Peshawar, June 23 : Despite tall claims made by the Pakistan government about protecting the interests of the minority communities in the country, especially Christians, a latest incident in which around 20 poor Christians were kidnapped and others beaten up savagely, has proved that members of the community were still vulnerable to blatant attacks, said an editorial in the Daily Times.

According to it, the incident, which occurred in a town in NWFP, was a fresh reminder of “dirt-poor Christians” being killed in the past to avenge the killings of Muslims at the hands of American “Christians” elsewhere in the world.

Describing the act as “dastardly in the extreme”, it said that nearly half-a-dozen terrorists arrived in brand new SUVs and failed to see the moral contrast of what they were doing. A fully armed gang had attacked the “most disadvantaged section’ of the city. It would be a cruel joke if the 20 abductees were kept as hostages to the demand that the Americans should leave Afghanistan, added the paper.

There are around 350 families in Banaras Town or Banarasabad that has been there since past many decades. Peshawar, which is a kind of melting pot of nationalities and Muslim sects, has seen maltreatment of its non-Muslims at the hands of its “pious” extremists in the past, but this is the most shameful example of how the city has lost control over itself and finds itself in a state of siege even as it parleys with the Taliban for a “peace” deal, said the editorial.

According to it, NWFP is not the sole province where minorities had been treated with such cruelty, as Punjab has also had the dubious distinction of staging the most gruesome attacks on the life and property of the country’s constitutionally protected citizens.

Under the jurisdiction of the last government, Sangla Hill saw the wholesale destruction of the places of worship of the local Christians after one Christian was accused of “desecrating the Quran and insulting the Holy Prophet PBUH”.

Similarly, Faisalabad has the distinction of being the scene of the self-immolation of Bishop John Jacob after the conviction for blasphemy of an innocent Christian. It outdid itself again when on June 5, 2008, the principal of Punjab Medical College, Randhava, rusticated 23 Ahmedi boy and girl students from college and ordered them out of the college hostel “with immediate effect”. (ANI)