A one-and-a-half-year-old infant was buried four days after she died from pneumonia in Toba Tek Singh, Punjab province. The girl, who was from an Ahmadi family, died on December 19, and was taken for burial the following day. At the cemetery the local clerics gathered with approximately fifty men who were armed with sticks and batons. The girl belonged to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam, declared non Islamic through constitutional amendments. The men refused to let the Ahmadis bury the girl in the common graveyard and prevented them from digging the grave.
In Chak 312-JB Kathowali, Gojra, Toba Tek Singh, the Ahmadi and local Muslim population have lived together for six decades after the creation of Pakistan and the graveyard was used by both communities without dispute. However, from the last year the Muslim fundamentalist tried to introduce some families, particularly unmarried persons, who became busy instigating the people to agitate against the Ahmadis in order to dislodge them. Their campaign was not successful and the burial of the child gave them the reason they needed to punish the Ahmadis.
The family of the infant said that Muslim residents of the area had refused to let them bury their child in the neighbourhood graveyard because she was born to an Ahmadi family.
The child was finally buried on a piece of land donated by a non-Ahmadi Muslim resident of the village, some 300 metres away from the graveyard. The settlement was reached after the family of the deceased child staged a protest demonstration.
While persecution against Ahmadis is nothing new, it is appropriate to suggest that the increasing attacks against graves, graveyards and now the family of the dead child facing such inhuman treatment calls for serious concern from the civil society Continue...