Lahore, March 25 Police in several districts of Pakistan's Punjab province have prevented the Ahmadi minority community from performing their religious rituals during Eid, the Jamaat Ahmadiyya Pakistan (JAP) said on Wednesday.
In a statement issued here, the JAP cited purported government orders and said that Punjab police forcibly evacuated Ahmadi places of worship in different districts on Saturday and locked them, thereby directly violating both the Constitution of Pakistan and the Supreme Court jurisprudence.
"The police have prevented Ahmadis from carrying out religious practices on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr in the districts of Gujranwala, Sialkot, Faisalabad, and Sargodha in Punjab," JAP spokesman Amir Mahmood said.
He said that preventing Ahmadis from carrying out their religious practices within the confines of their homes was a grave violation of the Supreme Court's order.
He said that these actions constituted a grave violation of Ahmadis' fundamental human rights, a breach of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which guarantees freedom of religion or belief.
"It is also a direct violation of Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan, which guarantees every citizen the right to profess, practice, and propagate their religion. Notably, these actions violate the 2022 judgment by a two-member bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which stated that Ahmadis have the freedom to practice their faith within the privacy of their own homes."
The spokesperson expressed deep regret that, despite high-ranking state officials frequently claiming that extremism will not be tolerated at any cost, the ground-level administration continues to act as an enabler of such extremism.
"By preventing a peaceful community from practicing their faith, these officials have tarnished Pakistan's global image and contradicted the state's official stance on pluralism," he said, demanding that constitutional guarantees of religious freedom be reflected in administrative actions as well.