New Delhi (CNSNews.com) - Anti -US protests have prompted some minority
Christians in Quetta, Pakistan, to pack up and flee the city. They fear that
rioters may follow the call of Taliban supporters to attack non-Islamic
targets.
Anti-government and anti-American demonstrations in Quetta have turned violent
in recent days, with a number of deaths and injuries. Some Christians in Quetta
report demonstrators attacked them and threw bricks at their houses.
Muslim hardliners across Pakistan have vowed to wage a war against the
"infidels" following the US-led strikes against the ruling Taliban in
Afghanistan. Some Christian families in Quetta say they were warned they would
be killed if the U.S. attacked Afghanistan.
"Every day we hear threats from Muslims," an unnamed Christian school
teacher was quoted by press reports as saying.
Some Christians in Quetta believe President Bush inadvertently jeopardized them
a few weeks ago, by referring to a "crusade" against terrorism. White
House officials later clarified the president's remark, saying he did not mean
to imply a religious war against Islam.
"It is what the fundamentalists heard. Crusade means a clash between
Muslims and Christians, and that is what we are all afraid of," the
Christian school teacher said.
There are only about 25,000 Christians in Quetta, a city of 1.2 million. In all
of Pakistan --- a country of 140 million -- fewer than 2 million people are
Christian -- mostly Catholic, Episcopalian and Pentecostal.
Pakistan's Christian community was also targeted in riots that swept through
much of Pakistan in 1998, when the U.S. launched cruise missiles into
Afghanistan after the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania.
A series of assaults in recent years has included a 1998 bombing in St
Patrick's Cathedral in Karachi and the massacre in 1999 of a family of nine,
hacked to death in Nowshera, 25 miles from Peshawar. An anti-Christian slogan
was reportedly scrawled in blood on the walls of the house where the family was
killed, the newspaper said.