It is a fact out in the open that non-Muslims in the Islamic state of Pakistan are severely discriminated, ostracized and marginalized to the fringes of the society. They are often the target of violence and abject poverty is synonymous when we hear of Pakistani Hindus or Christians. Even when a global pandemic is ongoing, several gut-wrenching reports have poured in where the minorities were denied ration and other essential items just because they were ‘Kaafirs’. Now reports have come in, where it has been brought to light that in Pakistan, only Christians are subjected to apply for the post of sewer sweepers.
A leading US daily on Tuesday exposed Pakistan for perpetrating atrocities on its minority Christians, documenting the life of Christian sewer cleaners. It reported that the Pakistani military, last July, had placed newspaper advertisements for sewer sweepers with the caveat that only Christians should apply.
Most of the Christians in Pakistan are the descendants of the lower caste Hindus which converted to Christianity centuries ago, by either under the pressure of the Missionaries or to escape the brutal cycle of discrimination, only to find themselves in a pickle as the terrorist state of modern-Pakistan is no better in terms of caste-equality and the minorities are looked down.
Manual Scavenging is a deadly profession and the recent spate of deaths among Christian sewer cleaners in Pakistan underscores how the caste discrimination goes beyond a particular religion. While India has been trying hard to do away with the evil of caste-discrimination and has somewhat succeeded, but in Pakistan, this discrimination is encouraged.
Non-Muslims are constitutionally barred from becoming president or prime minister of the country. While some Christians rise to become government officials or run businesses, the poorest work the country’s worst jobs, as sewer sweepers, toilet cleaners and street sweepers.
Christians make up only 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s population of some 200 million and are often treated as second-class citizens in Pakistan, where Islam is the official religion. Rights groups believe they fill about 80 percent of the sweeper jobs.
When Karachi’s municipality tried to recruit Muslims to unclog gutters, they refused to get down into the sewers, instead sweeping the streets. The job was left to Christians known derogatorily as “choora,” or dirty.
In the sprawling port city of Karachi, sweepers keep the sewer system flowing, using their bare hands to unclog crumbling drainpipes of feces, plastic bags, and hazardous hospital refuse, part of the 1,750 million liters of waste the city’s 20 million residents produce daily.
The stinking sludge and toxic plumes of gas that lurk deep underground often become the undoing of such Christian sewer sweepers who put their lives on the line every single time they take a plunge without any protective/safety equipments. Almost all of them develop skin and respiratory problems because of constant contact with human waste and toxic fumes.
The discrimination and the inferior treatment is not the end of the misery for the minorities in the country—the dastardly colonial blasphemy laws of Pakistan that have only been made more rigid by the successive governments are now being used to terrorize minorities in Pakistan. The revanchist state has systematically eliminated the country’s minorities and succeeding governments have brazened it out.
Stories of hordes of Hindu families and their little kids being burnt alive and young women being raped is the routine news that comes out of Pakistan.
https://twitter.com/akshaynarang96/status/1246980809870864384?s=20
Recently, Shahbaz Bhatti, a Roman Catholic and Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities Affairs was killed in Islamabad for defying threats over his efforts to reform blasphemy laws. Last year, Pakistan awarded death penalty to at least 584 people, out of which 17 were convicted for “blasphemy”, and 15 were executed.
Ever since Imran Khan assumed the reigns of Pakistan, the nation is increasingly adopting a hardline stance and it is unlikely that the spineless Khan and his government would take any actions to prevent the discrimination minorities’ face. By pushing Christians to the manhole of manual scavenging, Pakistan has made it clear that Islamic countries are no place for minorities.
The state of human rights across the country is indeed dire and the minorities can never rise above the atrocities inflicted upon them by the Wahaabi fundamentalists. And therefore when an organization like USCIRF clubs India with Pakistan regarding “country of particular concern”, it is truly laughable, to say the least.
