Sukkur, Pakistan - Police have accused 23 people of arson and damaging property in the torching of two churches during a protest about the burning of Islam’s holy book in a southern city, an official said today.
A Christian rights group condemned the attacks yesterday in the city of Sukkur, where about 400 people rallied after a Christian man was accused of burning pages from the Koran. The crowd ransacked the empty churches and set them ablaze.
Police have arrested 23 people and have accused them of arson, disrupting the peace and damaging property, said Aftab Hale Pota, chief of police in Sukkur district.
Police yesterday initially reported that only one church was burned by a group protesting the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published by Western media. But police later said the alleged Koran burning inspired the attacks on both churches.
The All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, a predominantly Christian group which also advocates rights of other religious minorities in Pakistan, condemned the church-burning.
“It is a brutal act of religious terrorism which should be condemned at all levels,” Shahbaz Bhatti, the head of the alliance, said in a statement.
Bhatti demanded better protection, adding that the “sense of insecurity and fear has increased among the religious minorities after the church attacks”.
Christians are a small minority in Pakistan, a deeply conservative Muslim nation where burning the Koran or insulting the prophet are considered blasphemous acts and can be punished with the death sentence.
Domestic and international human rights groups have called for the blasphemy laws to be abolished, saying they are often abused to prosecute non-Muslims in Pakistan.