India has expressed concern over increasing attacks on the Sikh community in Pakistan. The Ministry of External Affairs summoned a senior official of the Pakistani High Commission and expressed a formal protest. People of the Sikh community are being targeted in Pakistan for some time now. There have been four such incidents between April and June this year, in which three Sikh people died and one person was injured. Last week, a Sikh shopkeeper was killed in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. A day earlier, another Sikh shopkeeper in the same market was shot at. The terrorist organization Islamic State issued a statement accepting responsibility for both these attacks, and wrote that both people believed in polytheistic Sikhism.
Last year also two Sikh businessmen were killed in Peshawar. Since 2014, there have been more than a dozen attacks on the Sikh community in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone. These incidents show that the incidents of attack on the people of Sikh community in Pakistan are not being stopped. Even in the past years, after such attacks, countries like Canada and Sikh organizations including India have been demanding the Government of Pakistan to ensure the safety of minorities. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had also said in May last year that the culprits of such attacks should be identified and action taken against them. But, the problem of the Government of Pakistan is that it is an Islamic country and there, from the constitution to the government, it considers the protection of Islam as its main responsibility.
In such a situation, when attackers target minorities like Hindus, Sikhs, Christians or their places of worship in the name of Islam, it becomes not just a criminal incident, but a religious issue. In such a situation, the Government of Pakistan is accused of not being serious about preventing incidents of attacks on minorities. But, the issue of security of minorities in Pakistan is not just an issue of keeping a small population there safe. With every attack against minorities, Pakistan’s already weak international credibility in this regard gets further dented. In any responsible country, guaranteeing security and justice to the weaker sections of the society should be included in the priorities of the policy makers there.
