Jamaat Ahmadiya Punjab spokesperson Aamir Mahmood on Wednesday said that unidentified persons desecrated 16 graves of Ahmadis in a walled communal graveyard in Chak 203 RB Manawala, Faisalabad district, some 150 kms from Lahore on August 22.
The Islamic verses are inscribed on the tombstones of a number of graves in the graveyard of the community, he told news agency PTI.
“This act has caused immense grief amongst the bereaved families who are looking to the government for justice. This act is not only illegal but is clearly against all human values,” he said.
This graveyard is 75 years old and no such incident had taken place before this, he said. However, there had been a number of such incidents in other parts of the country in which the graves of the Ahmadi community members were desecrated by religious zealots in the past.
“A total of 185 Ahmadi graves were desecrated this year alone,” Mahmood said.
“This continuous persecution” testifies to the utter disregard of Ahmadi community rights and creates a sense of deep insecurity among the minority people, he said as he urged the government to take effective measures to stop this onslaught and hold the culprits accountable.
Notably, Pakistan’s Parliament had in 1974 declared the Ahmadi community as non-Muslims. A decade later, they were banned from calling themselves Muslims. They were later banned from preaching and from travelling to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage.
