LAHORE, Sept 25: The situation among Christians in Lahore is tense. After the attack on the Peshawar church, followed by the attack on the Ahmadiyya place of worship in Sialkot on Sunday and Monday, respectively, fear is the only logical response. There is a solid reason for this: Punjab has been the most dangerous province followed closely by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa with regard to the number of attacks on its various minority communities.

Though individuals from minority communities have been attacked throughout Pakistan’s history, the wave of attacks against Christians began after the Afghan-led war on terror in 2001. The chronology includes the Sangla Hill incident, where about 3,000 militants attacked Christians, the Gojra riots, several individual blasphemy cases, assassinations of Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and Governor Salmaan Taseer in response to their being against the Blasphemy Law, the attack on over 100 Christian homes in Joseph Colony (Lahore), attacks on countless Christian homes and churches in response to the Danish cartoons incident, and many other attacks on individuals which were never remembered enough.

Even though in the whole country they account for around 1.5 per cent of the population they feel they are most susceptible in Punjab because of their higher number and wonder: How has the province of Sufis become so violent that too towards minority groups?

“The law has often been abused to target minorities, settle vendettas and personal disputes and even settle land issues,” says a Christian whose house was burnt down during this year’s Joseph Colony mob attack. “They want to erase us so that they can simply encroach upon the land we are occupying.”

Some examples of incidents are the riots in Faisalabad in 2005, when Christians were blamed for desecration of the Quran; earlier in 2001, 16 people died in Bahawalpur when gunmen burst into a church, spraying bullets. During the 1990s, some Christians were arrested on charges of blasphemy. In a drastic step mirroring his frustration, Faisalabad’s Bishop John Joseph committed suicide to protest the execution of a Christian man on blasphemy charges. His suicide gained nothing for his community.

Eric Dayal Emergency Response Office from CARITAS international says the fear for survival never really leaves. After all, the attack in Peshawar was not a first of its kind. “But the fear has definitely increased now since the attack, and we feel very strongly now that security must be enhanced.”

As a result Christian community leaders have been asked to be vigilant within neighbourhoods.

“Can you blame us for this kind of paranoia?” questions Samuel Jawed, 23, a college student. “Sometimes I stay up in fear of a mob kicking down our door and raping my sister or killing us all. What will I do then? I don’t know.”

“Even before the State it is our own responsibility to keep ourselves safe. We cannot rely on the State to protect us, seeing as it has not done so in the past two or three decades, and it is gradually getting worse,” says Amjad Gulzar, executive director of CARITAS.

“Punjab has a much higher population of Christians who are also comparatively more active with their demands than anywhere else. KPK is also a threat to us because of the Islamic militants who stay close to the area. But the federal and provincial governments are both accountable for any form of violence that happens to us as minorities.”

Immediately after the Gojra violence occurred, in August 2009, former foreign secretary Najmuddin A Shaikh examined in an article that the incident highlighted the power of Islamist militant groups based in the Punjab province – (of which the biggest was Lashkar-i-Taiba). This rings true even today. If Punjab was once the province of Sufi saints, today it has fallen into the hands of terrorist outfits who regroup and base themselves in the province. Even the Punjab police’s Most Wanted list shows over a 100 men belonging to terrorist outfits, both active and defunct.

SP Security Lahore Abdul Ghaffar Qaisrani says the Christians in Lahore should be relatively safer now having been provided with security for some time.

“Security was hitched up a bit since I came more than a year ago,” he says. “Obviously there are about 450 churches here and we cannot provide security to all of them because we lack personnel but we definitely provide security for Sunday masses to the big churches and that has given the situation some strength.”

He says though no special steps have been taken after the Peshawar blast, the situation is much better than before.

But what happens if there is an unruly mob that has demands such as the one in Sialkot on Monday after which the police themselves resorted to fulfilling their demands and destroying the minarets on the Ahmadiyya place of worship? Qaisrani says the situation is a difficult one but the police response varies with the size of the mob.

“The best way is to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand. Our police training is fine, but we need equipment to fight off mobs such as water cannons which we do not have in Lahore.”