March 2, 2010
By Anto Akkara

BANGALORE, India – Christian groups in Pakistan and India have joined political and other religious leaders in deploring the recent beheading of two young Sikh men by a Taliban group in Pakistan, and have demanded security for religious minorities in the Muslim-majority nation.

"We condemn this diabolic act," said Victor Azariah, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Pakistan, in a telephone interview with Ecumenical News International on March 1. "This is yet another instance of growing insecurity to the [religious] minorities here."

The National Commission for Justice and Peace of the Roman Catholic Church in Pakistan said, "alarm bells are ringing" following the beheading of Jaspal Singh and Mahal Singh, whose bodies were found in Bara town in the troubled North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan on Feb. 21.

A pro-Taliban group kidnapped the two Sikh youths along with two other young men in January in the Khyber Agency region, and demanded a ransom of 30 million Pakistani rupees (US$350,200) for the release of their captives.

On March 1, Pakistan security forces rescued the other abducted Sikhs, Gurvinder Singh and Gurjit Singh, during a raid in which several of the kidnappers were killed.

The four Sikhs, who wore traditional turbans, had moved into the city of Peshawar to escape extremists in an area where Islamic groups had in 2009 imposed a "religious tax" on minorities, and threatened those who refused to pay.

The Catholic commission, headed by Lahore Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Pakistan, said that such violent incidents pose a "grave threat to the life, liberty and property of the members of religious minorities in the country."

"This was not a solitary incident of brutality against the religious minorities in Pakistan. Such incidents have happened before involving victims from Sikh, Hindu and Christian communities," the commission said

Religious minorities account for less than five percent of Pakistan's 174 million people, where the overwhelming majority are Muslims, most of them Sunnis.

In a statement quoting Nadeem Anthony, a Christian member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the group Minorities Concern of Pakistan pointed out that only a small number of Sikhs, Hindus and Christians are now left in the tribal areas of the country.

Minorities Concern of Pakistan noted that most of the minorities had left the region after the Taliban asked Sikh traders and others to convert to Islam or leave, or pay Jazia, an Islamic tax imposed on non-Muslims.

Episcopal News Service
Ecumenical News International