Police in Pakistan’s Sargodha finalize ‘hyper security’ arrangements for churches following mob attack 

ISLAMABAD: Police in Pakistan’s eastern Sargodha district said recently it has finalized “hyper security” arrangements at churches following last week’s mob attack against the Christian community that left one person critically injured. 

Violence erupted in Sargodha city on Saturday when a furious mob targeted members of the Christian community after some people accused their Christian neighbor of desecrating the Holy Qur’an. The house and a small shoemaking factory owned and operated by the man were burned down in the ensuing rampage, which was followed by police action that led to clashes with angry protesters.

The incident came within a year after another attack on the Christian community in August 2023, when a mob in Jaranwala city burned churches and targeted several houses in a similar incident involving blasphemy allegations.

“Sargodha police have completed arrangements for the hyper security of churches across the district,” Sargodha Police wrote on social media platform X. It added that over 1,000 police officers and youths were performing duties at important churches in the district. 

Saturday’s attack was condemned by rights activists and Pakistan’s leading human rights body, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). Pakistani Christian rights activists protested against the attack on Saturday in Karachi, raising alarm over the safety of minorities in the South Asian country. 

“As a 27-year-old Pakistani Christian who has never been abroad since the day I was born to the moment I’m standing here, I and every Christian who calls themselves Pakistani live under fear, under pressure and under the constant threat of being, God forbid, accused of committing blasphemy,” Luke Victor, a rights activist and one of the organizers of the Karachi demonstration, said. 

Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in deeply conservative, Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unproven allegations of insulting Islam have provoked deadly vigilantism.

Christians, who make up around two percent of Pakistan’s population, occupy one of the lowest rungs in society and are frequently targeted with spurious blasphemy allegations.
Politicians have also been assassinated, lawyers murdered and students lynched over such accusations.