Human Rights Focus Pakistan (HRFP) has reported a continued rise in human rights violations against religious minorities in Pakistan, urging the government to take urgent legislative, administrative, and judicial action.
In a fact-finding report released on Friday, HRFP cited a disturbing pattern of violence, discrimination, impunity, and religious intolerance affecting Christians, Hindus, and other marginalised communities. The organisation documented cases through its REAT Helpline, regional coordinators, and other sources, highlighting physical attacks, murders, sexual violence, forced displacement, abductions, forced conversions, attacks on places of worship, misuse of blasphemy laws, land-related conflicts, and systemic discrimination.
HRFP President Naveed Walter said recent fact-finding missions had exposed persistent failures in protecting religious minorities and ensuring justice. He criticised authorities for making equality, religious freedom, and protection largely inaccessible to vulnerable communities, who continue to suffer violence with little or no accountability.
The report highlighted several recent incidents, including the assault on Faisalabad-based pastor Afzal Masih, the killing of Christian youth Khalid Masih, unpaid salaries of Christian sanitation workers in Dera Ghazi Khan, and an alleged attempt to implicate a Christian man in a fabricated blasphemy case. It also cited the killing of Hindu doctor Dr Akash Kumar in Karachi, vandalism at the Kali Mata Temple in Hyderabad, and cases involving alleged abductions and forced conversions of minority girls.
Concerns were also raised over attacks targeting Ahmadiyya and Sikh communities, including a shooting outside an Ahmadiyya mosque in Chenab Nagar and the killing of an elderly Sikh couple inside a gurdwara in Mardan. HRFP called for urgent action to ensure accountability, strengthen protections, and uphold commitments related to freedom of religion or belief.
