agreed to.  Specifically, both governments had solemnly agreed in Part A:

Each shall ensure, to the minorities throughout its territories, complete equality of citizenship, irrespective of religion, a full sense of security in respect of life, culture, property and personal honour, freedom of movement within each country and freedom of occupation, speech and worship subject to law and morality.  Members of the minorities shall have equal opportunity with members of the majority community to participate in the public life of the country, to hold political or other offices and to serve in the country civil and armed forces.  Both Governments declare these rights to be fundamental and undertake enforcement effectively.

In Section C (5), they agreed to:

NOT (capitalization in agreement) recognize forced conversions.  Any conversion effected during a period of communal disturbance shall be deemed to be forced conversions.  Those found guilty of converting people forcibly shall be punished.

In Section C (7), they agreed:

Take prompt, practical, and effective steps to prevent the dissemination of news and mischievous opinions calculated to rouse communal passion by press, radio, or any individual or organization.  Those guilty of such activity shall be rigorously dealt with.

The agreement also states, “The Prime Minister of Pakistan has pointed out that similar provisions exist in the Objectives Resolution adopted by the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan.

As pointed out above, the Objectives Resolution did no such thing and is “generally understood as marking the beginning of the Islamization of laws and society.”⁵⁷ as all objections of the Hindu members of the Constituent Assembly were ignored.

The agreement to not recognize forced conversions is an implicit but exclusive reference to Muslims as they alone forcibly convert others to Islam.  (Forced conversion is impossible in Hinduism as one is born a Hindu).  The date of the agreement-1950- also shows that nearly three years after the Partition in 1947, Muslims continued their aggressive attacks on Hindus.  There is no data that Pakistan ever punished anyone for forcibly converting Hindus.  Instead of taking ‘effective steps to prevent’ news and opinion from arousing communal disturbance, Pakistan constructed its entire education system to arouse hate towards its Hindu, Christian, and Sikh populations.

Seizure of Hindus’ property though the Enemy Property Act (EPA) after the 1965 war

Pakistan has also used legal means to divest its Hindus of their property as documented in the book, ‘A quiet case of ethnic cleansing: the murder of Bangladesh’s Hindus’⁵⁸ by Dr. Richard Belkin. He notes that after Pakistan suffered “another embarrassing defeat at Indian hands” in the 1965 war between the two countries,

Unable to take out its vengeance on India, the Pakistani government attacked its own Hindu citizens by passing [the Enemy Property Act] that retaliatory law which allowed it to certain citizens (read Hindu citizens) enemies and confiscate their property. The law was openly anti-Hindu and matched the open and nationally supported rhetoric at the time, as well as the prevailing national sentiment all of the time even to our day. The nature of anti-Hindu sentiment and rhetoric among the Pakistani population is transparently racist since he persisted when Hindus were almost a fifth of the population and continues with Hindus now a sad and powerless one percent.

The intent to commit genocide as evidenced by the genocide inflicted upon Hindus by the Pakistani army in 1971 in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)   

Pakistan sees Hindus as Kaffirs, enemies, and traitors because they share their religion with the majority in India.  This was seen during the genocide inflicted upon the population of erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) by the Pakistani army in 1971.  As noted by the Hindu American Foundation,⁵⁹

On 25 March 1971, the Pakistan military began a 10-month campaign of genocide against the ethnic Bengali and Hindu religious communities in East Pakistan, a clear example of the facets of genocide as defined by the United Nations Genocide Convention.  In the eyes of the Pakistani military, Hindu, Bengali, and Indian identities were one and the same.   Archer K. Blood, the American Consul General in Dhaka, noted in 1971,

‘Genocide’ applies fully to [this] naked, calculated, and widespread selection of Hindus for special treatment…From the outset, various members of the American community have witnessed either the burning down of Hindu villages and Hindu enclaves in Dacca and the shooting of Hindus attempting [to] escape carnage or have witnessed after-effects which [are] visible throughout Dacca today.

Sen. Edward M Kennedy also stated in November 1971,

Nothing is more clear [sic] or more easily documented than the systematic campaign of terror – and its genocidal consequences launched by the Pakistan army on the night of 25 March… Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered, and, in some places, painted with yellow patches marked ‘H.’  (Emphasis added)

The illegal targeting, forced conversions, kidnappings, rape, and sexual exploitation of Hindu and Christian women and girls evidence the intent to commit genocide.  

The Genocide Convention prohibits, ‘Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” That is precisely what Pakistan did with the massive and continuing conversions, rape, and sexual abuse of Hindu girls and women.  Once forcibly converted, they could no longer, by definition, give birth to Hindu children.

Evidence from diverse sources establishes that Pakistani Hindu women and girls are and remain the targets of  fanatical mullahs⁶⁰ with more than a thousand converted and kidnapped every year.

According to the 2024 U.S. International Religious Freedom Report,

there were at least 136 cases of abduction and forced conversion of Hindu and Christian women and girls during the year, an increase from […] 103 cases the previous year.  Most victims were minors, and at least 18 percent were less than 14 years old.  Other estimates of forced or coerced conversions varied widely – with Hindu and Christian activists stating that more than 500 girls were abducted and forcibly converted each year.  Human rights activists stated that to avoid prosecution; abductors commonly coerced their victims into overstating their age and claiming that they converted to Islam and married willingly.  In many cases, courts accepted this testimony and granted custody to the abductor.  When courts determined girls to be below the age of marriage, they commonly sent them to shelters rather than back to their parents.

Civil society activists and media continued to report incidents of young Christian and Hindu women being abducted and raped by Muslim men.  Victims said their attackers singled them out as vulnerable due to their religious minority identity.  According to CLAAS and the Pakistan Center for Law and Justice, there were also reports of religious minority women being physically attacked by men.

In February, according to Christian media, a Muslim, Kamran Allah Bux, threw acid on the face of Sunita Masih, a Christian, in the Masoom Shad area of Karachi because she refused to enter into a relationship with him and convert to Islam.

Mary James Gill, director of the Center for Law and Justice, said: “minority (Christian and Hindu) girls face harassment and intimidation from Muslim men every day, but their pleas for help go unheeded.” On 17 May, a Hindu woman and her six children who went missing on 7 May in Karachi were reported converted to Islam on the same day they were reported missing by their husband and father.  A “certificate of conversion” was issued by Jamia Binoria Aalamia, an Islamic seminary in Karachi.  On 6 June, four men reportedly kidnapped, raped, and killed a 40-year-old Christian widow, Shazia Imran, in Lahore.  The victim’s family said the accused ringleader of the incident, Mani Gujjar, attempted to force Shazia to convert to Islam and marry him, but she refused.

An article in the Dawn⁶¹ published on 18 April 2024, highlighted the case of a nine-year-old Hindu girl, Priya Kumari, who had gone missing on 19 August 2021.

Just before her disappearance or abduction, she had been happily helping her father — a syncretic Hindu who runs a sabeel every year […] in a small town near Sukkur — [to] serve sherbet to thirsty mourners.  It is a curious case.  For one, she ‘disappeared’ from a place that was thronged with hundreds of people, and yet, reportedly, the police found little by way of evidence or even a witness.

She was targeted when she was engaged in religio-cultural services for Muslims.  In defiance of an obscurantist mindset that has spawned violence against religious minorities, she and her father transcended faith-driven fault lines.  Her victimhood […] exposes a corroded criminal justice system.

To the author, this case and others reflected “the incapacity, dysfunctionality, and discomfiture of the entire criminal justice system — the law, police, investigation, prosecution, and adjudication.”

Western countries are aware of these gross violations of the human rights of Pakistan’s Hindu women and girls.  For example, the U.K. sanctioned one Mian Abdul Haq,⁶² a Muslim cleric accused of being responsible for forced conversions and marriages of girls and women from religious minorities, including Hindus.  According to the Pakistan Human Rights Commission⁶³  in 2021 alone, “around 60 cases of forced conversion were reported in the local media, of which 70 percent were girls under the age of 18,” most of them from the Sindh province.  In its earlier reports, it stated:

With kidnappings and forced conversions of teenage Hindu girls, abduction of Hindu traders for ransom, and desecration of temples, many Hindus have been forced to migrate to India and elsewhere.   The Sikh community has also been subjected to continued discrimination and violence from extremists over the years because of their religious affiliation.  Over the years, there have been a number of religiously motivated attacks against minority Sikhs in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

This has forced Sikhs to flee in the face of rising violence from the province.  In 2023, Radio Free Europe⁶⁴ reported,

Thousands of Sikhs are believed to have fled Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, of which Peshawar is the capital, in the face of deadly militant attacks and growing religious intolerance in recent years.  Around 70 percent of the around 30,000 Sikhs who lived in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have left the province in the past decade.  Some 30 Sikh politicians, activists, and businessmen have been killed in attacks since 2013.

“We do not want money or jobs from the government,” he added.  “We just want an immediate end to the targeted killings of our community members and want the government to compensate us for the demolition of our houses.”

Niala Mohammad, a former South Asia analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said the rise of Muslim extremism in Pakistan has fueled discrimination against religious minorities.  “Violent attacks, including targeted killings, abductions, extortion, forced conversions to Islam, and forced marriages, pose major threats to the Sikh community in Pakistan.  The growing intolerance for religious diversity has forced many Sikhs to migrate to other countries in search of safety and freedom to practice their faith without fear.”

In April 2024, U.N. experts,⁶⁵

expressed dismay at the continuing lack of protection for young women and girls belonging to minority communities in Pakistan.  Christian and Hindu girls remain particularly vulnerable to forced religious conversion, abduction, trafficking, child, early and forced marriage, domestic servitude, and sexual violence.  The exposure of young women and girls belonging to religious minority communities to such heinous human rights violations and the impunity of such crimes can no longer be tolerated or justified.   The experts expressed concern that forced marriages and religious conversions of girls from religious minorities, which have been coerced, are validated by the courts, often invoking religious law to justify keeping victims with their abductors rather than allowing them to return them to their parents.  Perpetrators often escape accountability, with police dismissing crimes under the guise of ‘love marriages’.  The experts stressed that child, early, and forced marriage cannot be justified on religious or cultural grounds.  They underlined that, under international law, consent is irrelevant when the victim is a child under the age of 18.

In 2023, U.N. experts,⁶⁶ stated, “girls as young as 13 in Pakistan…are forced to marry and convert to Islam.  [They]warned that teenagers had been “kidnapped from their families, trafficked … far from their homes (and) made to marry men sometimes twice their age.  They also implicated “religious authorities” and the complicity of security forces and the justice system.  The U.N. maintained that Pakistan’s courts had enabled the perpetrators by accepting “fraudulent evidence” from them regarding the age of the victims and their willingness to marry and convert to Islam.  “Abductors force their victims to sign documents which falsely attest to their being of legal age for marriage as well as marrying and converting of free will.  The police cite these documents as evidence that no crime has occurred.  [The experts were] “very concerned” that marriages and conversions have taken place “under threat of violence to these girls and women or their families.”

In 2022, several Special Rapporteurs of the U.N.⁶⁷ issued a public communication that, in part, stated:

The practice of abducting young women and girls who belong to religious minorities and forcing them to marry and convert to Islam against their will is reportedly widespread in Pakistan, particularly impacting the Hindu and Christian minorities.  Victims are allegedly taken from their cities or provinces of origin and deprived of contact with their families.  They are then allegedly raped and/or forcibly married and forced to convert to Islam, sometimes under the threat of violence and with the direct involvement of religious clerics.  These women and girls are then reportedly forced by their abductors to appear before courts and give testimony and/or sign official documents which attest to their being of age and having married and converted to Islam of their own free will.  This coercion reportedly takes place under the threat of violence against them or their families.

Perpetrators of these offenses are alleged to enjoy a significant degree of impunity, enabled in part by the actions of the security forces and the justice system.  Family members of victims report that their complaints are not taken seriously by police at the first instance of reporting; on the contrary, police in some instances have reportedly convinced family members to sign documents that attest to their children being of age through fraudulent practices such as allowing illiterate people to sign written documents or having complainants sign a blank piece of paper that is subsequently filled in by the police with information indicating that the victim in question was of age.  In other instances, police have reportedly informed families that they have no jurisdiction to intervene, describing the abductees’ relationship with their abductors as “love marriages” and providing the families with documentation from the girls’ abductors, which attests to their voluntary marriage and conversion.

When victims or their families finally succeed in lodging complaints and bringing cases of abduction, early and forced marriage, and forced conversion before courts, their cases are often eventually dismissed due to alleged interference by the defendants.  Defendants reportedly produce certificates of marriage and conversion and written or videotaped statements from the victims that attest to the victims’ being of age and having married and converted of their own free will; however, these documents are often prepared without the victim’s knowledge or consent, or the victim’s participation is secured only through coercion and under duress, as is reportedly the case with victims’ written and videotaped statements of consent to conversion and marriage.  Abductors appeal to the religiosity of the police and judiciary by emphasizing they have converted a non-believer to Islam.

It is reported that courts often fail to undertake critical examination of such documents submitted by abductors and their families to determine or statements made by the victims to determine whether they were falsified or produced under duress, but rather accept these documents at face value.  This is allegedly true even in instances where documents from other sources, such as the victims’ schools, religious institutions, families, or the Government’s National Database and Registration Authority, contradict the documents submitted by abductors and their families with regard to the victim’s age.  Courts reportedly issue orders on the basis of these fraudulent documents that order victims to remain with their abductors and, in some instances, to refrain from contact with their families.

In 2022, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom⁶⁸ commenting on Pakistan, stated:

religious minorities were subject to frequent attacks and threats, including accusations of blasphemy, targeted killings, lynchings, mob violence, forced conversions, sexual violence against women and girls, and desecration of houses of worship and cemeteries.  Christian, Hindu, and Sikh communities faced the continued threat of persecution via harsh and discriminatory legislation as well as increasingly aggressive societal discrimination amid a rise in radical Islamist influence.

In its view, Pakistan was “engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom” that needed to “address radical Islamist rhetoric, which often precedes attacks on minorities.” It also recommended holding accountable individuals who incite or participate in vigilante violence, targeted killings, forced conversions, and other religiously based crimes.

In 2022, Amnesty International,⁶⁹ stated:

Forced conversions of Hindu, Christian, and Sikh women and girls continued.  Victims, particularly those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, were unable to access justice.  Scheduled Caste Hindus (also known as Dalits) were disproportionately disadvantaged in accessing services, resources, and opportunities.  Many remained trapped in bonded labour and were subjected to rape and violence.

It quoted Zohra Yusuf, a Pakistan-based rights advocate, “Laws in Pakistan and the prejudices in the society have contributed toward the persecution of minorities.  Their rights are violated regularly, and they have little or no support from the law or the society.”

In 2023, Human Rights Watch report⁷⁰ stated, “Women from religious minority communities remain particularly vulnerable to forced marriage.  The government did little to stop such early and forced marriages.  Blasphemy-related violence against religious minorities, fostered in part by government persecution and discriminatory laws, intensified.”

In 2019, a Pakistani newspaper summed up the genocidal atmosphere in which Hindus live in an article⁷¹ entitled ‘More than 20 Hindu girls are kidnapped and forcefully converted every month in the name of marriage.’

Last week, in a shameful capitulation to religious fanatics, the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) rejected a proposed bill in the Sindh Assembly against forced conversions.  If there was ever an argument to be made that constitutional guarantees mean nothing until the people believe in their worth, it is this.  Article 20 of the Constitution guarantees religious freedom, but what religious freedom means is currently what the fanatic believes it should mean.

So, it is in Sindh, which has lately seen a rise in forced conversions of members of religious minorities.  For those who may be blissfully unaware of the extent of the problem, here are some numbers: according to the Aurat Foundation, around 1,000 women and young girls from religious minorities in Pakistan are forced to convert to the religion of the majority and marry their kidnappers every year.  The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan believes that more than 20 Hindu girls are kidnapped every month.

The parents of the victims try to obtain that elusive concept known as justice.  If you live in this country, you know that only people with a certain economic and social pedigree are allowed justice.  The case of Rinkle Kumari should still be fresh in our minds, although it seems the PPP is suffering from temporary amnesia.  Rinkle Kumari was 16 years old when she was abducted, allegedly forcibly, and married to her kidnapper.  Twice, she wept and pleaded to go back home to her parents.  Once before the civil court and then before the Supreme Court when it took up a pending petition on forced conversions initiated by the Pakistan Hindu Council.

Those who follow such cases of forced conversions in Sindh are familiar with the landscape upon which these cases happen.  The inequality of economic and political power between the abductor and the victim — as Kumari’s case so starkly displayed; the sudden epidemic of helplessness that seizes the police and the lack of proper investigation behind the marriages and conversions.

Forced conversions are, after all, a part and parcel of the massive economic inequality that religious minorities face in Sindh and all over Pakistan.   With many of them working under bonded labour — South Asia’s version of slavery — the abuse they are liable to suffer is extremely high.  They are at the complete mercy of those they work for, who freely give them up for forced conversions and marriage.  The families of victims have no wealth, no influence, no power through which they can obtain justice.  Try getting the police to do anything when you have none of those three.

A reader responded with the comment, “Are Pakistani police willing to risk their lives to enforce law and order against the will of violence-wielding mullahs?  If not, then what does it matter what the criminal justice system says?”

A joint submission of the World Sindhi Congress and Global Human Rights Defence,⁷² extensively backed their claims with references and stated:

One of the primary reasons is that law enforcement agencies and judicial organs in Pakistan neglect women’s issues and often advise them to return to their husbands.  In particular, the justice system often favours the position of abductors and makes judgments that do not support the victims.  Moreover, Pakistani police officers and lawyers often refuse to work on these cases because of the fear of being threatened by influential families of the perpetrators.  Consequently, victims do not receive any legal counseling and, thus, do not continue with the process of reporting their cases.  Besides being pressured by their abductors, victims often declare in the court that they entered into the marriage based on their voluntary consent and make statements in favour of their abductors.  Also, in many instances, victims are left in the custody of their kidnappers during trial processes.  They are raped and assaulted so that they will not make any statement against their abductor.  Above all, during the court or trial, judges are often strongly influenced by Islamic religious groups or individuals who advocate the conversion of Hindu girls to Islam.  Very often, police officers and jury members have personal ties with influential Islamic groups who convince them to apply Sharia law during trial processes.  Moreover, courtrooms are usually full of individuals shouting slogans that advocate Islamic principles as well as the conversion of victims.

Most recently, a 3 June 2023 report⁷³ detailed the suffering many Hindus experience as “infidels” in Pakistan, and quotes some who fled: “In Pakistan, there is no difference between meat and women… Had we stayed back, our women would have been torn to shreds.”

As for the plight of Christian women, as noted by Raymond Ibrahim,⁷⁴

In Pakistan, for example, three Christian girls walking home after a long day’s work were accosted⁷⁵ by four “rich and drunk” Muslims — hardly candidates for ISIS — in a car.  They “misbehaved,” yelled “suggestive and lewd comments,” and harassed the girls to get in their car for “a ride and some fun.” When the girls declined the “invitation,” adding that they were “devout Christians and did not practice sex outside of marriage,” the men became enraged and chased the girls.  “How dare you run away from us,” the men yelled.

“Christian girls are only meant for one thing: the pleasure of Muslim men.” The men then drove their car into the three girls, killing one and severely injuring the other two.

In a separate incident, a human rights activist speaking about another Muslim man’s rape of a 9-year-old Christian girl revealed⁷⁶ that” Such incidents occur frequently.  Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure.  Abusing them is a right.  According to the community’s mentality, it is not even a crime.  Muslims regard them as spoils of war.”

Edwina Pio and Jawad Syed⁷⁷ have written about the persecution of Christians in Pakistan. In their words, “Mob violence resulting in injury and death, burning and killing of individuals, shooting during church services, rape, sexual abuse, kidnapping and forced conversion are some of the atrocities experienced by Christians in current-day Pakistan.

The intent to commit genocide is evidenced by the poisoning of young minds and the whole of Pakistani society by teaching Hindu and Christian hate through the school curriculum.

Pakistan has devised a simple but devastatingly effective genocidal tool: teach hate to its children against Hindus and Christians through its school curriculum.  To fully understand the importance of this factor, it is necessary to briefly digress and consider U.N. ideals, the impact of hate speech, and hate-filled curriculums in other parts of the world.

On 11 April 2024, the European Parliament (E.P.) adopted a resolution condemning educational material produced by the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) and by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees for its role in inciting hatred against Israelis.  In this document ⁷⁸ the European Parliament,

Condemns the problematic and hateful contents encouraging violence, spreading antisemitism, and inciting hatred in Palestinian school textbooks drafted by [European] Union-funded civil servants as well as in supplementary educational materials developed by UNRWA staff and taught in its schools.

It further recognized that those teaching materials, subsidized with European taxpayer money in the case of P.A. textbooks, had a role in radicalizing Gazans prior to the 7 October onslaught, in which 1,200 people were killed by Hamas and other terror groups in southern Israel, and 253 were taken hostage to Gaza.  A CEO of the nonprofit IMPACT–se⁷⁹, which has been monitoring Palestinian schoolbooks for over two decades, stated, ” For years, we have warned that the textbooks taught to Palestinian children create the conditions for the barbarism we all witnessed.”  Indeed, Palestinian textbooks have repeatedly come under scrutiny⁸⁰ for their alleged role in radicalizing generations of Gazans and West Bankers, inciting them against Israelis, spreading antisemitic tropes, glorifying terrorism and “martyrdom,” and systematically erasing Israel’s existence.

Second, during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (in which the U.N. acknowledged its failure), the incendiary  role played by Radio–Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLMC)⁸¹is an established fact.  The radio,

was set up and financed by Hutu extremists to prepare the people of Rwanda for genocide by demonizing the Tutsi and encouraging hate and violence.  Some people – including the Belgian ambassador and staff of several aid agencies – recognized the danger and asked for international help in shutting down the broadcasts, but it was impossible to persuade Western diplomats to take it seriously.  They dismissed the station as a joke.  David Rawson, the U.S. ambassador, said that its euphemisms were open to interpretation.  The U.S., he said, believed in freedom of speech.

Such disregard for public hate speech proved costly, as subsequently, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda⁸² became the first international tribunal to hold members of the media responsible for broadcasts intended to inflame the public to commit acts of genocide.

The preamble of UNESCO⁸³ states: ‘Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” It would a reasonable to conclude that countries who are members of UNESCO (and Pakistan is one⁸⁴) would steer clear of teaching hatred to their children.

Keeping the above in mind, the intent to commit genocide is evidenced by Hindu and Christian hatred being an integral part of Pakistan’s school curriculum.  In 2021-22, the Pakistan Human Commission of Pakistan⁸⁵ in its report titled A Breach of Faith: Freedom of Religion or Belief questioned the standardized national curriculum in parts of Pakistan that created an “exclusionary narrative that sidelines Pakistan’s religious minorities.”

In 2016, a seminar in Peshawar⁸⁶ concluded, “The school curriculum has fomented hatred against minorities in the country.”  The Sikh leader attending the event, Sardar Charanjit Singh, said, “Minorities are treated like step-children and ignored on every platform.”

In 2013, The Christian Science Monitor reported that history books taught schoolchildren about the events that followed after India was partitioned in 1947 and Pakistan was created.  The material included the following:

Caravans that were on the way to Pakistan were attacked by Hindus and Sikhs.  Not a single Muslim was left alive in trains coming to Pakistan.” As the magnitude of the sentence registers with the students, the phrase “No Muslim was left alive!” echoes around the classroom from whispered lips.  Students are clearly engaged with the subject and clearly disturbed with what history they have just learned.

The Christian Science Monitor considered this “description in the students’ books highly misleading.” It continued,

Though the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 was indeed one of massive violence, Mubarak Ali, who has written several books on India-Pakistan history, says this is a onesided account of events and an exaggerated version of the truth.  In fact, it was the Pakistani side where the communal riots started, and in reaction, Indians responded, he says, adding: “But very few trains were attacked.  And many more made it alive, which is not taught.  Dr. Ali says that such content should be expunged from schoolbooks, much as India has managed to do.  After the teacher finishes reading, he asks another student to continue reading aloud from the next chapter, which focuses on why Pakistan came into existence: “Narrow-mindedness of the Hindus and the conspiracies of whites led to the call of this Islamic country, Pakistan.  When asked later about his opinion of Hindus and Christians, the student reiterated what his textbook said.  “I think Hindus are against Pakistan, against Islam.  Hindus are like that,” he adds.

In these textbooks, there was not the slightest attempt to distinguish between the Hindus in India (against whom their ire was directed) and the Hindus in Pakistan.  The Hindus of India were the enemies of Islam and by extension, the Hindus of Pakistan got tarred with the same brush.

President Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization of Pakistan from 1977 to 1988 was a disaster for Pakistan’s Hindus who were relegated to an even lower status than before and forced to study Islamic religious content.

In 2011, an article in The Dawn entitled, ‘Pakistan schools teach Hindu hatred’⁸⁷  reported on the finding of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.  The study was based on reviewing more than 100 textbooks from grades 1-10 from Pakistan’s four provinces.  Researchers visited 37 public schools, interviewed 277 students and teachers, and 19 madrasas, where they interviewed 226 students and teachers.  It found:

Textbooks in Pakistani schools foster prejudice and intolerance of Hindus and other religious minorities, while most teachers view non-Muslims as ”enemies of Islam.” There was systematic negative portrayals of minorities, especially Hindus and to a lesser extent Christians.  Religious minorities and those brave enough to speak out against intolerance have often been killed, seemingly with impunity, by militant sympathizers.  Religious minorities are often portrayed as inferior or second-class citizens who have been granted limited rights and privileges by generous Pakistani Muslims, for which they should be grateful.  Hindus are repeatedly described as extremists and eternal enemies of Islam, whose culture and society are based on injustice and cruelty, while Islam delivers a message of peace and brotherhood, concepts portrayed as alien to the Hindu.  In most cases, historic revisionism seems designed to exonerate or glorify Islamic civilization or to denigrate the civilizations of religious minorities.

The commission warned that any significant efforts to combat religious discrimination, especially in education, would ”likely face strong opposition” from hardliners.  Islamic teachings and references are commonplace in compulsory textbooks, not just religious ones, meaning Pakistan’s Christians, Hindus, and other minorities were being taught Islamic content.

This attitude of hatred can be revealed even in sports. A Pakistani Hindu cricketer, Danish Kaneria⁸⁸ was mistreated by his Pakistani teammates because he was a Hindu and   “even barred from picking up food from the same table as others because of his faith.” Christians too suffer. Experts have noted, “It is not uncommon to see ordinary Muslims expressing contempt for their Christian employees, colleagues or neighbors” and “Christians are disadvantaged in university admissions because they do not know the Qur’an by heart.” Their constitutional and legal provisions make Christian de fact unequal under the law, an inequality which includes Christian testimony being entirely excluded from some courses at the discretion of the judges, their testimony granted less weight than Muslim testimony, and, in practice, penalties for convicted Christians being more severe than those for Muslims for an equivalent crime.  The blasphemy laws also facilitate hate; the Hudood Ordinances⁸⁹ and the Qanoon-e-Shahadat (law of evidence).

Continuing attacks and neglect of Hindu temples and churches in Pakistan evidence the intent to commit genocide.

In addition to targeting Hindu and Christian women and girls, Pakistan has targeted the only solace available to Hindus and Christians-their faith symbolized through their temples and churches.  Here too, the genocidal intent pervasive in Pakistani society is substantiated by diverse sources.

In 2023, in Kashmore, Sindh,⁹⁰ a group attacked a Hindu temple overnight on July 15- 16 using what police said were rocket launchers, which failed to function.  The attackers then used guns to shoot at the temple and adjoining homes belonging the Hindus.

The BBC asked ⁹¹ in an article entitled ‘Hindu shrine desecration: Can Pakistan protect its religious minorities?’ This rhetorical headline was superfluous as the answer is a clear no.  The BBC noted “Prejudice against Hindus is ingrained.”  It described the attack on the temple that left a scene of “utter devastation.”  The persons attacking the temple were led by a local Muslim cleric, who had earlier attacked on the temple in 1997.  According to witnesses, the cleric whipped up the crowd, inciting rallygoers who then smashed in the walls of the temple with sledgehammers and set fire to it.

A report compiled by Pakistan’s Commission for Minority Rights after the attack found that precious ornaments were destroyed, as were ornate wooden doors and windows made from Burma teak and the carved white marble of the grave of a Hindu saint.   Temples have been attacked by fanatics using high–grade weapons.^[14] 

In 2017, the Dawn published an article whose title summed up what has been done to Hindu culture and legacy  in Pakistan,“ Once populated with temples,^[15] only traces of Hinduism remain in Laki.”^[16][17] It stated, “..today, there are only a handful of shivalas or temples in Laki.  Once majestic, they now wear a deserted look since there is no one to take care of them anymore.”

In 2021, Insight UK ⁹⁵reported on the list of desecrations and destruction of Hindu temples in the recent past in Pakistan.  These included:

• A 100-year-old Hindu temple in Rawalpindi was attacked, and property destroyed.
• In June 2020, the construction of a Hindu temple in Islamabad was stopped. Though the Islamabad Capital Development Authority had granted the permission, objections, and lawsuits existed to stop the construction.
• A pre-partition Hindu temple in Karachi was demolished in August 2020 by a builder and the police sealed off the site, preventing access.
• The Hindu temple in Nagarparkar in Sindh province was vandalized, and idols were damaged in October 2020.
• The Hindu temple in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was set on fire and destroyed by a mob following hate speech in December 2020. This temple, which was built in 1919, was also the target of an attack in 1997.
• In January 2020, the Hindu temple in Chhachro City of Sindh province was attacked, and idols were broken.
• In the same month, the Nankana Sahib Gurudwara, the place of worship of Sikhs, was pelted with stones.

In 2020, Amnesty International reported:⁹⁶

Pakistan’s authorities must protect the right to freedom of religion and belief for the country’s beleaguered Hindu community, including the construction of temples to exercise that right.  Authorities in Islamabad capitulated to pressure from a discriminatory campaign mounted by politicians, media outlets, and clerics to halt the construction of a rare temple in the Pakistani capital.  The boundary wall of the site where the temple is supposed to be constructed has also been torn down by a mob.

The destruction of the Hindu temple site is yet another example of persistent discrimination faced by the Hindu community in Pakistan.  In recent years, they have faced increasing marginalization, with individuals facing false accusations of “blasphemy” – a crime that carries a mandatory death penalty in Pakistan – attacks on temples and shops, and the horrific abduction, forced conversion, and forced marriage of hundreds of young Hindu women.  In 2019, in two separate incidents, mobs attacked Hindu properties and places of worship in the southern Sindh province after allegations of “blasphemy” were made against a Hindu school principal and a Hindu veterinarian.

It quoted a human rights activist: “The Pakistani authorities must clearly and publicly condemn such acts instead of giving into them.”

A Pakistani newspaper reported on Pakistan’s Crumbling Hindu Heritage ^[18] and stated, “a recent surge of extremism, [has] regrettably, transformed the temples into schools, stables, or trash houses…. Many temples across Pakistan have already faded during the past few years.  They were investigated and documented a few years back, but now they have vanished completely.”  In a rebuke to authorities, the author added,

Undoubtedly, there is a genuine need for their protection and preservation to utilize memorable Hindu architecture best.  The authorities should take steps to protect, preserve, and conserve this shared heritage, which represents our past rich culture, to pass it on to our generations, on which they can be proud.  Their preservation is obligatory not only for their survival for our future generations but also for imparting a strong message to the world that Pakistan does not support extremism at any cost and that Pakistanis care for the sacred structures of every religion.

According to a Pakistani Youtuber,⁹⁸ whenever there was a war with India, there were unprovoked attacks against Hindus and their temples, which had declined from more than 1350 temples in 1992 to about “50 to 100 in working condition” today.  All the rest have been either broken or built over by builders including by registering false cases against Hindus.

The intent to commit genocide is evidenced by subjecting Christians to live in conditions that cause perpetual fear.

Christians in Pakistan, comprising less than 2 percent of the population or about 3 million people, have long lived under a shadow of fear.  Across the country, most of them live in sheer poverty, consigned to menial roles such as sanitation, agricultural labor, and other low-wage jobs.  Churches have also been repeatedly and mercilessly attacked.  Christians, in general, are referred to by the insulting term of musalli, which means immoral, low caste, and polluted.

In 2023, a Christian journal reported on  26 Churches⁹⁹ burned in the country.  Church music, deemed haram or forbidden to most Pakistanis, is often mockingly likened to dancing in a pub.  The journal described a crowd’s attacking behaviour:

They found their church burned and its walls torn down after tensions surged in Jaranwala when torn pages of the Quran surfaced in the town center.  Mosque loudspeakers broadcasted urgent announcements, leading groups from nearby villages within a 50kilometer radius to quickly gather.  Christians from these villages, speaking to CT under the condition of anonymity, identified the TLP as a major force behind the mass mobilization, which saw hundreds, if not thousands, traveling towards the epicenter of the unrest.  From motorcyclists to passengers in buses, trucks, and lorries, a vast array of transportation means was utilized as they all converged on the city with a shared purpose.

Mobs rampaged through various villages, including [the villages of] Chak 61, Chak 126, Chak 238, Chak 20, Chak 120, Chak 22, and Chak 19.  Their primary targets were churches, though in some cases, they also attacked Christian homes.  In [the village of] Chak 238, the mob first ransacked a Presbyterian church and then Alice High School about 100 meters away.  Before setting fire to any furniture in the school, the mob first looted it of all valuables.  Notably, this school, operated by Christians, offers education to 200 Christian and Muslim students.  Remarkably, these groups, though arising from various locations, displayed a striking unanimity in their actions.  As they advanced toward the town, they methodically sought out and targeted churches in every village they passed, no matter how small or densely located.  These sanctuaries were first raided for valuables.  After the plunder, they desecrated crosses, burned Bibles, destroyed musical instruments, and wrecked furniture.  Roofs and walls bore the brunt of their fury.  In some instances, they employed cranes to pull down church barriers.

It was reported by Vatican News¹⁰⁰ that the Church in Pakistan has pleaded for a Christian sentenced to death for blasphemy and strongly condemned the death verdict against a young Christian in Punjab for alleged blasphemy amid worsening persecution against religious minorities in the Muslim-majority nation.  “We condemn this in strongest terms,” said Bishop Joseph Arshad of Islamabad-Rawalpindi, chairperson of the Commission for Justice and Peace of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference (NCJP).  “This is the abuse of law, a travesty of justice,” Bishop Indrias Rehmat of Faisalabad told UCA News.  Anglican Bishop Nadeem Kamran of Lahore said, “Such condemnations reflect the frustration of Christians,” constituting about 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s 241 million people.

In June 2024, a Pakistani newspaper, The Dawn, wrote

“Many are scared of a public discussion on the issue of Pakistan’s minorities.  Consider the coverage of Jaranwala, where, too, the Christian community had been attacked.  A largely ‘apolitical’ caretaker cabinet was not averse to official visits to show solidarity with Pakistani citizens, while press coverage was also relatively substantial.  However, even then, no ‘real’ leadership turned up — local or national.  Most of those who take part in elected politics stayed away.  By the time elections took place and a new government came to power, another tragic incident followed in Sargodha, where a mob attacked a Christian family.  There were no visits by elected or government officials, and little condemnation was visible.  Press coverage was actively discouraged.

A fact-finding report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted, “with deep concern the Punjab government’s attempt to downplay the incident by reportedly discouraging press coverage and failing to engage with the Christian community in Sargodha.” In 1998, a Pakistani Bishop¹⁰¹, John Joseph committed suicide to protest a court judgment that sentenced a Pakistani Christian, Ayub Masih, to death for allegedly making blasphemous remarks.

Christians are discriminated against even after death.  “The signs of abuse are obvious at the cemetery [in Karachi] [where] thousands of headstones have been neatly aligned over the past 150 years; a settlement has encroached on the cemetery, covering dozens of graves.  Its residents toss garbage into the graveyard, and crosses and statues are frequently desecrated.”

The intent to commit genocide is demonstrated by the social apartheid against low-caste Hindus and Christians by ‘reserving’ menial jobs for them, which Muslims refuse to perform. 

Alice Albinia, author of Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River, begins her book by describing a scene in the streets of Karachi of “a human being emerging, almost naked, from a sewer.”  Disbelievingly, upon inquiry, she is told the man is a ‘Bhangi,’ which means a ‘low-caste’ Hindu or low-caste Christian.  An official tells her, “Not one Muslim is doing this job.  It is an age-old situation from the very beginning of Pakistan.”

She further writes that in 1948, the Pakistan government realized to its alarm that “something entirely unexpected was happening: among the fleeing Hindus were the city’s sweepers and sewer cleaners’ referred to as the ‘Depressed Classes’ who were low-caste Hindu and Christian converts.  This led Karachi, Asia’s cleanest city,” to become an ‘unhygienic disgrace.’  The Government of Sind was ‘compelled to take legal action to slow down the migration of such persons who, in their opinion, constitute the essential services of the province.’ Alice Albina writes, ‘Pakistan was not living up to the purity of its name, so the Government was answering the chorus of demands for a cleaner capital city with a form of social apartheid.’

The Indian ambassador to Pakistan, horrified at the action, scheduled a meeting with the Prime Minister of Pakistan to complain; ‘Surely God did not create the Hindus to clean the roads and the latrines of Karachi.  “But who, the Prime Minister replied would clean the streets and latrines of

Karachi in case they did not come back?’ The author then writes, ‘In Pakistan, the attitude of the ruling class appeared to be that huge swathes of its population were second class citizens.’

In June 2016, an article in a Pakistani newspaper entitled, ‘Our vanishing Hindus’ referred to the first president of the Constituent Assembly and the first law and labour minister of Pakistan, Jogendra Nath Mandal, and stated:

The first issue was the inclusion of scheduled caste members in the cabinet of East Bengal.  As argued by Mandal in his letter and verified by other sources, the cabinet of first Sir Khawaja Nizamuddin and then Nurul Amin kept delaying the appointment of a scheduled caste member to the provincial cabinet even after several pleas from the central minister, leaving Mandal feeling that his “outspokenness, vigilance and sincere efforts to safeguard the interests of the minorities of Pakistan, in general, and of the Scheduled Caste, in particular, were considered a matter of annoyance to the East Bengal Government.

Disillusioned, Jogendra Nath Mandal left for India in 1950 after writing an ominous letter that stated the condition of Hindus in Pakistan was “not only unsatisfactory but absolutely hopeless and that the future completely dark and dismal.” The article further stated,

Mandal wrote his ominous letter in October 1950 and then left for India, leaving behind the minorities, perhaps at God’s mercy—most of the atrocities against Hindus that Mandal noted continue in even stronger form today.

A reader’s response indicated the intolerance that has been mainstreamed towards Hindus in the general population: “I sympathize with the Hindus in Pakistan, but if they leave and there are none left, it would not change anything in today’s Pakistan.  Most people will hardly miss them and many would rejoice at their departure.”

The intent to commit genocide is evidenced by the discriminatory and demeaning attitude of the Pakistani towards Hindus and Christians in its recruitment practices.

In 2018, a Pak army advertisement reserved sanitation jobs for ‘non-Muslims only’ in the noncombatant category, which included tailors, carpenters, painters, bootmakers, water carriers, and sanitary workers.’ An activist protested and posted on Twitter, ‘So the criteria for a sweeper/sanitary worker in Pakistan should be “Non-Muslim Only.” Your job is to make filth; ours is to clean only.”

The New York Times wrote that caste-based discrimination “is almost encouraged by the state.” In July 2020, the Pakistani military placed newspaper advertisements for sewer sweepers with the caveat that only Christians should apply.  While Christians make up only 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s population of some 200 million, according to a 1998 government census, rights groups believe they fill about 80 percent of the sweeper jobs.  Lower-caste Hindus mostly fill the rest of the slots.

In May 2024, an advertisement solicited candidates for sweepers at health facilities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province state, which read, ‘Christian community will be preferred.’  A former member of the National Commission for Minorities, Albert David said the ad gave the impression that sanitation work was beneath the Muslim-majority population.  Such a discriminatory ad clearly violated Article 27 of Pakistan’s constitution and international conventions to which the country was a signatory.  He protested:

Article 27 provides safeguards against discrimination in services or employment, but this has been so blatantly trampled upon over the decades,” said David, adding that the United Nations and International Labor Organization’s Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111) describes discrimination as, “Any distinction, exclusion or preference made on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin, which has the effect of nullifying or impairing equality of opportunity or treatment in employment or occupation.

According to the  website  Hindugenocide.com,

A high percentage of Hindus in Pakistan are SC/STs, [low caste] and are employed by landlords literally as slaves.  The landlords mint heavy profits, but the Hindus, who work as bonded laborers, are paid in pennies and remain in poverty.  They are denied a proper education, destroying their prospects for a better livelihood.  The National Assembly of Pakistan abolished the Bonded Labour Act in 1992, but bonded labour is still practiced widely, especially in Sindh.

The intent to commit genocide is evident in subjecting Hindus and Christians to ‘de facto slavery’

The Bonded Labor Liberation Front, an NGO, reported that nearly 6.7 million persons worked in debt bondage around the country, with 98 % of them at brick kilns.

According to the 2024 US International Religious Freedom Report,^[19] most bonded laborers working in brick kilns are Christians or Hindu Dalits.  It quoted the NGO Scheduled Caste Rights Commission in Sindh that 600,000 men, women, and children from Dalit communities were held in a debt bondage system in that province.

Common practices in the brick kiln industry – such as giving meager “advances” to workers they had to work off, paying far below minimum wage, paying workers as a “team” rather than individually, and owners refusing payment entirely, resulted in ‘de facto slavery.’  Community leaders stated Hindu Dalits remained vulnerable to human rights violations and pressure by perpetrators to withdraw police cases.

Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians are specially targeted by criminals only because of their faith. 

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) stated it was “alarmed” by reports of “deteriorating law and order in the districts of Kashmore and Ghotki in Sindh, where members of the Hindu community, including women and children, have allegedly been held hostage by organized criminal gangs.” Hindu leaders said that police were sometimes complicit in these kidnapping efforts and/or were pressured by landowners who influenced the government to look the other way.  The leaders said police sometimes even received a portion of ransom payments.

According to the 2024 US International Religious Freedom Report,^[20] criminal gangs in northern Sindh kidnapped approximately 30 Hindus for ransom during the spring and summer of 2023.  Sources from religious groups said Hindus were kidnapped at higher rates because they were excluded from local patronage and protection networks run by police and powerful landlords.  Throughout the year, individuals – often unidentified – assaulted and killed Hindus, Christians, [and] Sikhs in religiously motivated attacks.

The intent to commit genocide was evidenced by the fact that Hindus were forced to convert to Islam, as they received no assistance after torrential floods because of their faith. 

According to the 2024 US International Religious Freedom Report

Some representatives of minority religious groups said Hindus in areas affected by 2022 floods converted to Islam or married Muslims to qualify for flood relief.  In one case, on 30 January, more than 100 individuals from the Hindu Bheel community converted to Islam at a ceremony organized by local politicians and the custodian of Amrot Sharif shrine in Sultankot, Shikarpur district, Sindh.  Local residents said that influential local politicians and religious leaders offered Hindus food and financial incentives for converting, as most received no flood assistance from authorities and faced discrimination in relief and rehabilitation activities.

The intent was to commit genocide as Hindus and Christians suffered forcible evictions because of their faith. 

According to the 2024 US International Religious Freedom Report,^[21]  ‘members of religious minorities, particularly lower-caste Hindus and Christians reported cases of forceful evictions from their homes and villages by government officials who assisted individuals desiring their land.  Sindh-based religious leaders reported cases of real estate developers and “land mafias” encroaching on religious property, including commercial real estate owned by houses of worship surrounding churches, temples, and gurdwaras.  They also accused what they said were powerful real estate networks of seizing minority-owned farmland and pushing rural minorities into debt bondage.

The number of UN Special Rapporteurs who have jointly voiced strong concern about Pakistan’s human rights is also evidence of this whole-of-society genocidal intent. 

In 2022, the Special Rapporteurs dealing with contemporary forms of slavery, minority issues, freedom of religion or belief, the sale and sexual exploitation of children; trafficking in persons, especially women, and children on violence against women and girls and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls all sent a common communication to the Pakistani government.  They would not have done so unless there was a massive and continuing violation of the human rights of Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan. The evidence above also fully vindicates the decision of the Indian government to pass the Citizenship Amendment Act¹⁰⁵ to fast-track citizenship for persecuted Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to India before Dec. 31, 2014 from Muslim-majority Pakistan (and other countries) due to religious persecution.

SECTION F

CONCLUSION

The entire territory of Pakistan is the crime scene of an Islamic genocide that has decimated the Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs of the country.  As stated by the journalist and Pakistani politician Farahnaz Ispahani ¹⁰⁶ “The real culprit in the widespread persecution of religious minorities in the case of Pakistan was the desire of some to create a purer Islamic state.” She correctly called it the “drip, drip genocide.”

The UN emphasizes the need to understand the “root causes and precursors” and identify “risk factors and precursors” that can lead to genocide.  These are now evident.  The eternal Islamic command to despise the kaffir and to convert them, their status as dhimmis; the manifestation of this hatred in the movement to create Pakistan and operationalizing this virulence within the state structure was mainstreamed into society by paranoid, inaccurate, and supremacist textbooks.

Since its creation in 1947, the state of Pakistan, created in the name of Islam, has relentlessly killed, raped, sexually abused, falsely accused, imprisoned, illegally converted, kidnapped, and discriminated against its Hindu, Christian, and Sikh minorities with their women and girls their preferred targets.  Their temples, churches, and gurudwaras have been burnt, bombed, vandalized, and destroyed, and their properties snatched and illegally expropriated.  Violent mobs have reined terror on them.  The laws supposedly protecting them proved meaningless as unenforced laws are worse than no law at all.

Shamefully, this genocide stands accomplished in full view of the international community.  This is evident in the steep decline in population of Hindus, Christians and Sikhs as contrasted with the massive rise in Pakistan’s Muslim population. The fact of their almost complete physical destruction can no longer be doubted.

Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs have been subjected to grievous and continuous violation of their human rights only because they fell into the wrong and fundamental classification of Islam: kaffirs. They were targeted ONLY because of their faith.

The evidence on record demonstrates Pakistan’s acts constitute genocide under Article 2 of the Genocide Convention and also fulfill the technical requirements of ‘intent to destroy’ as laid down by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and International Court of Justice (ICJ).

If the international community fails to act, it will only further expose the hollowness of the UN’s repeated invocations of the phrase ‘Never again.’

SECTION G

ACTION REQUESTED:

The Security Council, in accordance with its repertoire¹⁰⁷ of establishing international tribunals, such as in the cases of Rwanda and Yugoslavia, mandate an International Criminal Tribunal for Pakistan from 12 January 1951 (the date of entry into force of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) to the present day.  The functions of the tribunal should be:

• To identify and prosecute all perpetrators responsible for the genocide of Pakistani Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs regardless of whether they are private individuals, public officials, or political leaders with sovereign immunity.
• Take all appropriate and urgent steps to ensure that there is a complete cessation of the violations of the human rights of Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs, as evidenced above.
• To require the United Nations Human Rights (Office of the High Commissioner) and UN Women to closely support the work of the tribunal, including through field visits in Pakistan for fact-finding visits to prevent any further fraudulent and forcible conversions of Hindu, Christian, and Sikh women to Islam.
• To instruct the Pakistani government to immediately confiscate all textbooks that teach hatred of Pakistan’s Hindu, Christian, and Sikh minorities.
• To decide upon a mechanism for monetary compensation for the victims of genocide to be exclusively funded by the Government of Pakistan.
• To initiate a reexamination and updating of the Genocide Convention in the light of the knowledge gained since its entry into force, especially to expressly include cases where genocide is committed slowly but relentlessly over many years, which may lack the characteristic of a sudden spasm of violence directed against a specific community leading to massive loss of life but is nevertheless done with the same intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

9. https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls–for–input/report–countering–islamophobiaanti–muslim–hatred–eliminate–discrimination–and
10. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/publications–and–resources/Genocide_Framework%20of%20Analysis–pdf
11. https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2018/09/genocide–never–again–has–become–time–and–again
12. https://www.un.org/africarenewal/news/%E2%80%98it–can–happen–anywhere%E2%80%99–general–assembly–reflects–rwandan–genocide
13. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide_Convention_FactSheet_ENG_2023.pdf
14. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/publications–and–resources/Genocide_Framework%20of%20Analysis–pdf
15. https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/uscirf/2009/en/67558
16. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world–news/religious–minorities–experiencing–genocide–in–pakistanscholar/articleshow/57391406.cms
17. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2427592/beyond–the–brink–pakistans–population–explosion
18. https://www.worldometers.info/world–population/pakistan–population/
19. https://www.newslaundry.com/2015/01/09/the–vanishing–hindus–of–pakistan–a–demographic–study–2

20. https://theprint.in/opinion/modi–critics–decry–india–mistreating–minorities–but–cant–whitewash–pak–islamisation/355536/

21. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/book/purifying–the–land–the–pure–history–pakistans–religious–minorities

22. https://www.livemint.com/Politics/F4r3Tmf51k8Sm6DGjPRaEN/Slow–genocide–of–minorities–in–Pakistan–Farahnaz–Ispahani.html

23. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/world/asia/pakistan–hindu–conversion.html

24. https://theprint.in/world/exiled–analysts–rue–decline–of–hinduism–in–pakistans–punjab–province/891684/

25. https://tribune.com.pk/story/1121936/our–vanishing–hindus

26. https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistani–court–hindu–sisters–not–forcibly–converted–to–islam/4872780.html

27. https://www.dawn.com/news/1839168
28. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/publications–and–resources/Genocide_Framework%20of%20Analysis–pdf
29. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press–releases/2024/04/pakistan–un–experts–alarmed–lack–protection–minority–girls–forced–religious ³⁰ https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/01/1132482
30. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g23/036/54/pdf/g2303654.pdf?token=Jhh0pt6BQY5JiHMnPk&fe=true
31. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g23/036/54/pdf/g2303654.pdf?token=Jhh0pt6BQY5JiHMnPk&fe=true
32. https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=27585
33. https://www.genocidewatch.com/single–post/pakistan–defence–minister–admits–minorities–hindus–sikhs–smaller–muslim–sects–face–persistent
34. https://www.dawn.com/news/1476874
35. Placeholder

36. https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=9&verse=5

37. https://legacy.quran.com/9/29

38.  

    Faith-Based Violence and Deobandi Militancy in Pakistan, published by November 2016DOI:1057/978–1–349–94966–3, Edition: 2016, Palgrave, Editor: Syed, J., Pio, E., Kamran, T., Zaidi, A., ISBN: 978-1-349-94965, Chapter 7, Marked by the Cross: The Persecution of Christians in Pakistan.
39. https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Kafir_(Infidel)
40. https://quran.com/al–bayyinah/6
41. https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet–dawah/
42. https://islamqa.info/en/answers/12376/how–to–give–dawah–calling–others–to–islam
43. https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/testimony/49.pdf
44. https://ayaanhirsiali.com/books/the–challenge–of–dawa
45. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/we–are–born–because–of–hatred–pak–political–expert–discusses–how–india–outpacedpakistan/videoshow/107493594.cms
46. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/book/purifying–the–land–the–pure–history–pakistans–religious–minorities
47. https://arslan.pk/the–ideology–of–pakistan–is–islam/. This was his message on Id September 1945, page175, Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah by Jamiluddin Ahmad)
48. https://arslan.pk/the–ideology–of–pakistan–is–islam/
49. https://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/legislation/constituent_html
50. https://criterion–com/jinnahs–11–august–1947–speech/

51. https://arynews.tv/watch–how–the–famous–pakistan–ka–mtlab–kya–slogan–was–coined/

52. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia–South–Central/2013/0228/Pakistan–textbooks–raise–debate–about–curriculum–of–hate

53. https://historypak.com/objectives–resolution–1949/

54. https://historypak.com/objectives–resolution–1949/

55. https://historypak.com/objectives–resolution–1949/

56. https://statelesshistories.org/assets/uploads/documents/Nehru–Liaquat–Agreement–1950.pdf

57. https://sigur.elliott.gwu.edu/2018/02/07/the–objectives–resolution–of–pakistan–islam–minorities–and–the–making–of–a–democracy–discussionwith–dr–neeti–nair/
58. See page 173.
59. https://www.hinduamerican.org/1971–bangladesh–genocide
60. https://www.upr–org/sites/default/files/country–document/2023–03/JS21_UPR42_PAK_E_Main.pdf
61. https://www.dawn.com/news/1828152/curious–case–of–priya–kumari
62. https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/world/uk–sanctions–pakistan–cleric–mian–mithoo–for–forced–conversion–of–hindu–girls–in–sindh–province2022–12–10–830175
63. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/18/pakistan–urged–to–act–against–forced–child–marriages–conversions
64. https://www.rferl.org/a/pakistan–minority–sikhs–flee–khyber–pakhtunkhwa/32614334.html
65. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press–releases/2024/04/pakistan–un–experts–alarmed–lack–protection–minority–girls–forced–religious
66. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/01/1132482
67. https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=27585
68. https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/2023–05/Pakistan.pdf
69. https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia–and–the–pacific/south–asia/pakistan/report–pakistan/
70. https://www.hrw.org/world–report/2024/country–chapters/pakistan#79bf71
71. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2079363/bill–forced–conversion
72. https://www.upr–org/sites/default/files/country–document/2023–03/JS21_UPR42_PAK_E_Main.pdf
73. https://www.opindia.com/2023/06/pakistan–hindu–migrants–rajasthan–reveal–atrocities–hardships/
74. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19724/rape–enslave–non–muslim–women
75. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7289/pakistan–christian–girls

76. http://www.fides.org/en/news/28031–ASIA_PAKISTAN_Catholic_girl_raped_by_a_Muslim#.VqKlRvkrLIV

77. https://library.usi.edu/record/929593

78. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA–9–2024–pdf

79. https://www.timesofisrael.com/european–parliament–condemns–incitement–in–palestinian–unrwa–textbooks/

80. https://www.timesofisrael.com/unrwa–textbooks–were–pivotal–in–radicalizing–generations–of–gazans–watchdog/

81. https://rwandanstories.org/genocide/hate_radio.html
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84. https://www.unesco.org/en/countries/pk
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87. https://www.dawn.com/news/672000/pakistan–schools–teach–hindu–hatred

88. https://www.indiatoday.in/sports/cricket/story/inzamam–ul–haq–always–backed–me–danish–kaneria–discrimination–pakistan–teammates–forbeing–hindu–1631872–2019–12–27
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92. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/two–hindu–temples–including–one–built–over–150–years–ago–destroyed–in–pakistans–sindh–provincewithin–24–hours/articleshow/101803289.cms

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94. https://www.dawn.com/news/1326114/once–populated–with–temples–only–traces–of–hinduism–remain–in–laki ⁹⁵

95. https://insightuk.org/plight–of–hindus–in–pakistan

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97. https://scientiamag.org/pakistans–crumbling–hindu–heritage–our–shared–culture–and–responsibility/ 
98. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXC6JjnxciQ
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100. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2024–07/pakistani–church–pleas–for–christian–sentenced–to–html

101.  Faith-Based Violence and Deobandi Militancy in Pakistan

102. https://www.state.gov/wp–content/uploads/2024/05/547499_PAKISTAN–2023–INTERNATIONAL–RELIGIOUS–FREEDOM–REPORT.pdf
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