Did the attack occur just because he and his neighbors are Christians?
Kala Jee Allah Ditta is crouching on the remains of his home in the Pakistani community of Badami Bagh, near Lahore’s landmark railway station.
All that remains of the boundary wall is a jagged edge at each end. Broken masonry is strewn around him, along with broken doors andcrumpled sheets of metal. The small, three-room home he shared with six other relatives is deeply charred.
The flames melted the blades of the ceiling fan, leaving the mounting device dangling awkwardly on its own. Below, broken bits of cups and plates are strewn across the floor. In a corner, a faint curl of smoke still rises from a pile of broken wood.
The scene is depressingly reminiscent of an earlier tragedy. In 2009, a group of masked gunmen went door-to-door setting fire to homes and churches in a similar clustered and overcrowded colony of small, red-brick Christian homes in the town of Gojra, which like Badami Bagh is in the Pakistani province of Punjab.
They poured chemicals over 45 homes and three churches before setting them ablaze. The smell lingered for days – the same smell that remains pungent in Badami Bagh.
Then, as now, the attack was sparked by rumors of blasphemy – the bane of Pakistani politics and jurisprudence in recent years. Both times, the police failed to protect the Christians, or even stood aside. The sole mercy for the Christian residents of Badami Bagh is that they were able to get away the night before.
In Gojra, nine people were killed. The Badami Bagh incident, however, has its own set of local complications – including, it seems, the politics of a local steel traders’ election. Beset on several fronts, the Christians also fear that there may be forces trying to force them out in order to grab their property.
On Friday night, Kala Jee and the other residents area were told to flee.
“The police came and told us to go away,” he says. “A big, angry crowd had gathered on the main road. They had sticks and chains with them. We left and spent the next two nights with families that lived elsewhere.”
Once the community had been emptied of its residents, the crowd returned the next day, Saturday, looting, destroying and torching some 150 homes and at least two churches. On Sunday, the residents returned to survey the ruin.
According to the Christians, the conflagration was sparked, some days earlier, with a quarrel between two old friends. Sahwan Masih was a 26-year-old Christian who was popular in his area for his billiard table. During the day, he worked nearby, as sanitation worker for the municipal authority.
“When he would finish work at 3 or 4 in the afternoon,” says his younger brother, Sabir, “he and his friend Imran would sit together and drink together.”
Imran, a Muslim known in the area as both Mohammed Imran and Shahid Imran, had a barbershop on the main road, just opposite Masih’s home.
Last Wednesday, according to Sabir and others, as the two friends sipped some hooch brewed locally, the conversation apparently turned towards each other’s religions. It isn’t clear what was said. Accounts within the community differ.
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Kala Jee Allah Ditta is crouching on the remains of his home in the Pakistani community of Badami Bagh, near Lahore’s landmark railway station.
All that remains of the boundary wall is a jagged edge at each end. Broken masonry is strewn around him, along with broken doors andcrumpled sheets of metal. The small, three-room home he shared with six other relatives is deeply charred.
The flames melted the blades of the ceiling fan, leaving the mounting device dangling awkwardly on its own. Below, broken bits of cups and plates are strewn across the floor. In a corner, a faint curl of smoke still rises from a pile of broken wood.
The scene is depressingly reminiscent of an earlier tragedy. In 2009, a group of masked gunmen went door-to-door setting fire to homes and churches in a similar clustered and overcrowded colony of small, red-brick Christian homes in the town of Gojra, which like Badami Bagh is in the Pakistani province of Punjab.
They poured chemicals over 45 homes and three churches before setting them ablaze. The smell lingered for days – the same smell that remains pungent in Badami Bagh.
Then, as now, the attack was sparked by rumors of blasphemy – the bane of Pakistani politics and jurisprudence in recent years. Both times, the police failed to protect the Christians, or even stood aside. The sole mercy for the Christian residents of Badami Bagh is that they were able to get away the night before.
In Gojra, nine people were killed. The Badami Bagh incident, however, has its own set of local complications – including, it seems, the politics of a local steel traders’ election. Beset on several fronts, the Christians also fear that there may be forces trying to force them out in order to grab their property.
On Friday night, Kala Jee and the other residents area were told to flee.
“The police came and told us to go away,” he says. “A big, angry crowd had gathered on the main road. They had sticks and chains with them. We left and spent the next two nights with families that lived elsewhere.”
Once the community had been emptied of its residents, the crowd returned the next day, Saturday, looting, destroying and torching some 150 homes and at least two churches. On Sunday, the residents returned to survey the ruin.
According to the Christians, the conflagration was sparked, some days earlier, with a quarrel between two old friends. Sahwan Masih was a 26-year-old Christian who was popular in his area for his billiard table. During the day, he worked nearby, as sanitation worker for the municipal authority.
“When he would finish work at 3 or 4 in the afternoon,” says his younger brother, Sabir, “he and his friend Imran would sit together and drink together.”
Imran, a Muslim known in the area as both Mohammed Imran and Shahid Imran, had a barbershop on the main road, just opposite Masih’s home.
Last Wednesday, according to Sabir and others, as the two friends sipped some hooch brewed locally, the conversation apparently turned towards each other’s religions. It isn’t clear what was said. Accounts within the community differ.
Read more
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