ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Yaqub Masih is one of thousands of impoverished Christians facing the demolition of his makeshift home in Islamabad, Pakistan, after a government agency in early December stated that informal slum settlements of Christian migrants threatened the city’s Muslim-majority demographic.
“It is one thing being poor but things are far worse if you are poor and Christian,” said the middle-aged man who ekes out a living as a mason. “Has the government even considered where I would take my family if they put us out on the street?”
In a statement that rights groups called bigoted, Pakistan’s Capital Development Authority (CDA) asserted Dec. 4 to the Supreme Court of Pakistan that “it is necessary to identify the fact that most katchi abadis [slum settlements] are under the occupation of the Christian community” from other parts of Pakistan, and “this pace of occupation of land may affect [the] Muslim majority of the capital.”
The CDA statement came in response to an Aug. 2 petition to the Supreme Court by the Islamabad-Rawalpindi Chapter of the Awami Workers’ Party seeking a declaration that the government must provide shelter and other amenities to citizens under the constitution. On July 30, CDA began evicting some of the more than 16,000 people in the I-11 slum settlement in Islamabad, bulldozing ramshackle homes and shops before the Supreme Court issued a stay order stopping the operation in August.
Masih and his family reside in Islamabad’s Maskeen Colony, 1 of about 30 makeshift settlements to which CDA has sent eviction notices. (MS)
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