May 292010

Ahmadi victims are buriedThe burials took place in Rabwah, the Ahmadi headquarters Mourners in Pakistan have buried the 93 victims of co-ordinated attacks by gunmen on two mosques of the minority Ahmadi Islamic sect in Lahore.

The attackers fired guns and threw grenades at worshippers during Friday prayers. Three militants later blew themselves up and two were captured.

An Ahmadi leader called for greater government protection after the attacks by suspected Taliban militants.

Lahore has been the scene of a string of brazen attacks.

The victims were buried in Rabwah, the religious headquarters of the Ahmadi community.

‘Easy targets’

Security was tight at the two mosques on Saturday.

A day earlier, several attackers, armed with AK-47 rifles, shotguns and grenades, held people hostage briefly inside a mosque in the heavily built-up Garhi Shahu area.

WHO ARE THE AHMADIS?A minority Islamic sect founded in 1889, Ahmadis believe their own founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who died in 1908, was a prophetThis is anathema to most Muslims who believe the last prophet was Muhammad, who died in 632Most Ahmadi followers live in the Indian subcontinentAhmadis have been the subject of sectarian attacks and persecution in Pakistan and elsewhereIn 1974 the Pakistani government declared the sect non-MuslimWho are the Ahmadis?In pictures: Lahore attacksAnalysis: Soft target for militantsEyewitness: Mosque attack

Some took up positions on top of the minarets, and fired at police engaged in gunfights with militants below.

Police took control of the other mosque in the nearby Model Town area after a two-hour gunfight.

Pakistan's Geo TV channel said the Pakistani Taliban had claimed responsibility for the assaults.

Members of the community have often been mobbed, or gunned down in targeted attacks, says the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad.

But this is the first time their places of worship have suffered daring and well co-ordinated attacks that bear the mark of Taliban militants, our correspondent adds.

Ali Dayan Hassan of Human Rights Watch told the BBC the worshippers were "easy targets" for militant Sunni groups who consider the Ahmadis to be infidels.

While the Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim and follow all Islamic rituals, they were declared non-Muslim in Pakistan in 1973, and in 1984 they were legally barred from proselytising or identifying themselves as Muslims.

map

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

  • Share/Bookmark

Mourners in Karachi, 6 Feb 2010

At least 20 people have been killed in violence in the Pakistani city of Karachi, police say.

They say most of the dead were victims of drive-by shootings carried out by unidentified motorcyclists.

The bulk of Wednesday’s violence took place between rival ethnic groups in western and eastern parts of the city.

Correspondents say that while Karachi has not been spared Islamist militant violence in recent months, a bigger worry is factional violence.

The city was wracked by clashes between rival ethnic-based political factions for much of the 1990s in addition to sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis.

Intense gunfire

The provincial government closed all educational institutions in the city on Thursday and school exams were suspended for the day.

Many of the killings were followed by intense gunfire, police say.

Karachi city police chief Waseem Ahmed said that the dead included at least one member of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) party and four members of Awami National Party (ANP).

The MQM is supported by Karachi’s majority Urdu-speaking population whose ancestors migrated from India at the time of Indian partition in 1947. They mostly live in the central parts of the metropolis.

The ANP derives support from the city’s ethnic Pashtun population, which is spread across its western and eastern parts.

Map

The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that the two parties have accused each other of carrying out targeted killings since 2007.

A number of ANP workers were killed in May 2007 when the MQM allegedly resorted to violence to prevent Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry – who at the time had been suspended by military ruler Pervez Musharraf – from addressing lawyers in Karachi. President Musharraf was supported by the MQM.

ANP Sindh province head Shahi Said said that Wednesday’s killings were part of an "ongoing process of ethnic cleansing" of Pashtuns in Karachi.

He said the killings were perpetrated by the "same people who were responsible for the 12 May (2007) killings" – a clear reference to the MQM.

But in an official statement on Wednesday night, the MQM blamed the killings on "infighting" between the ANP and those campaigning for a separate Hazara province in the north of the country.

The ANP governs what was known as North West Frontier Province but which last month changed its name to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The party was in the forefront of the campaign for the name change, which was vigorously resisted by people in the Hazara region.

Our correspondent says that people from both regions have a considerable presence in Karachi.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

  • Share/Bookmark

Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan activists protest in Lahore on May 18, 2010, against cartoons of Prophet Muhammed in Danish newspapers in 2008

A court in Pakistan has ordered the authorities temporarily to block the Facebook social networking site.

The order came when a petition was filed after the site held a competition featuring caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

The petition, filed by a lawyers’ group called the Islamic Lawyers’ Movement, said the contest was "blasphemous".

A message on the competition’s information page said it was not "trying to slander the average Muslim".

"We simply want to show the extremists that threaten to harm people because of their Muhammad depictions that we’re not afraid of them," the statement said.

"They can’t take away our right to freedom of speech by trying to scare us into silence."

Correspondents say that publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked angry protests in Muslim countries – five people were killed in Pakistan.

Internet is free in Pakistan but the government monitors content by routing all traffic through a central exchange.

Justice Ejaz Ahmed Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court ordered the department of communications to block the website until 31 May, and to submit a written reply to the petition by that date.

An official told the court that parts of the website that were holding the competition had been blocked, reports the BBC Urdu service’s Abdul Haq in Lahore.

But the petitioner said a partial blockade of a website was not possible and that the entire link had to be blocked.

The lawyers’ group says Pakistan is an Islamic country and its laws do not allow activities that are "un-Islamic" or "blasphemous".

The judge also directed Pakistan’s foreign ministry to raise the issue at international level.

In the past, Pakistan has often blocked access to pornographic sites and sites with anti-Islamic content.

It has deemed such material as offensive to the political and security establishment of the country, says the BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad.

In 2007, the government banned the YouTube site, allegedly to block material offensive to the government of Pervez Musharraf.

The action led to widespread disruption of access to the site for several hours. The ban was later lifted.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

  • Share/Bookmark
© 2010 International news round the clock Suffusion WordPress theme by Sayontan Sinha