Targeting Christian neighborhoods as drug dens is unconstitutional, bogus cases must end or protest will follow
(Publish from Houston Texas USA)
(By Mian Iftikhar Ahmad)
Faisalabad: Faisalabad Minority Rights Movement (MRM) chief Lala Robin Daniel along with Christian community leaders Bishop Shams Pervaiz, Pervaiz Iqbal Bhatti, Raja Thomas, Malik Sohail Sardar and Shaukat Khokhar said while addressing a press conference at the Faisalabad Press Club on Monday that the ongoing anti-drug campaign in Punjab is commendable and they fully support it.
However for the past two months Christian localities are being deliberately portrayed as drug dens which is unjust, discriminatory and unconstitutional, they stated that drugs such as heroin, hashish, ice and other narcotics are neither produced by nor collectively linked to Christian populations, they said a systematic propaganda campaign is being run on social media and through certain quarters where false and baseless cases under section 9-C are being registered to create the impression that drugs are associated with the Christian community, they urged the district administration to immediately take action against this one-sided media and social media campaign, warning that if the majority population falls prey to this propaganda and attacks Christian neighborhoods the consequences would be devastating, the leaders said that under Article 37/H of the Constitution of Pakistan alcohol is recognized as part of Christian religious rituals and beliefs and therefore if any state institution including the police declares it a drug and projects it in a hateful manner it amounts to a clear violation of the Constitution, they also demanded that the contents of liquor permits be properly read and understood, they informed that recently police conducted searches of two houses in Christian Town within the limits of Gulberg Police Station on a false report by a miscreant but nothing was recovered and the police staff apologized while the person who gave the false information never came forward, they alleged that despite this political pressure, personal enmities and number-based targets are still being used to register bogus 9-C cases in Gulberg and Batala Colony police stations, they pointed out that the owner of the Murree Brewery liquor factory is an MNA on a reserved seat and also holds a liquor export license yet no one labels him a drug dealer, similarly alcohol licenses are issued to homeopathic doctors and much of that alcohol is used as liquor instead of medicine but they are also not called drug dealers, they stressed that the Constitution of Pakistan guarantees complete justice without discrimination on the basis of color, race, religion or gender and the Christian community should not be deprived of this fundamental right, they said when SHOs are asked about the reasons for bogus cases they cite pressure from senior officers, they also criticized intelligence agencies’ reports as biased and one-sided and appealed to the heads of these agencies to make their reporting process transparent, they announced that if the bogus cases are not withdrawn within five days and the campaign of false cases continues they will stage a sit-in protest in front of the Punjab Assembly.
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