Pak-based rights group demands resumption of temple construction in Islamabad

A Pakistan-based human rights organisation, Human Rights Focus Pakistan (HRFP) has demanded the resumption of temple construction in Islamabad, which was stopped by pressure from Islamists.

A Pakistan-based human rights orgsation, Human Rights Focus Pakistan (HRFP) has demanded the resumption of temple construction in Islamabad, which was stopped by pressure from Islamists.

In a statement, president of HRFP, Naveed Walter also condemned the negative propaganda against the Shri Krishna Mandir Complex through social, print and electronic media and also through religious and political mediums.

The new temple planned for Islamabad, the city's first, was supposed to be a symbol of tolerance. Instead, violence and controversy have turned it into an emblem of Pakistan's troubled relationship with its religious minorities.

Several Muslim clerics ruled that no Hindu temple should be built because Pakistan is a Muslim country.

Walter said, "The Hindu's temple construction should be as normal as the mosques and other worship places of all religions may construct in any country's capital and areas around the world".

Naveed Walter added that if the one's worship place is owned and funded by state then why the state adopted a different policy for others?

"The prayer & worship places are a basic right of every citizen and religious minorities including Hindus", said Walter.

He said at the time of partition in 1947, almost 23 per cent of Pakistan's population was comprised of non-Muslim minorities but today they declined to 5 per cent and will go down further if the same discriminatory practices will be continued.

Naveed Walter questioned if the Hindus temple construction stopping does not mean that the country's land ownership only belonged to extremists who could make decisions to permit for establishing any temple, church, worship place or not?

"There are many same examples of not only about worship places, graveyards, community institutions but it has been seen severally in individual's cases also as like the most recent issue of Nadeem Joseph, a Christian man with family who murdered by his neighbors in Peshawar for just moving in his new house in a Muslim area and wasthreatened to leave. On his bold stand on 4th June 2020, the perpetrators opened indiscriminate fire on Joseph and his mother-in-law. They both died," said Walter.

Naveed Walter said the incidents with groups and individuals happen differently but the resemblance in mindsets looks same on their levels.

( With inputs from ANI )