Minority rights activists in Pakistan demand end to forced conversions

Activists and civil society representatives held a protest in Karachi outside Mazar-e-Quaid to mark National Minority Day, demanding an end to discrimination and violence against religious minorities in Pakistan.

The Minority Rights March, featuring prominent activists such as Sheema Kirmani and Pastor Ghazala Shafiq, presented an 11-point list of demands to the government. Key requests include criminalizing forced religious conversions and amending personal laws regarding interfaith marriages to protect the rights of minority spouses and children.

Additional demands involve implementing a 10 percent quota for minorities in both public and private sector jobs, protecting places of worship, and removing hate speech from school curricula. Protesters also called for the enforcement of a 2014 Supreme Court ruling through the creation of national and provincial minority rights commissions and requested that specific religious identities be used in legal documents instead of the term ‘non-Muslim’.