On December 12, the Assistant Commissioner of Attock, Jannat Hussain Nekokara, was forced to apologize for comments in support of equal rights for minorities. As per news reports, “While speaking at an International Human Rights Day event in Attock, Nekokara had called for granting equal rights to all minorities regardless of religious divisions. “We should give due rights to non-Muslims Pakistanis, we should give them their due regard, we have unfortunately gotten stuck in these religious divisions, someone identifies as Shia, someone as Sunni, someone as an Ahmadi, someone as a Wahabi, we should dissolve these differences and instead identify ourselves only as Muslims and Pakistanis,” she said.”
However, “soon afterward, over a dozen protesters, most of them students, arrived at the district administration building demanding an explanation from the Attock AC over grouping Ahmadis with other Muslims in her speech. In her defence, AC Nekokara said that she did not in any way imply that Ahmadis were Muslims and said she accepted the constitution which declared them non-Muslims. “I talked about minority rights, I spoke about rights of non-Muslim Pakistanis, may be I should have not even mentioned the word Ahmadi in that, then I spoke about how we should stay united and not discriminate against anyone so that we can protect against external enemies,” she said. “They (Ahmadis) are non-Muslim according to the constitution and non-Muslim in my view as well,” she added.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) immediately tweeted and expressed its concern but it is reprehensible that the state of Pakistan did not stand up for its own official.
