India’s UN Representative raises voice at UNHRC over persecution of Hindus and Christians in Pakistan

Christians (2.4 billion) and Hindus (1.2 billion) are considered minorities in Pakistan, constituting only over 3 per cent of the country’s total population, and they endure severe persecution.

Hindus and Christians in Pakistan are subjected to ongoing violence, harassment, forced conversions, kidnappings, and even murders, according to a post published on X by Kashmiri activist Javed Beigh.

Places of worship, such as Christian churches and Hindu temples, are regularly damaged or defaced, and young girls from these faiths are frequently abducted and forced into marriage.

The post claims that Dalit Christians in Punjab and Dalit and Adivasi Hindus in Sindh are frequently forced into menial occupations like manual scavenging due to long-standing caste prejudice.

The international Christian community is mainly silent about these grave human rights abuses. According to the post, none of the 157 nations with a majority of Christians in the world, including Brazil, the United States, and Russia, have publicly questioned Pakistan’s treatment of its Christian minority.

According to Javed Beigh’s tweet, there hasn’t been much uproar in support of persecuted Christians in Pakistan, even in India, where there are sizable Christian populations in states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and the Northeast.

India’s ambassador to the UN, Javed Beigh, recently spoke before the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Switzerland, to draw attention to the plight of Pakistan’s Christian and Hindu minorities.

“It is symbolically important to raise the issue of the plight of Hindu and Christian religious minorities in a Muslim-majority nation like Pakistan by an Indian Muslim because most Muslims of the world hypocritically remain silent about the misery, humiliation and torment that non-Muslim minorities like Hindus and Christians face in Muslim majority countries or for that matter the oppression that Shia Muslim sectarian minority faces in most of the Muslim majority countries” as quoted in the post.

“It is ironic that even as the global Muslim community is very vocal about Palestine, it doesn’t want to speak about Muslims facing oppression from fellow Muslims like Shias and Baloch or the plight of non-Muslim minorities living in Muslim-majority countries”, stated the post.