Lahore:Observing National Minorities Day, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said Monday that both state and society must be true to Jinnah’s vision of a country in which religion or belief was a personal matter and no basis for differences of citizenship.
In a statement, the Commission said: “Seventy-three years after this historic speech, Pakistan’s religious minorities continue to be relegated to the status of second-class citizens, vulnerable to inherent discriminatory practices, forced conversions, and faith-based violence.”
On National Minorities Day, HRCP called on the state to implement the 2014 Supreme Court judgment, which protects the right to manifest one’s religion or belief in private or public free of coercion. A bold and pivotal step would be to modify the Constitution to reflect Jinnah’s 11 August speech, which—as an address to the first Constituent Assembly – should be treated as policy direction rather than political rhetoric.
HRCP demanded that the government should set up an autonomous statutory national commission for minorities’ rights to replace the ineffectual National Commission for Minorities reconstituted earlier this year. The Single National Curriculum, which violates the constitutional guarantee that no member of a religious minority will be required to ‘receive religious instruction’ not relevant to their own religion, must be revised to reflect that a uniform standard of education is not the same as a uniform curriculum.
HRCP also demands that the controversial and divisive Tahafuz-e-Bunyad-e-Islam bill in Punjab be retracted, and the federal and provincial governments refrain from law-making that infringes any community’s right to freedom of religion or belief.