Pakistan is engulfed in a deepening crisis of religious intolerance and systemic persecution. This year has witnessed a disturbing surge of violence, discrimination and institutional complicity. Christian, Ahmadiyya and Hindu communities have particularly been targeted.
Despite repeated calls for reform and international condemnation, Pakistan's failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens has left a trail of shattered lives, desecrated places of worship, and a society increasingly fractured by hate.
Pakistan has for years been seriously repressing its minorities, political dissidents, human right advocates and journalists – even transnationally. Nevertheless, Pakistan continues to enjoy the benefits of the European Union's special incentive arrangement under its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP+).
The contradiction was highlighted once again at the United Nations.
As a part of the ongoing 60th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the international NGO CAP Freedom of Conscience collaborated with the news outlet EU Today through a side event on October 1. This event called upon the EU to review Pakistan's GSP+ status in light of its long-term state-sanctioned human rights violations.
A documentary on the subject, which included statements from multiple Members of European Parliament, was also screened at the event. The organizers were evidently hoping to generate awareness about Pakistan's ongoing human rights crisis. As a result of the UNHRC's session, several EU lawmakers and European Commission members were in attendance.
Earlier, on September 30, Baloch human rights defender Joshua George Bowes had raised urgent concerns about Pakistan's failure to uphold its international human rights obligations while continuing to benefit from the EU's GSP+ trade status.
Citing the International Federation of Journalists' South Asia Press Freedom Report 2024–25, Bowes highlighted that Pakistani journalists faced 34 serious press freedom violations. Those included seven targeted killings and eight non-fatal attacks, placing Pakistan at 158th on the World Press Freedom Index.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, between 1992 and 2025, at least 68 journalists were murdered in Pakistan. One recent example is the murder of Imtiaz Mir, a journalist who was shot to death in Karachi last month. Mir, an anchorperson for TV channel Metro 1 News, was heading home in a car driven by his older brother when six suspects riding two motorcycles fired on their vehicle.
On October 2, police in Islamabad stormed the National Press Club. attacking several journalists. Footage shared on social media and by press outlets showed police manhandling, pushing and shoving journalists inside the club.
Violent attacks are part of the wider siege that Pakistani journalists are under. Journalists across Pakistan are increasingly facing crackdowns, enforced disappearances, travel bans, frozen bank accounts, job dismissals, and exile for challenging the country's entrenched power structures. Journalist and television anchor Samina Pasha, for instance, said her bank account was frozen on the orders of Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA). She called it part of an escalating effort to silence independent journalists.
Journalists in Pakistan (and even the family members of exiled journalists) are subject to enforced disappearances. Journalist Asif Karim Khehtran and the brothers of U.S.-based exiled Pakistani journalist Ahmad Noorani were abducted in March 2025 and remain missing.
Journalists' YouTube channels are also being targeted on a massive scale. On July 8, at the request of the NCCIA, an Islamabad court ordered 27 YouTube channels to be blocked under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, accusing them of spreading "anti-Pakistan" content.
Bowes also drew attention to a 2025 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which documented that more than 700 individuals in 2025 were imprisoned on charges of "blasphemy." This figure represented a 300% increase from the previous year.
He further referenced human rights monitoring by the Baloch National Movement's human rights department, Paank, which documented 785 enforced disappearances and 121 extrajudicial killings in the first half of 2025 alone. Paank made a direct appeal to the European Council:
"The European Union is Pakistan's largest trading partner. Continued trade privileges under GSP+ must be linked to real human rights progress, not empty promises."
Similarly, the Pashtun National Jirga reported last month that more than 4,000 Pashtuns are missing.
The brutal murder of Laeeq Cheema on April 18 stands as a grim symbol of this crisis. Cheema was a 47-year-old member of Pakistan's Ahmadiyya community who was beaten to death by a Sunni Muslim mob outside an Ahmadi place of worship in Karachi's Saddar neighborhood. The crowd, reportedly composed of supporters of the Islamist Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), stormed the narrow streets. They shouted anti-Ahmadi slogans and accused the community of violating Pakistan's vicious anti-Ahmadi laws. Despite police intervention, the mob swelled to more than 600 people. Cheema's death is simply yet another entry in the long ledger of violence against Pakistan's Ahmadi religious minority.
In another attack, Dr. Sheikh Mahmood, a prominent Ahmadi gastroenterologist and hepatologist, was shot dead in Sargodha, Punjab on May 16, Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported. According to initial reports, Mahmood, a highly respected doctor, arrived at Fatima Hospital at around 2.30pm to attend to his patients, as was his routine. While walking through the hospital corridor, an unidentified man who had been lying in wait shot him from behind, killing him. The murderer, openly brandishing a pistol, fled the scene.
The Ahmadiyya community (which numbers around 500,000 in Pakistan and nearly 10 million globally) has long been subjected to systemic discrimination. Though Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim and share nearly identical beliefs with mainstream Islam, a 1974 amendment to Pakistan's constitution nevertheless declares them non-Muslims. A 1984 ordinance criminalized many of their religious practices.
This legal framework only emboldened extremist groups and legitimized persecution. The Ahmadis live in fear, often hiding their identities, avoiding public worship, and facing desecration of their graves and places of worship. On May 10, at least 90 Ahmadi Muslim gravestones were desecrated in Punjab Province. The gravestones were smashed and defaced, with debris scattered across the cemetery grounds. According to the Department of External Affairs of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK, 269 Ahmadi Muslim graves have been vandalized during 11 separate attacks in 2025 alone, and in 2024, 319 gravestones were defiled in 21 incidents.
These acts are not isolated incidents but part of a broader campaign of religious "cleansing," driven by radical Islamist groups such as the TLP and facilitated by a legal system that criminalizes Ahmadi identity.
The persecution of Hindus in Pakistan has also intensified. On September 17, 2024, the Hindu Rama Pir Temple in Sindh province was attacked by armed terrorists who indiscriminately fired at worshippers, wounding four people. Such attacks on Hindu places of worship are alarmingly frequent. The climate of impunity only encourages deep-seated hostility toward religious minorities.
Forced conversions and underage marriages of Hindu and Christian girls have also surged. Each year in Pakistan, more than 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls, typically between 12 and 25 years, are kidnapped, forced to convert, and married off to Muslim men. Women and children from religious minorities are at high risk of kidnapping, forced conversion and forced marriage. Forced conversion to Islam is not illegal in Pakistan. The authorities rarely take any meaningful action to bring perpetrators to justice, and the police are often refuse to file complaints submitted by the victims or their families.
In addition, human trafficking of girls and women along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is a massive problem. A report by the Brookings Institution states:
"Offsetting this was the fact that many of the victims belonged to the Christian community of Pakistan — less surrounded by society's notions of honor, and less protected because they are marginalized.... That most of the victims belonged to the poor and marginalized Christian community of Pakistan sadly made it easier for Pakistan to divert attention away from the issue without an ensuing public outcry."
As noted in a 2020 report by the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development, ideologically targeted sexual abuse is directed specifically at religious minorities, both for sexual predation but also as a "conquest" to win the girl over to Islam.
The strong influence of Pakistan's Islamic religious landscape is particularly discriminatory towards women and girls of minority religions. Those minorities in Pakistan endure economic and social marginalization. They are often relegated to menial jobs, denied access to education and government services, and excluded from political representation. In rural areas, land-grabs targeting minority communities are common, with little legal recourse. Women from these communities face compounded discrimination. Literacy rates are significantly lower than both the national average and those of men within their own communities.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has repeatedly raised alarms over the deteriorating state of religious freedom in the country and called for the release of those jailed under Section 298-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, a provision that criminalizes Ahmadis for identifying as Muslim or preaching their faith. The HRCP's report, "Streets of Fear: Freedom of Religion or Belief in 2024/25," details mob-led violence and extrajudicial killings.
Pakistan's fierce blasphemy laws continue to target religious minorities. The HRCP report documents that increasingly, minority individuals accused of blasphemy are lynched by mobs or murdered while seeking police protection. In two separate cases, individuals were extrajudicially executed by law enforcement, highlighting the urgent need for reform within Pakistan's policing and judicial systems. The rise in hate speech, threats against judicial figures, and the politicization of bar associations only propel a dangerous tilt toward Islamic radicalism within state institutions.
The Jaranwala incident, in which Muslims destroyed at least 24 churches and forcibly displaced hundreds of Christians in August 2023, is just one illustration of violence resulting from the blasphemy laws. Using the blasphemy law to target Christians, Hindus, and Muslim minorities such as the Ahmadis, keeps increasing.
Christians are victims of roughly a quarter of all blasphemy accusations despite being less than 2% of the population. Muslim business rivals accuse Christian men of blasphemy as a means of destroying their business and reputation. Additionally, Christians, Hindus and people from other minority communities typically occupy lower-status jobs and have been referred to as "chura", a derogatory word meaning "filthy," reserved for road sweepers and sewage cleaners.
Christians in Pakistan suffer from the volatile security situation, the high level of violence and the lack of effective channels for seeking protection. The police appear more interested in appeasing local Islamic strongmen and keeping things calm than in implementing the law and protecting minorities.
Last October, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif acknowledged the gravity of the situation during a Diwali celebration in Lahore. She urged citizens to recognize the collective responsibility of protecting minorities and emphasized that respect for religious diversity is fundamental to Pakistan's integrity. Such statements are praiseworthy but rare. Without concrete policy action and accountability, they remain toothless and insufficient.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has officially been a Muslim state since its independence in 1947. The country's demographic composition underscores the painful condition of its minorities. With a population of approximately 251.9 million, Muslims constitute 97%. Hindus and Christians each make up just 1.6%. Ahmadis make up a mere 0.2%. These communities are too small to pose any threat to the majority, yet they face unrelenting persecution. Pakistan's blasphemy laws are among the harshest in the world. They prescribe a mandatory death sentence for insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad and prison terms for Ahmadis who "pose as Muslims." These laws often become weapons with which to settle personal scores and incite communal violence.
According to the human rights organization Open Doors, all Christians in Pakistan suffer from institutionalized discrimination. Occupations seen as low and dirty are reserved for Christians by the authorities, as can be seen in job advertisements. Many Christians are poor and are victims of bonded labor, through which they are either forced to convert to Islam or are given in child marriage by their employers. Christian girls in bonded labor situations are more vulnerable to being illegally detained by their employers.
Open Doors notes:
"Pakistan is home to dozens of radical Islamic groups. Increasingly, advisory bodies to the government are completely made up of Islamic scholars who influence the laws. Thousands of madrassas are being run without government scrutiny of how they are funded or what they are teaching. Anyone calling for reform of blasphemy laws is openly threatened by radicals who believe "infidels" deserve death. Banned radical groups often do not dissolve but rebrand, go online or merge with an existing group. Religious sentiments and resulting mob violence are easily stirred up and are targeted against religious minorities, especially Christians, as showcased in the August 2023 violence in Jaranwala. Pakistan suffers from ethnic fragmentation. Balochistan Province and the central Sindh regions are considered beyond the reach of the state authorities. Religious minorities are seen as impure, both for religious reasons and because they do not belong to the ruling ethnic groups."
The Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a Washington DC-based think tank, has also documented the devastating impact of blasphemy allegations and mob violence on Pakistan's religious minorities. Its report highlights the surge in attacks on Christians in Punjab during 2023 and 2024, and this year's continued targeting of Ahmadis. According to the organization, the Ahmadi community endured six faith-based murders in 2024 and three more in the first half of 2025. This pattern of violence is both persistent and escalating.
The international community has increasingly voiced concern over Pakistan's failure to protect its minorities. The United Nations and several countries have criticized the government's inaction and called for urgent reforms. Meaningful change, however, is nowhere in sight. The HRCP has urged the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry based on findings from the National Commission for Human Rights, particularly regarding entrapment in blasphemy cases. Such a commission could be a vital step toward justice, but only if it operates independently and is empowered to hold perpetrators accountable.
The Pakistani state's complicity in the sustained persecution of Hindus, Christians, Ahmadis, Shia Muslims, and Sikhs in Pakistan, as well as critical journalists, whether through silence, legal endorsement, or active participation, needs to be seriously confronted.
The machinery of religious persecution has become lethal, with discriminatory laws and unchecked hate crimes turning faith into a fatal liability. The urgency to act is no longer a matter of principle; it is, for religious minorities, a matter of survival. Reform in Pakistan needs to start by immediately repealing the laws that criminalize belief; by prosecuting those who incite and execute violence, and by giving full protection to equal rights for every citizen, regardless of religion. Minority communities are being hunted, erased and buried under the weight of institutionalized hate.
The European Union should stand for the principles and ideals on which its Generalized System of Preferences was based. At present, it is simply furthering intolerable behavior and embarrassing itself.
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
