worship service of a church outside Lahore on May 29, cursing
the congregation, smashing a glass altar and desecrating Bibles and a
cross, Christian leaders said.
Police initially tried to
protect the leader of the Muslim intruders, the nephew of a former
Member of the Punjab Assembly, and instead of making arrests
eventually pressured Christians to accept an apology from the accused,
they said.
Pastor Ashraf Masih of Numseoul Presbyterian
Church in Lakhoki Kahna village told Compass that Muhammad Shoaib,
nephew of former MPA Mansha Sindhu, entered the church building
accompanied by four men armed with rifles and pistols and started
cursing the congregation for “disturbing the peace of the area by
worshipping on loudspeakers,” though the congregation was using
loudspeakers only inside the church building.
Pastor Masih said the Muslims manhandled members of the congregation when they tried to stop the intruders.
“They
were just out of control,” Masih said. “Shoaib and his men broke the
glass altar of the church, threw copies of the Bible towards the wall
and desecrated the cross.”
He added that this was not the
first time Shoaib has harassed village Christians. Four months ago,
Shoaib manhandled 70-year-old church elder Bohru Masih, telling Bohru to
stop church services because he did not want to hear the Christians
singing hymns, Pastor Masih said.
“The loudspeakers on
mosques are used all day long for prayers and sermons,” Pastor Masih
said. “I fail to understand why this man has turned against us the last
few months.”
He said that after the Muslims left the
church, he called police, who soon arrived. The Christians showed
officers the damages and expressed their anger at the desecration of the
Bible and cross. They led police to Shoaib’s house and returned to the
church site, where journalists and representatives of various Christian
support organizations had arrived.
“I was later told by a
local Christian that the area’s police in-charge, Inspector Arshad
Khan, was appointed there by Sindhu and he would try his best to save
the former MPA’s nephew,” Pastor Masih said.
His fears
that authorities would protect the gang leader bore out when police
later informed Christians that they had not found Shoaib at his home.
“This
was a complete lie, because Shoaib was at his home all this time, and
someone told us that he had prepared lunch for Inspector Khan and the
other policemen,” Pastor Masih said.
He and the other
Christians decided to go to the police station to register their
complaint with area Superintendent of Police Malik Awais.
“On
reaching the police station, we found the officials present there
reluctant to register a First Information Report against Sindhu’s
nephew,” he said. “They also tried to pressure us by saying that we were
making false allegations against the Muslims.”
He told
police that their colleagues had witnessed the damage done to the church
building, that journalists had also photographed the site, and that
unless officers registered the case they would block the main road in
protest.
“At this the police panicked and started
requesting us to reconcile with Shoaib and his men,” Pastor Masih said.
“In the meantime, Awais also arrived at the police station, followed
closely by Mansha Sindhu. Both men started asking us to let go of the
case.”
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif was present
in the area that day to inaugurate a housing scheme, which added
pressure on police to keep the Christians from blocking the road in
protest, Christian leaders said.
Pastor Masih said that
after an hour-long negotiation with Christian representatives, Sindhu
agreed to make Shoaib publicly apologize, but that the police’s hostile
attitude toward the Christians was evident in open support of Sindhu and
his men.
“Shoaib said that he was drunk at that time and had lost his temper,” the pastor said.
A
local newspaper quoted Awais, the police official, as saying that
Shoaib was not drunk, had not carried a weapon and had not desecrated
Bibles. The police superintendent declined to answer calls from Compass
about why the former legislator’s nephew had apologized if he was
innocent and why police hadn’t registered vandalism charges.
Sohail
Johnson of Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan was among those who reached
the village after hearing about the incident. He accused Tariq Javed, a
local Christian politician, of pressuring area Christians into bowing to
Sindhu’s demands.
“Some of us, including Pastor Ashraf,
refused to give in to the pressure, but he [Javed] prevailed over the
villagers, and ultimately they decided to pardon the Muslims,” he said,
adding that fear of reprisal was the biggest element behind the
reconciliation.
Napolean Qayyum, central leader of the
Pakistan People’s Party Minorities Wing, said Christians’ political
weakness was one of the main reasons for their inability to protest
desecration of their church building.
“The Christians
there were faced with a very influential Muslim politician,” Qayyum
said. “Had there been a strong Christian leadership in Pakistan, such
incidents would not have happened this frequently.”
He
added that none of the Christian representatives at the police station
had the courage to press the case further when the former legislator and
his band of gunmen arrived.
A South Korean ministry team established the church in the village in 2004.
Cheri Fuller and Cindy Lamb Curry 
Marilyn Hickey 
Charisma Staff