Very frequently, some or the other member of a minority community, whether Hindu or Christian, is subjected to humiliation, torture and cruelty in various forms in Pakistan.
While the men are assaulted, thrashed and even lynched, their girls are raped and forcibly converted to Islam to be married to a Muslim man against their choice.
Most tragically, the victims of these Hindu or Christian victims get no support from the police, the government or even the judiciary.
In this series of atrocities against the minorities in Pakistan, the latest reported case is that of 35-year-old Yasir Masih, a Christian sanitation worker, who was thrashed by a group of Muslims in Lahore for not swiftly obeying their directive to collect garbage and sweep the doorstep of their house.
It may be mentioned here that in Pakistan, the sanitation work is reserved officially for the minority Hindus and Christians only. Muslims are not kept away from such menial work.
Yasir’s main job is to clean the streets but he would often comply with the orders of the Muslim families living there to clean their premises. But he would do that after finishing his official work.
Such families included Malik Khadim Hussian, a resident of Gujjarpura.
On May 25, Yasir took longer to finish his official work, which meant delay in obeying the orders of Malik Khadim Hussain.
This angered Hussain and he asked Yasir to clean the roof of his house. When Yasir reached the roof, Hussain, his sons and some other men hit him with iron rods besides punching and kicking him.
Badly injured, Yasir was then chained to a chair and kept in open sun without any clothes.
He suffered for hours before finding a chance to escape, despite being still chained to the chair.
Almost coinciding this tragic event was another horrific case in Bahawalpur where a Muslim employer and his henchmen stripped naked a Hindu woman worker, hung her upside down and raped her.
Her only fault was that she was pressing for her salary, which was being denied to her.
Prior to this, a 14-year-old minor Hindu girl, Neena, was kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam and married against her wishes to her abductor Mehdi Hasan in Mirpurkhas in Sindh Province.
Just before that, another 14-year-old Hindu girl Parisha Kumari was similarly abducted by Muslim men in Garhi Mori area of Sindh Province and forcibly converted to Islam before being married under coercion with one of her abductors.
Such cases and incidents are endless in Pakistan but there is, sadly, no end to these.
As a result of these incidents, the population of minorities in Pakistan has been reducing at a very fast rate.
The victims and activists have been requesting global human rights organisations to intervene so that atrocities against minorities in Pakistan could stop.
We hope and wish that such cases end at the earliest.
