Press release

HRCP report questions state’s commitment to equal citizenship for minorities

15 October 2026, Lahore. A report released earlier today by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has welcomed the passage of the National Commission for Minorities Act 2025 and child marriage restraint laws raising the minimum age for marriage to 18 in Punjab and Balochistan. However, the report also warns that these important steps towards protecting religious minorities are in stark contrast to persistent violations of freedom of religion or belief (FORB), including the weaponisation of blasphemy laws, forced marriages and conversions, escalating hate speech, and the state’s failure to ensure equal citizenship.

Sanctuary Denied: Freedom of religion or belief in 2025/26, HRCP’s seventh annual report on this subject, points out that the National Commission for Minorities Act remains unimplemented months after its passage, with the commission yet to be constituted. Meanwhile, hundreds of people accused of blasphemy remain in legal limbo, and the alleged perpetrators of an organised entrapment network have yet to be investigated. The report also documents attacks on the Ahmadiyya community, including two extremist attacks in Chenab Nagar, alongside increasingly overt attempts to exclude Ahmadis from public and commercial life.

Girls from Christian and Hindu communities continued to face abduction and forced marriage, compounded by poverty and inadequate police responses. Discriminatory employment practices, the Islamisation of school curricula and the marginalisation of minority concerns in mainstream media further undermine equal citizenship.

The report urges the federal government to operationalise the National Commission for Minorities Act without further delay, investigate alleged blasphemy entrapment networks and hold accountable those who incite violence against minorities. It also calls for stronger safeguards against forced conversions and underage marriages, mandatory FORB training for law-enforcement agencies, and effective protection for human rights defenders, lawyers and journalists. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa must also enact legislation setting the minimum marriageable age at 18 for all.

Speaking at the report launch, HRCP director Farah Zia warned that the state’s approach to religious minorities was increasingly exclusionary. Minority rights defender Nabila Feroz Bhatti drew attention to the case of Kamran Gill, a Christian medical practitioner from Sheikhupura, whose dispensary was set ablaze by a mob on 9 October following allegations that he had shared blasphemous content on social media. HRCP Punjab vice-chair Raja Ashraf warned that blasphemy accusations had become a means of exploiting and endangering vulnerable people.

Describing the severe restrictions on Ahmadis’ freedom of expression and assembly, community representative Amir Mahmood recalled that the community’s last public gathering had taken place more than 40 years ago. Shehri Pakistan director Arafat Mazhar cautioned that, in ongoing blasphemy cases, the public must consult the accused’s lawyers and allow the courts to determine the appropriate legal procedure, rather than turning accused individuals into symbols of the wider debate over blasphemy laws. Former HRCP chairperson Hina Jilani, highlighting the institutional nature of discrimination against minorities, reminded the audience that ‘Democracy should have no concept of “minority” and “majority”.’

Asad Iqbal Butt
Chairperson