Police in Pakistan on Saturday destroyed 17 gravestones of the minority Ahmadiyya community in Punjab province, allegedly under pressure from a radical Islamist party. This is the second such incident this week. This incident took place in Bahawalpur, about 400 km from the provincial capital Lahore.

According to Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan, under pressure from the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), the Punjab Police desecrated at least 17 graves at the Ahmadiyya community graveyard in Basti Shukrani in Bahawalpur district.

“TLP activists were threatening the Ahmadiyya community and pressuring the police to destroy Ahmadiyya gravestones.

“The Ahmadiyya community living there is feeling unsafe due to the support of law enforcers to the illegal demands of extremists,” Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan said in a statement on Saturday.

It said the graveyard land was allotted to the Ahmadiyya community by the Punjab government.

Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan said that local clerics also accompanied the police personnel while removing the tombstones from Ahmadiyya graves.

Last year, there were at least 43 incidents of desecration of places of worship of the Ahmadiyya minority community in Pakistan, most of them in Punjab.

Most Ahmadiyya places of worship have come under attack by radical Islamists – TLP activists – while in other incidents the police, under pressure from religious extremists, have demolished minarets, arches and removed sacred writings.

A Lahore High Court ruling has said that Ahmadiyya places of worship built before a special ordinance was issued in 1984 are valid and should not be altered or demolished.

The TLP says that Ahmadiyya places of worship are similar to Muslim mosques as they have minarets.

The TLP says it is not acceptable to construct or display any symbols identifying Ahmadis as Muslims, such as building minarets or domes on mosques, or publicly writing verses from the Quran.

Although Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims, Pakistan’s parliament declared the community non-Muslim in 1974. A decade later, they were banned not only from calling themselves Muslims but also from practicing certain aspects of Islam.

The hate campaign against the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan is reportedly at its peak and last week a teenager in Punjab shot dead two of its members allegedly because of their religion.

Pakistani authorities on Wednesday demolished the minarets of a 54-year-old place of worship of the minority community in Punjab province, an official of Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Pakistan said.

Under pressure from the TLP, a dozen policemen were seen demolishing the minarets of an Ahmadiyya place of worship in the Jahman Burki area of ​​Lahore.