Tahir Naveed Chaudhary, a Regional Director of advocacy group All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) in the Sargodha area, told BosNewsLife that the EC accepted his organization’s proposed minority candidates, including Christians, for the January 8 elections.
He said APMA will cooperate with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by former Prime Minister Benazit Bhutto, a move advocacy groups hope will help Christians in their struggle for more political and religious rights. “The PPP has agreed that APMA’s candidate will occupy a parliamentary seat reserved for minorities,” Chaudhary explained.
He said APMA wants to ensure that the Christian minority has also seats in local assemblies in key provinces, including the troubled North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where Christians have received death threats from Muslim militants linked to groups such as the Taliban.
CHRISTIAN CANDIDATES
He said APMA-backed candidates Jaffer George and Prince Javed would fight for the reserved minority seats for Christians in NWFP and Balochistan provinces bordering Afghanistan.
APMA candidates, including women, will also fight for minority seats in Punjab province, which has seen an increase in militant attacks against churches and rice farmers, BosNewsLife established. Other religious minorities such as the Sikhs, will also be represented by APMA officials, Chaudhary told BosNewsLife.
He said he hopes the ballot will help to establish "equal rights for all the minorities of Pakistan" and help end the controversial blasphemy laws under which several Christians can face long prison sentences, and even execution, on charges of "insulting Islam."
LAW MISUSED
Rights watchers say the blasphemy law has been misused to settle personal vendettas and arguments over property or money, particularly against minority communities. "In addition, APMA would do its best to solve other problems of the Pakistani minorities, such as, unemployment, housing, education and health care," stressed Chaudhary.
He said APMA wants the immediate end of emergency rule imposed by President Pervez Musharraf, which led the detention of thousands of Christian and other activists across the country.
The APMA official cautioned that a fair election campaign was made difficult by authorities as "political parties are not even allowed to take out rallies and conduct public meetings."
Christians comprise less than three percent of Pakistan’s 165 million, predominantly Muslim, population, according to United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates.
