Media

MEP Condemns Killings of Minority Community Leaders in Pakistan

Baroness Nicholson MEP
12th September 2008

Baroness Nicholson MEP has expressed her “utter dismay and disgust” at the recent killing of two senior members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Pakistan and called for the Pakistani Government to take action to ensure that further attacks on the Ahmadiyya community are stopped.

Dr. Abdul Mannan Siddiqui, a physician and President of the local branch of the Ahmadiyya Community was killed at the Fazl-i-Umar Medical Centre in Mirpurkas, situated in the Sindh Province of Pakistan by three assassins on Monday the 8th of September, while Sate Mohammad Yusuf was murdered on the 9th September in Nawab Shah, he was the District Amir of the Ahmadiyya Community.

Baroness Nicholson MEP speaking about these killings said: “I want to share my utter dismay and disgust of the murders of Dr. Abdul Siddiqui and Sate Yusuf who were targeted simply because they are members of the Ahmadiyya community.  These killings are just another example of the extremely difficult situation that the Ahmadiyya are in.  They are a community who have faced discrimination and brutality for far too long.”

The Ahmadiyya Community in Pakistan were declared non-Muslim by state authorities in 1974, and in 1984, became criminally prohibited from declaring themselves Muslim and peacefully practicing their Islamic faith, including greeting people and praying in accordance with Islamic custom and practice.

Dr Siddiqi was a eminent member of the Ahmadiyya Community and also a renowned physician. He spent his life serving all members of the local community at the Fazl-e-Umar Hospital in Mirpurkhas, which he himself founded.  Dr. Abdul Siddiqui is the fifteenth Ahmadi doctors killed in the country by extremists since 1982.

Baroness Nicholson MEP continued: “The new President of Pakistan must ensure that everything is done to apprehend the perpetrators and hold them to account, and seize this opportunity address comprehensively the targeting of Ahmadiyya’s who like all Pakistanis share a right to religious freedom and tolerance.  The time has come for the discriminatory and outdated laws directed at the Ahmadiyya community are repealed.  They are an anathema that has contributed to the targeting of a minority community.”

Baroness Nicholson MEP has been a long standing supporter of the Ahmadiyya Community, and has called upon the Pakistani President to take steps to end the discrimination and persecution that this community faces, most recently in February of this year when she visited Pakistan as part of a European Parliament delegation.