Pakistan’s Ahmadi minority boycotts elections, again

RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – As Pakistan, the world’s fifth-most populous nation, prepares to vote on February 8, its half-million-strong Ahmadi community will boycott the election.

Aljazeera reported the decision taken by Ahmadi after a spike in attacks on its members, institutions and even burial sites in the weeks leading up to the vote.

For many Ahmadis the brief decline in attacks following the past September meeting between Ahmadi community and top officials of Pakistan’s government was proof of what could happen — if the country’s leaders wanted it.

What the decline in attacks showed that if the state wishes, it can easily control the violence against Ahmadi but unfortunately, the impression Ahmadi community get is that either some government is not clear-minded about its action, or is unwilling to help.

It is a sentiment driven by decades of entrenched discrimination, including in the electoral system. And it has led the community to boycott the elections.

In a statement last week, the community’s leaders announced their “disassociation” from the vote. “Although the elections are ostensibly being held under a joint electorate, there is, however, a separate voter list prepared only for Ahmadi citizens due to their faith,” said a statement released by an organisation representing the community on Wednesday.

“This discriminatory treatment based on religion is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise Ahmadi citizens from the electoral process for all intents and purposes and thus denying them their right to vote,” it added.

While the community has been avoiding participation in elections for nearly four decades, the latest boycott announcement came after three different incidents of Ahmadi grave desecration in the last two weeks, in different towns in Punjab province.

The Ahmadi sect considers itself Muslim. But they were declared “non-Muslims” in 1974 under Pakistan’s constitution. In the decades since the 1970s, hundreds of attacks, including murders and desecrations of their religious places and graveyards, have been reported in Pakistan.

Community members were active participants in the electoral process until and including in the 1977 elections, before then-army chief General Zia ul-Haq imposed martial law.

The military strongman passed a ruling in 1984 which restricted the community from practising Islamic rituals or publicly displaying any symbol that identifies them as Muslims, including building minarets or domes on mosques, or publicly writing verses from the Quran.

In the elections that were conducted in 1985, he introduced separate voter lists for different religious groups in the country, after which the community began their boycott of the polls. The system of separate voter lists lasted until the 1997 elections, after which it was unified again for the 2002 elections under military ruler General Pervez Musharraf.