LAHORE: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), with support from Friedrich- Naumann-Stiftung Fur Freiheit (FNF), on Thursday held a consultation on the 2014 Supreme Court judgment on the rights of religious minorities. It discussed strategies for better implementation of the decision.

The background of this is the suo moto action taken on June 19, 2014, by then chief justice of Pakistan Tassaduq Hussain Jillani who directed that a seven-point agenda be implemented with regard to minorities rights.

The points included the constitution of a peace force at the federal level to develop a strategy for promoting religious tolerance, the development of an appropriate curricula for primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education that promote religious harmony and tolerance, a curb on hate speech on social media, the constitution of a national council for minorities, the establishment of a special police force to protect the worship places of minorities, the enforcement of five per cent minority quota in government jobs, and to take prompt action, including registration of criminal cases, whenever constitutional rights of religious minorities are violated or their worship places desecrated.

Regarding this, human rights activist Peter Jacob gave a detailed presentation of the research he had done on the issue, which assessed how much of this SC directive had been implemented. He gave a province by province assessment on each of the directives.

“Some of these directives have been implemented but only partly,” he claimed. “However, unfortunately most of them have not been complied with at all. Much of the fault is of the departments. There are certain issues in compliance that have repeatedly appeared during the research which points to the gaps.”

The issues in compliance included indecision by the government department in taking action, the fact that the government policy was unclear or didn’t even exist in certain cases, overall indifference by various departments, institutional overlapping and dysfunction, and the Supreme Court directive was not well understood or else was not regarded.Submitting applications in court is a a weary process and without proper preparation the minorities’ side in court does not have a solid case, and sometimes poor representation. It is also an expensive procedure, according to some of the minority community members who were at the discussion.

Some CSOs are ill equipped with the task of providing rights to the religious minority communities. “We should have one solid NGO which is at the level of the HRCP and other international CSOs, who can fight for our rights on one platform,” said Jacob.

Atam Parkash from Tando Adam Khan, who had also filed cases in court regarding the restoration of a mandir in his area, said the Hindu leadership was not up to the mark, and even across the border sometimes Hindu leaders said some things that were insensitive and controversial and this reflected on the community here.

“When Babri mosque was attacked in India, our temples were attacked too,” he said.

Moving on to the methods of implementation, Mr I.A. Rehman spoke about how important it was to have a continuing process of reviewing the situation. “We must keep the issue alive in the minds of the executive, we must continue to lobby and create awareness for this suo moto action,” he said.

“For the continual process of monitoring a bench must be formed, and the objective of course is that such a situation must be eventual where there is no need for monitoring.”

He said there was no existence or awareness about the Minorities Rights Commission which was shameful since it had been explicitly ordered by the court.

“There is built-in resistance in our administration to implement any such laws,” he said. “Our country’s spaces for the marginalised and vulnerable people including minorities and women are shrinking. The issue of the curriculum including hate speech is going from bad to worse and a rational system of governance is needed,” he said.

Dr Saima Ejaz, former member of parliament, suggested that the minorities should also be more aggressive politically and create an opposition.

The minority community representatives said there were some very unfair provisions in law or tradition which were deeply entrenched. “The head of the state cannot be a non-Muslim and even the Evacuee Trust which takes care of all our lands and properties is always a Muslim,” said one member.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2017