wfn.org | Christians in Pakistan say they are suffering for the policies of the U.S.

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Note #7440 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

27-September-2002
02366  
  
Christians in Pakistan say they are suffering for the policies of the U.S.
  
by Anto Akkara
Ecumenical News International  

NEW DELHI - Following the latest lethal attack on a Christian target in their
country, some churches in Pakistan have declared that they are being made to
suffer because of the policies of the United States.  

In a statement Thursday, the National Council of Churches in Pakistan (NCCP)
blamed the "unfair false assumptions adopted by [the] United States of
America" for the recent attacks on Christian targets in Muslim?majority
Pakistan.  

The statement followed the killing on Wednesday by unidentified gunmen of
seven workers at the Idare-eb Amin-o-Insaf (Institute for Justice and Peace),
an ecumenical social service center, in Karachi. The victims were tied to
chairs and shot in the head.  

Attacks in Pakistan have claimed 30 Christian lives since last October when
the U.S. and its allies launched military strikes in Afghanistan.  

"Christians [in Pakistan] are confronting horrible massacres," said the NCCP,
which groups mainline Protestant churches. It said that the "exemplary
brotherhood" which had prevailed for decades between the minority Christian
and majority Muslim population had been a victim of U.S. foreign policy.  

"Christians are seen by them [Islamic groups] as agents of Western nations
and so they are targeting us," Victor Azariah, the NCCP general secretary,
told ENI.  

Muslims make up 97 percent of Pakistan's population of 138 million, while the
remaining 3 percent is made up of Christian, Hindu, Parsee and Buddhist
minorities.  

"There is no doubt that we have become the hapless victims of the Western
policies in Afghanistan and Palestine," said Father Yousaf Mani, director of
the Justice and Peace Commission of the Roman Catholic Church in Pakistan.  

Mani said that of the seven staff killed at the Karachi ecumenical center,
three were Catholic and the others belonged to other Christian denominations.
 

All the major churches have been working with the center, which provides
literacy, public health, human rights advocacy and legal aid programs for
poor people of all faiths.  

The killings in Karachi have also been condemned by churches around the
world.	

George Carey, the archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world-wide
Anglican communion, said: "This is a dreadful act of violence against a
Christian organization which has been offering welfare and social support to
people of all faiths for 30 years."

In Germany, the leaders of the country's Protestant and Roman Catholic
churches in a joint statement said that religious minorities needed better
protection against attacks.  

The assaults against Christians in Pakistan were "putting a heavy strain on
all efforts to promote human rights in the country," said Manfred Kock of the
Evangelical Church in Germany and Cardinal Karl Lehmann of the Roman Catholic
Church.  

In India, Ipe Joseph, general secretary of the National Council of Churches
in India, said the killings in Karachi indicated that "the persecution of
minorities continues in Pakistan." He called on the government of Pakistan
"to be more sensitive to the safety of the lives of Christians and do all
that is necessary to protect them."  

The South Asian Council of Churches (SACC), which groups national church
councils in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, said Thursday
that the Karachi killings were "another blood?stained event in the continuing
atrocities against minorities in South Asia."  

"This again brings to our urgent attention the need of a pro-active approach
towards overcoming violence ... to bring about harmony and peace in South
Asia," the SACC said in a written statement. 

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