Mob loots, torches Christian colony in Lahore

[Ali_Syed]

Re: Mob loots, torches Christian colony in Lahore

@Silaaj

Whether we like to admit it or not, all of us must have thought about this point at least once. 177 burnt houses, and not a single death or burn wound is indeed thought provoking.

The argument presented by the residents is that the police came in advance, and got all the houses vacated ‘by force’, which is why all the residents escaped unhurt, but the houses were burned down. They attribute this to qabza groups with business interests, that want to take over the land.
The argument presented by the police is that they got the houses vacated in advance because they wanted to ensure safety for the residents.

In either case, police seems to be the culprit, as if they knew people were coming to burn the houses, they could have tackled those arsonists, tear gassed them, even killed them in order to push them back. The police did not make a single move, which makes this saga sound dodgy, and makes one wonder whether the punjab govt had some complicity in this. Though I dont believe sharifs would be stupid enough to engineer something like this, but it does seem like something smaller was planned, which got out of hand. Shahbaz Sharif’s huge rectifying steps seem to be emergent damage control more than an effort to do the right thing. Anyway, this is all just ideas floating in my head…and while we are on the conspiracy theories, there are also rumors of this having been engineered by the opposition…If you look at Farooq Sattar’s idiotic speech afterwards, you kind of believe that for a while.

Well the Christians say that they were evacuated from the area (like you have mentioned) by the police for their own safety. The banner was put up in the area (one day ago) by some PMLN guy that the punishment for blasphemy is beheading. With so much tension in the area and assurancse by the police that its for their own safety, people would surely have evacuated. Once they had evacuated, and the government had intelligence that the situation is tense, what did they do to safeguard the area?

The questions we need to ask is that why Christians have been attacked three times (in the same manner) during the past 5 years of Khadim e aala? Not one person has been punished in the Gojra incident. Its not only Christians the way minorities are being treated in the province is in front of us. What can we expect by appeasing murders and terrorists?