LAHORE, Oct 7: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has urged the government to take measures to eradicate hatred and intolerance from society to prevent incidents like the Friday’s killing of eight Ahmadis during worship at Moong village near Mandi Bahauddin.

Expressing concern over the incident, HRCP Secretary-General Syed Iqbal Haider said attacks similar to the one executed by four gunmen at the place of worship in Moong had been repeated time and again during the past 10 years.

“The most shocking aspect of the outrage is that despite simmering tensions over the past 15 days or so and numerous complaints by Ahmadis regarding publication of highly provocative material in local newspapers, the authorities had failed to take measures to calm down the situation.”

Neither the Ahmadis’ place of worship was protected nor was any attempt made to prevent the clerics of the area from stoking hatred against the community, according to reports received by the HRCP.

It was obvious that given the prevailing environment more such attacks would take place. More families would lose children, brothers and fathers as a result of such targeted killings, he said. He added that the immunity available to murderers in the past could only encourage other zealots to follow in their footsteps.

He said the HRCP had frequently warned that such incidents were directly caused by the forces of intolerance, hatred and militancy that had established an iron grip on society. A lack of commitment to loosening the hold had already resulted in loss of at least 110 lives in sectarian violence across the country during this year.

The HRCP representative said the measures that could bring some improvement in situation by penalizing those delivering inflammatory speeches, ensuring that the local administration did not ignore complaints of sectarian harassment and taking steps to eradicate hatred from school textbooks and rehabilitating the misguided young militants trained with the state support, were yet to be taken.