KARACHI, Dec 29: The All Pakistan Minority Alliance (APMA) has condemned the terrorist attack on a church in Daska and said that the government has failed to provide adequate security to the Christian community.
Speaking at a press conference here on Sunday, a former MPA and the Sindh chief of the APMA, Saleem Khurshid Khokhar, said that Christian community and its organizations and religious places in Pakistan had been subjected to victimization and terrorist attacks ever since the start of the US-led forces’ bombing on Afghanistan.
Christians living in this country, he stressed, were Pakistanis first and added that they were in no way responsible for the action being taken by the US or western countries. He was equally critical of the US and Western countries whose action, he said, had resulted in the miseries facing the Christian community. He warned that if the terrorists attacks against the community did not stop, Christians would resort to demonstrations in front of the United Nations and the concerned countries’ missions in Pakistan.
He maintained that it was the government’s prime responsibility to ensure safety and security of each and every citizen of this country, particularly members of minority communities. However, he pointed out, the government had miserably failed in fulfilling its responsibility. He said that the government could not absolve itself from its responsibility by paying monetary compensation to the victims.
Accusing the government of having adopted an indifferent attitude in this regard, he pointed out that even all the people nominated in the attack on church had not been arrested.
Saleem Khokhar termed the banning of certain hardline religious organizations in the country ‘an eye-wash’ saying that the government looked the other way when members of these organizations participated in the recent general elections and some of them succeeded in occupying seats in the assemblies.
Rafiq Abid, Samuel Xavier, Yaqoob Gill, Yusuf Gill, Riaz Shahid, Tasneem Kauser and others were present.