Punjab; July 2021: Opposition, committed to deny Ahmadis their freedom of religion in Pakistan, went into high gear in view of the forthcoming festival of Eidul-Adha on July 21, 2021. They planned to deny Ahmadis their traditional right to practice Qurbani (Sacrificing cattle) at the occasion. They felt encouraged by the cooperative response of the Punjab Police at some of the locations in the province.
This year, they made use of social media extensively to mount this prohibitive campaign. There is internal evidence that a group of anti-Ahmadi lawyers prepared an application for their activists to put up to SHOs of local police stations, asking them to stop Ahmadis undertaking Qurbani, or otherwise book the Ahmadis and their leaders under anti-Ahmadi law.
The draft ‘Application’ was made viral through WhatsApp etc. We produce its translation in Annex II of this report.
Here we do not comment on its legal or religious demerits. The sole aim of their exercise was to stop Ahmadis practice their religion — that is a violation of the country’s Constitution and its commitment to international covenants. In these very days, the Honorable SC Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail sought “lawyers’ role for establishing just society,” through the news report in the daily Dawn, of July 19, 2021!
The state apparently took no action against the perpetrators of this massive absurdity.
