Christians in Pakistan say they
are suffering for the policies of the U.S.
[9-28-02]
by Anto Akkara, Ecumenical
News International
NEW DELHI -- September 27, 2002 -- 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.
