Islamabad, Pakistan – Amir Mahmood remembers a gathering between his Ahmadi group and high officers of Pakistan’s authorities final September. He can’t overlook how the group, for lengthy a sufferer of persecution within the nation, noticed a decline in assaults on its graves and shrines within the days after that assembly.
But that respite didn’t final.
As the world’s fifth-most populous nation prepares to vote on February 8, its half-million-strong Ahmadi group will boycott the election, after a spike in assaults on its members, establishments and even burial websites within the weeks main as much as the vote. For many Ahmadis, like Mahmood, the temporary decline in assaults following the September assembly was proof of what may occur — if the nation’s leaders needed it.
“What the decline in attacks told us that if the state wishes, it can easily control the violence against us but unfortunately, the impression we get is that either some government is not clear-minded about its action, or is unwilling to help,” he mentioned.
It is a sentiment pushed by a long time of entrenched discrimination, together with within the electoral system. And it has led the group to boycott the elections. In a press release final week, the group’s leaders introduced their “disassociation” from the vote. “Although the elections are ostensibly being held under a joint electorate, there is, however, a separate voter list prepared only for Ahmadi citizens due to their faith,” mentioned a press release launched by an organisation representing the group on Wednesday.
“This discriminatory treatment based on religion is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise Ahmadi citizens from the electoral process for all intents and purposes and thus denying them their right to vote,” it added.
While the group has been avoiding participation in elections for practically 4 a long time, the most recent boycott announcement got here after three completely different incidents of Ahmadi grave desecration within the final two weeks, in numerous cities in Punjab province.
Mahmood, additionally a group spokesperson, mentioned knowledge confirmed that there have been assaults on 42 Ahmadi locations of worship throughout the nation final 12 months, in addition to desecration of greater than 100 graves in simply the state of Punjab. The 12 months 2022 additionally noticed at the very least 14 mosques and 197 graves belonging to the group desecrated final 12 months, in accordance with the group’s statistics. At least three members of the group have been gunned down in 2022, allegedly attributable to their non secular affiliation.
‘No sense of belonging’
The Ahmadi sect considers itself Muslim. But they have been declared “non-Muslims” in 1974 underneath Pakistan’s structure. In the a long time because the Nineteen Seventies, tons of of assaults, together with murders and desecrations of their non secular locations and graveyards, have been reported in Pakistan.
Community members have been lively contributors within the electoral course of till and together with within the 1977 elections, earlier than then-army chief General Zia ul-Haq imposed martial regulation.
The navy strongman handed a ruling in 1984 which restricted the group from practising Islamic rituals or publicly displaying any image that identifies them as Muslims, together with constructing minarets or domes on mosques, or publicly writing verses from the Quran.
In the elections that have been carried out in 1985, he launched separate voter lists for various non secular teams within the nation, after which the group started their boycott of the polls. The system of separate voter lists lasted till the 1997 elections, after which it was unified once more for the 2002 elections underneath navy ruler General Pervez Musharraf.
Under the revised joint record, all Pakistanis no matter their non secular affiliation have been mixed in a single voter record — besides Ahmadis. They have been as a substitute put in a separate “supplementary” record, the place they’re recognized as “Qadianis”, a time period that refers back to the city in Indian Punjab the place the Ahmadi custom took root. The group considers the time period derogatory.
“If there can be one voter list which has the rest of the citizens of Pakistan, regardless of their caste, ethnicity, and faith, what is stopping them from adding Ahmadis to that list? Why single us out?” Mahmood requested.
Other members of the group say the discrimination within the electoral lists is consistent with the bias they confront in on a regular basis life.
“I moved to Pakistan two decades ago from the United Kingdom after getting married,” Fatima*, a 47-year-old homemaker, instructed Al Jazeera. “I am human, of course. I also get frustrated a lot, because I am a citizen of Pakistan and I want to be able to vote,” she mentioned.
“I have voted in the UK in the past when I was young, and it has really given me this sense of pride and achievement, that I can contribute in a small way to my country. But in Pakistan, that sense of belonging has been stolen from me, on account of my faith,” she added.
Akbar*, a 22-year-old scholar in Islamabad, says that whereas he’s politically conscious and would have favored to vote if there was a unified voter record, candidates of mainstream events usually resorted to inflammatory feedback towards his group.
“It is something very commonly seen in Pakistani election campaigns that bigotry, against our community is very evident. Candidates use inflammatory comments to garner votes while putting our lives at risk,” he tells Al Jazeera.
“There is a clear sense of alienation in the community. If all the mainstream parties are thinking along such lines, how can we even think about voting, especially when the list wants us to renounce our faith and call ourselves non-Muslims?” Akbar added.
‘Limited influence’
Political analyst Tahir Mehdi mentioned that for Pakistan’s non secular conservatives, the choice to get Ahmadis declared non-Muslims by the constitutional modification of 1974 stays a significant achievement.
“This is a subject on which there will be no compromise, and they want to protect this victory at any cost,” he mentioned.
Mehdi added that with as a result of the group’s inhabitants in Pakistan is comparatively small, it’s not a major sufficient voting constituency to woo for events. “Their lack of numbers means a limited way to influence polling results, thus leaving no incentive for the state, or even political parties, to change their policies.”
Fatima, the housewife, mentioned that the persecution towards the group goes a lot past assaults or the separate voter record.
“We have so many restrictions and limitations in our day-to-day lives. Something as simple as ordering something online, the vendor will refuse to deliver the moment they see the name of Rabwah city as the address of delivery,” she mentioned. Rabwah is a small metropolis in Punjab province, located roughly 177km (110 miles) west of Lahore. The metropolis homes near 80,000 individuals, with over 90 % of the inhabitants belonging to Ahmadi group. The authorities formally renamed the town Chenab Nagar within the late Nineteen Nineties however the identify has not caught.
“I have experienced this multiple times myself, that a vendor would point out to my city, and say you live in Chenab Nagar, you must be a Qadiani [a derogatory term for Ahmadis], and they point-blank refuse to deliver,” she mentioned.
Yet, she mentioned, that has not weakened her spirit — or her religion.
“We are not going to give up on our faith. We are never going to renounce it, even if it means not being able to vote. The state is trying to control us, but they won’t succeed,” she mentioned.
That can also be why Akbar, the scholar in Islamabad, refuses to take part within the elections.
“Just by participating in a system like this, it feels like you’re endorsing something that is working towards eliminating you from it. It will be a betrayal to myself and to my community to participate in this apartheid system of dual [voter’s] list singling out me out for my faith.”
*Names modified to guard the people.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/6/why-single-us-out-pakistans-ahmadi-minority-disassociates-from-polls?traffic_source=rss
