'Fear And Anxiety': Pakistan's Minority Sikhs Flee Restive Province In Face Of Rising Violence

[Premi]

https://www.rferl.org/a/pakistan-minority-sikhs-flee-khyber-pakhtunkhwa/32614334.html

September 28, 2023 13:23 GMT

• By Abubakar Siddique
• Maliha Amirzada

'Fear And Anxiety': Pakistan's Minority Sikhs Flee Restive Province In Face Of Rising Violence

Radesh Singh Tony survived three assassination attempts in 2018, forcing him and his family to flee their home in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar.

Tony, a member of the tiny Sikh religious minority in predominately Muslim Pakistan, had run in the parliamentary elections that year on a platform of tolerance.

The threats to the family persisted even when they moved to the eastern city of Lahore, where Tony and his teenage son were brutally beaten by a group of hard-line Islamists in 2019.

The incident compelled Tony and his family to escape to neighboring India, where the vast majority of the world's estimated 25 million Sikhs reside.

Pakistan's Sikhs have "repeatedly demanded protection in the face of rising security threats," said Tony. "But our complaints and demands have been ignored."

Tony and his family are among the thousands of Sikhs who are believed to have fled Pakistan's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, of which Peshawar is the capital, in the face of deadly militant attacks and growing religious intolerance in recent years.

Many Sikhs have relocated to other areas of Pakistan, a South Asian nation of some 240 million. Others have fled abroad.

Tony estimates that around 70 percent of the around 30,000 Sikhs who lived in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have left the province in the past decade. Some 30 Sikh politicians, activists, and businessmen have been killed in attacks since 2013, according to Tony.

Three members of Pakistan's Sikh minority have been killed so far this year. In June, Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) claimed responsibility for killing a Sikh man who was on his way home in Peshawar. In May, gunmen shot and killed a Sikh man in Lahore. A month earlier, IS-K militants said they shot and killed a Sikh man in Peshawar.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a mountainous province bordering Afghanistan, has been the scene of attacks by the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and IS-K extremist groups for years. The militants have carried out deadly attacks against religious minorities, including Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, and Shi'ite Muslims.

The TTP has intensified its insurgency against Islamabad since the Afghan Taliban, an ideological and organizational ally, seized power in Kabul in 2021. The TTP's growing attacks in Pakistan have fueled insecurity and bolstered other Islamist militant groups.

"The conditions in Peshawar are worsening by the day," Sahib Singh, a Sikh elder, told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal. "That has forced members of our community to move."

Singh said many of the Sikhs who have left Khyber Pakhtunkhwa moved to the eastern province of Punjab, of which Lahore is the capital. Punjab, where most of Pakistan's estimated 60,000 Sikhs reside, is home to several sacred religious sites. Singh said Pakistani Sikhs have also fled to India and to the West.

"Fear and anxiety have turned members of our community into nomads," Gorpal Singh, a Sikh activist based in Peshawar, told Radio Mashaal. "We are just moving from place to place."

"We do not want money or jobs from the government," he added. "We just want an immediate end to the targeted killings of our community members and want the government to compensate us for the demolition of our houses."Pakistani leaders have promised to protect members of religious minorities from militants and Muslim mobs, which have carried out lynchings and destroyed places of worship. But minority communities say the authorities have not done enough.

"There is no security for religious minorities in Pakistan," said Tony.

Niala Mohammad, a former South Asia analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said the rise of Muslim extremism in Pakistan has fueled discrimination against religious minorities.

"Violent attacks, including targeted killings, abductions, extortion, forced conversions to Islam, and forced marriages pose major threats to the Sikh community in Pakistan," she said.

"The growing intolerance for religious diversity has forced many Sikhs to migrate to other countries in search of safety and freedom to practice their faith without fear," added Mohammad, who is a director at the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Washington.