New Delhi: Supreme Sikh Council UK condemn the killing of a Sikh doctor in Peshawar in Pakistan last week and further five targeted killings of civilians by terrorists including a female Sikh head teacher, prominent Hindu pharmacist and a Hindu male teacher with an intention to create fear and panic amongst minority community of Jammu and Kashmir.
"We have also had disturbing reports of Taliban entering a Gurdwara Sahib in Kabul, destroying CCTV cameras, threatening the Sangat and apprehending some of community members,” said Supreme Sikh Council United Kingdom in a statement.
A statement issued by the council said it is concerned with frequent reports of persecution of minority communities in Pakistan including kidnapping, rape, forced conversion and marriages of girls from Sikh and Hindu communities in Pakistan.“Such murders and targeted persecution are designed to create fear and ethnically cleanse areas as was the case leading up and during partition. We call upon Pakistan government to protect rights of minorities in Pakistan and to use its influence on Taliban regime in Afghanistan to uphold rights of minorities in Afghanistan,” the council said.
Adding to the statement, Sikh Council asked Pakistan Government to control extremist groups operating from Pakistan targeting civilians of J&K and to hold those responsible for killing dozens of civilians each year in J&K and urge the Indian Government to do much more to protect the lives of minorities in J&K who are being mercilessly killed and driven from their own homes.These are ancestral homelands of people from different faiths including Sikhs and Hindus and we all need to coexist peacefully.The world is changing and the idea of single faith land no longer fits the ethos of a modern world where diversity is celebrated and pluralism welcomed, the statement added.
