Christians fear attacks

Members of Pakistan’s Christian minority fear they may be attacked by Muslims as attitudes harden in the runup to anticipated US military action against Afghanistan. “The mulvi (cleric) at a mosque last Friday said that if one Muslim is killed in Afghanistan, two Christians will be killed in Pakistan. This is the kind of intimidation that is going on,” Father Simon Sarfaraz of St Fatima’s church in Islamabad told IRIN on Wednesday. “These fanatic Muslims are considering this a war between Christians and Muslims,” Sarfaraz added. “It is a very scary situation at the moment. People are afraid, wondering what will happen.” Pakistani Christians comprise an estimated three million out of a total population of 140 million. Since Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden was named the prime suspect for carrying out the deadly attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on 11 September the minority community has been worried. Moreover, since Pakistan’s leader, General Pervez Musharraf, has pledged to cooperate fully with the US in its fight against terrorism, pro-Taliban demonstrations have been increasing in Pakistan. Musharraf was due to address the nation on Wednesday. Sarfaraz said he knew of no attacks on any Christians up to now, but was deeply concerned over what could happen. A countrywide strike has been called for Friday by religious parties, which are also planning more demonstrations across the country following Friday prayers, including two rallies in Islamabad’s twin city, Rawalpindi. Pakistan’s Christian community has been targeted by hardline Muslims in the past. Several Christians have been killed and a considerable number jailed after being found guilty of blasphemy in the past decade. In February 1997, Christians in Shantinagar in the eastern province of Punjab were subjected to violent attacks when mobs engaged in looting and desecrated churches, leaving some 20,000 Christians homeless. Following reprisals on Muslims in the US, Sarfaraz said he also feared attacks on churches in Pakistan. The priests from St Fatima’s were to meet their bishop later in the day to try to devise a strategy to deal with the crisis, but they expressed pessimism. “In the past nobody came to help us,” he said. “Muslims think because we are Christians we are associated with the West and Americans.” Other Pakistani Christians interviewed by IRIN expressed similar sentiments. A woman who works in a foreign household and has to leave her five children alone every day said events had made her very nervous, and that she had told her children not to answer the door to strangers. “This is not a fight between Christians and Muslims. This is only for Osama,” said Peter Fitahchen, another Christian working in Islamabad. “But some people do not understand this. They think that Christians make a problem, and that this is a Muslim versus Christian fight, but I hope they will not think this.” “There’s a nervousness,” said Sister Adelheid, a German working at the Rawalpindi Leprosy Hospital, which has contacts with the Christian community. “A mob could come and who knows...”, she said. “We hear the mosques around us who are stirring up the people.” Elsewhere in the region there are similar concerns. Russians in Kyrgyzstan - a dwindling community - are particularly sensitive to the risks of an armed conflict in the region if the US strikes Afghanistan. In 1991, when Kyrgyzstan became independent, Russians accounted for 20 percent of the population. Today, half of them have left the country, causing a major brain drain, as they often represented a qualified labour force. The term Russian is used generically to include all people of Slav origin - Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians. However, Islamic leaders have given assurances that there would be no such reprisals in Bishkek. Abdushakur Narmatov, head of the Islamic Institute of Bishkek, which trains the future mullahs of Kyrgyzstan, told IRIN: “Kyrgyzstan is 80 percent Muslim, but we have always lived in peace with our Christian brothers. Kyrgyz Muslims are not extremist. There will never be a conflict based on religion in here.”