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28 Ahmadis exhumed from Muslim cemeteries since 1988

By Ali Waqar

LAHORE: The bodies of 28 Ahmadis have been exhumed from graveyards meant for Muslims and reburied at other sites in Pakistan since 1988, some without the knowledge of the Ahmadi community or the families of the dead, sources told Daily Times.

Out of the 28, eight bodies were those of women, sources said, adding that the Ahmadi community had been prevented from burying 36 bodies (24 men and 12 women) in Muslim graveyards over the past several years.

Sources said Muslims and Ahmadis had been buried in the same graveyard until 1984, but clerics had stopped Ahmadis from burying their dead in Muslim graveyards during Gen Ziaul Haq’s rule in the late 1980s.

A similar incident took place in Chanda Singh village, Kasur, in March when Kasur district administration and local authorities had exhumed the body of Nadia Hanif, an Ahmadi, from a Muslim graveyard 10 days after she had been buried there. Under pressure from clerics, her body was then reburied at an Ahmadi cemetery on March 18, 2006.

Kasur District Police Officer Mobeen Ahmed supervised the reburial, which took place at midnight. Muhammad Hanif, Nadia’s father, had become an Ahmadi about five years ago. A cleric from a local mosque got a decree from a senior cleric in Kasur, claiming that Ahmadis could not be buried in Muslim graveyards and that it was acceptable to exhume Nadia’s body and rebury it in an Ahmadi cemetery.

Sources said the number of exhumation and reburial cases over the past 18 years was alarming.

In another incident in Hafizabad district in July 2003, Mukarram Feroze Din, an Ahmadi, died and was buried in a local Muslim graveyard. Some months later, local Muslims protested the move and demanded his body be exhumed and reburied at an Ahmadi cemetery.

Although the local Ahmadi community had told local Muslims that they would not bury any Ahmadi in the Muslim graveyard in the future, Muslims stuck to their demand of exhuming Mukarram’s body, which they did in July 2004, without the knowledge of the Ahmadi community or Mukarram’s family.

The Ahmadi community approached the police with a written application, but the police refused to do so and to date, Mukarram’s family still does not know where he is buried. In an incident in Sargodha district in 1994, the local Muslim community destroyed an Ahmadi graveyard in Kot Momin.

The Ahmadi community has urged the Pakistani government to afford them equal status and rights accorded to all Pakistani citizens and to take steps to eradicate religious discrimination against their community.

Community representatives have also called for religious tolerance and harmony and have urged President Pervez Musharraf to tell district governments and leaders to promote tolerance.

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