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Persecution: Plight of Christian students in Pakistan

Pakistan’s minority Christians students are facing serious challenges in their academic studies, reports Jeremy Reynalds, correspondent for ASSIST News Service.

According to an article by Aftab Alexander Mughal of the Minorities Concern of Pakistan (MCOP), students are encountering problems because of their minority status and faith.

MCOP said the curriculum is biased towards religious minorities which they have to study, and students have been routinely facing discrimination by their teachers and Muslim classmates.

A recent incident showed their plight in the government run schools.

MCOP said on May 28, about a dozen heavily armed men attacked a Christian religious leader Pastor Mubarak Masih and his family. The incident occurred when the pastor’s nephew Shaid, 13, declined to recite the Quran in a government school in the city of Smundri in Punjab province.

Although the pastor reported to the police, MCOP said authorities did not take action against the Muslim teacher who forced the Christian student to read the Quran.

MCOP said the Pakistan Minorities Teachers’ Association (PMTA) wrote a letter on June 8 to the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The group requested the Chief Justice take action against the Federal Ministry of Education for violating the rights of the students of minority communities, including Christians, Hindus and Sikhs. The action was requested because of what the group called the ministry’s “biased attitude” against vulnerable students.

MCOP said students from religious minority communities are forced to study what it called the “the biased curriculum” representing a particular religious ideology. The national curriculum strongly emphasizes the nation’s dominant religion.

MCOP said in addition to the textbooks, students have been facing difficulties from teachers acting in a discriminatory fashion. The group commented that some Christians and other minority students may be publicly ridiculed, or even beaten, by teachers because of their faith.

MCOP said that according to Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based political and security analyst, governments are reticent to implement reforms, particularly in school curricula. “In textbooks used in government schools, Pakistan are equated with Muslims...They teach Pakistan is a country only for Muslims. They don't teach that non-Muslims also live here,” MCOP said he told the Reuters News Service.

According to MCOP, last year an 11-year-old Christian girl, Nadia Iftikhar, was severely beaten by her teacher in Dharema, Punjab. Her teacher was furious when Nadia said that she is both a Pakistani and a Christian. The reacher reportedly said that according to school textbooks all Pakistanis were Muslims.

MCOP reported that Minority Rights Group International, a London based minority rights organization, said in its latest report, “State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2010,” “Education systems can also be used by the state to assimilate religious minority children.”

MCOP said the report continued, “Curricula may be imbued with the doctrine of dominant religions and cultures, and may even denigrate religious minorities through the perpetuation of stereotypes and negative narratives. State curricula can be used as a vehicle for persecution of religious minorities.”

MCOP reported Rebecca Winthrop, with the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, said “Historically, education in Pakistan has been used as a tool by successive regimes in pursuing narrow political ends. The curriculum and teaching methods in public schools helped create intolerant views.”

According to MCOP, education statistics in Pakistan are “sobering.” Just 54 per cent of the population is able to read, and 6.8 million children between the ages of five and nine are not in school. Less than a quarter of the girls complete elementary school, and only one-third of Pakistani children get a secondary education, with many dropping out.

With Christians, the figures are even worse, MCOP said. Only 19 per cent of Christians are able to read, according to one report. Although the constitution of Pakistan grantees equal rights to the non-Muslims, that is not happening in reality.

MCOP said many laws and practices clearly not only deny their basic rights, like education and health, but discriminate against and persecute them in their own land.

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TAGS: Pakistan Christian students persecution academic studies plight

[07/12/2010]

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