wfn.org | Pakistan Christians say they are powerless to respond to attacks

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>]

Note #7373 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

08-August-2002
02288

Pakistan Christians say they are powerless to respond to attacks 

"Insecurity is increasing," they say

by Anto Akkara
Ecumenical News International
  
NEW DELHI - Church leaders in Pakistan say that insecurity is increasing among the country's Christians in the wake of the attack this week against a missionary school near Islamabad.  

Six people were killed, including two Christian staff, and three people were injured on Aug. 5 when gunmen attacked the school at Murree, 40 kilometers northeast of the capital, Islamabad. 

It was the third attack against a Christian target in Pakistan since October last year.  

"We don't feel secure in Pakistan. Not only the Christians in Murree but Christians all over the country feel the same," said the Rev. Seed Javed, a Presbyterian pastor in the town.  

Javed said he lost both his adopted son Babar Pervez, the school's office manager, and his nephew Javed Masih, a cook at the school, in the shooting.   

"For me this is a personal tragedy I can never forget," he told ENI by telephone from Murree on Aug. 8.  

The other four people killed in the shoot-out were all Muslims - two security guards, a school carpenter and a passer?by.   

The British Broadcasting Corporation reported yesterday that three men suspected of attacking the school had committed suicide after being challenged by police.  

In a statement on Aug. 6, the National Council of Churches in Pakistan condemned a "terrorist act focused against the Christians of Pakistan."  

Victor Azariah, the council's general secretary, said: "We cannot see this in isolation from the earlier attacks."   

In March this year, five people were killed and 41 injured when grenades were hurled at a Sunday church congregation in the diplomatic quarter of Islamabad.  

Last October, 16 people were killed when masked gunmen attacked a church in Bahawalpur in the east-central part of the country.   

"Christians are being identified as part of the western nations," Azariah told ENI, speaking from his office in Lahore.  

Police had found a letter at the site of the school shooting claiming the attack was in reaction to western "brutalities against Muslims in the world," he said. Islamic terrorist groups "were taking revenge on Pakistani Christians" for United States' foreign policy in the Middle East and attacks made on Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror strikes in the U.S., he added.  

Pakistan's Christian community did not dare mount protest demonstrations against such attacks and had to put up with such attacks "in patience." Christian street protests, he said, "would only aggravate the situation for us as the government itself is helpless to deal with the powerful Islamic fundamentalists here."  

Pakistan's Christian community represents just over 2 per cent of its 140 million population, 95 per cent of which is Muslim.  
------------------------------------------
Send your response to this article to pcusa.news@pcusa.org

------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send an 'unsubscribe' request to

pcusanews-request@halak.pcusa.org