KARACHI: To spread awareness of constitutional rights and legal provisions, the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) organised a seminar on ‘Minority rights: challenges in implementation of Supreme Court’s judgement’ at a hotel here on Tuesday.

Piler’s executive director Zulfiqar Shah spoke on their project ‘Access to justice for vulnerable populations in Pakistan’ that focuses on three vulnerable groups of society — women, religious minorities and persons with disabilities. “Under the project, Piler aims to sensitise and create awareness among the community and the providers of justice about the constitutional rights and the legal provisions for the rights and protection of these identified vulnerable groups,” he said.

Legal expert Nisar Ahmed Shar said the Supreme Court’s judgement of 2014 seeking a national council for minority rights was a revolutionary step towards rebuilding society. “This country was made for minorities, as Muslims were a minority in undivided India,” Shar said while providing some background to the decision when the SC had received a letter from an NGO, Justice Helpline, following the attack on a church in Peshawar in which 81 Christians were killed.

“The judgement rightly interprets and maintains Islamic jurisprudence where no one would be refused citizenship on the basis of race or colour, no one can be allowed to speak against any religion and collection from any community will be invested in their institutions only,” he said.

Resident director of the Aurat Foundation Mahnaz Rehman said Pakistan was created thanks to the minority vote of Christians and the people who were against the birth of this country were in fact the ones who were now against minorities and were all for laws such as the blasphemy law that could be easily used against them. “Even judges and lawyers are under pressure of mullahs and the mob when dealing with a blasphemy case here. And we all know how this law can be used against a non-Muslim by anyone who may have an axe to grind with them,” she said.

Taking the example of India, Ms Rehman said that they could be called truly secular as there they had no issues with intermarriages or having a Muslim leader while “we here cannot even conceive such a notion”. “The state and the religion, which is a personal matter, should be kept separate,” she said.

“Here even our school curricula are such that non-Muslims think twice before admitting their children to our schools.” Piler’s director Karamat Ali said that both India and Pakistan were spending a large portion of their budgets on the purchase of weapons. “Under the Saarc mechanism, there is a social charter which suggests portable social security to all South Asian countries. If we want to make a society free from difference, we need to remove differences between minorities and majority,” he said.

Adam Malik, a social activist, spoke about the National Action Plan and how it affected minority rights. “It is very important as the minority rights judgement of the Supreme Court as it upholds the rights of minorities,” he said explaining that all cases of blasphemy could be reversed if proven wrong and the punishment intended for the falsely accused could be given to the petitioner as per the National Action Plan.

“Commitments of the National Action Plan include promoting interfaith harmony and deployment of police at the places of worship of minorities. There is also prohibition of a 5pc quota of jobs for minorities. Politicians and prominent figures, too, are encouraged to attend minority festivals here,” he said.

Haq Nawaz Talpur, secretary-general of the Karachi Bar Association, said that the lawyers community had supported the minorities. He recalled that during his childhood, he used to visit temples of Sikhs in Sanghar where he also enjoyed tasting sweetmeats. He said his family always protected the rights of minorities. “During the Partition riots my father protected Hindu families of the neighbourhood in our home,” he added.

Human rights expert Iqbal Detho, senior journalist Muqtida Mansoor Khan and Dastigar Legal Aid Centre coordinator Amrit Kumar also spoke.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2016