as a bloodbath in Karachi shattered hopes that the government ended Islamic violence, BosNewsLife learned Thursday, September 26.
Shouting "stop terrorism" hundreds of Christians marched in Karachi Wednesday, September 25, hours after two gunmen invaded the port city’s Christian charity where they tied up workers and shot seven of them to death, each with a bullet to the head.
An eighth person was reportedly critically wounded in the attack on the third-floor office of the Institute for Peace and Justice, several news reports said.
The organization had operated in Karachi for 30 years, working with poor municipal and textile laborers to improve working conditions and organize programs with human rights groups.
NEW CRACKDOWN
On Thursday, September 26, there were reports that the Pakistani authorities organized a new crack-down against militants, but there were fears that this will do little to stop the attacks.
"People in our community now feel more insecure . . . our people are being killed," said Bishop Victor Mall, head of the Diocese Church of Pakistan in Multan, an area that has spawned a number of militant Muslim groups.
Open Doors, an international organization helping persecuted Christians, said in a statement from its United States office that "thousands of Christians in Pakistan live in daily fear" of their lives.
CHRISTIANS TARGETED
The CEO of Open Doors USA, Terry Madison, described the attack in Karachi as a "further indication that extremists are intentionally targeting the Christian community."
He stressed that "now more than ever, it is critical that we as Christians in America increase our support and prayers for our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ in Pakistan."
The attack in Karachi was apparently expected. Open Doors said it had reports that police in the troubled town recently "found maps of two Christian churches and a Christian school along with weapons while arresting two suspected extremists."
SERIES OF ASSAULTS
A series of violent assaults on Christian agencies have killed at least 30 people and injured over 100 in Pakistan over the last few months, Open Doors and other sources said.
In March a grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad killed five worshippers. Also four Pakistani nurses were killed in August in an attack on a Christian hospital in Taxila and six people died when gunmen burst into a school for children of foreign missionaries in Muree.
Pakistan’s 3.8 million Christians make up about 2.5 percent of the country’s overwhelmingly Muslim population, according to official estimates.
"ENEMIES OF PAKISTAN"
Information Minister Nisar Memon has called the militants "enemies of Pakistan" and said the violence would not shake the nation’s resolve. "Pakistan’s cooperation with the world community in the war against terrorism will continue," he told reporters.
Analysts has linked the upsurge of violence against Christians to Pakistan’s support of the United States in neighboring Afghanistan as part of what Washington describes as the war against terrorism.
