Leading Urdu Newspaper Runs Quetta Jail Ward Story With Bizarre ‘Annihilating’ Ahmadis Headline

Leading Pakistani Urdu Daily Jang on Tuesday ran a Quetta jail ward story with a bizarre anti-Ahmadi headline.

“The Muslim world must act in concert to annihilate Qadianiyat*,” the story was headlined as. The story carried under, on the other hand, is on Balochistan Ombudsman Muhammad Nazar visit to Bolan Medical Complex Hospital. Nazar, who visited the medical facility to inspect sites for the establishment of both: a temporary and permanent jail ward, is no where quoted as having made the anti-Ahmadi remarks. Nowhere does the story feature anything on the minority.

Daily Jang, one of the nation’s most-widely circulated Urdu news dailies, is the flagship publication of the eponymous Jang Group. The media conglomerate also owns English daily newspaper The News and television channel Geo.

Pakistan’s tiny Ahmadi community is routinely subjected to discrimination which often enjoys legal and state sanction.

A school in Punjab’s Attock district expelled four Ahmadi students over their confession earlier in September. Tahir Khan*, a relative of the students, said they had been expelled for simply being Ahmadi. He said a class fellow of one of the students had been harassing one of the students for some time. The students, Khan said, were expelled after some parents prevailed on school principal Kulsoom Awan.

Attock School Expels Students ‘For Being Ahmadi’

He also presented a document on the expulsion reading that the students had been expelled due to their confession. “The following students who were studying in this institute are being withdrawal (sic) on the basis of Qadianiat* Religion,” the document read. The institution, the document read, was not in a position to let them continue.

*Qadiyaniat is a derogatory slur employed for the minority Ahmadiyya community.