PAKISTAN: The EU should suspend its trade privileges. Why? Blasphemy high on the agenda in August
The bad deal EU-Pakistan “Trade privileges in exchange of human rights progress” called the GSP+ should be suspended as long as an end is not put to the misuse of the blasphemy laws and to impunity.
HRWF (31.08.2025) – For a decade, Pakistan has been benefiting from a privileged access (reduced or zero duties) to the about 450 million consumers of the EU market. In this framework, Pakistan’s products enter the EU market with 0% duties across approximately 2/3 of all EU tariff lines. From 2014 to 2022, Pakistan’s exports to the EU almost doubled, from 8.3 billion EUR to almost 15 billion EUR.
In exchange, Pakistan pledged to sign and implement 27 international treaties regarding labour rights, good governance and human rights. This EU scheme is known as the GSP+.
Since the inception of this agreement, Pakistan has failed to demonstrate a tangible progress on the implementation of international human rights standards. Quite the contrary, the situation goes on worsening as this digest of human rights violations perpetrated in the sole month of June shows.
This is in addition to our monthly reports about the violations of religious freedom in March, April, May, June and July 2025.
Month after month, religious discrimination, public intolerance against Christians and Ahmadis, forced conversion to Islam, false charges of blasphemy and impunity towards perpetrators of human rights violations are recurrent issues where no substantial progress can be noticed.
From 2020 to 25 July 2024, the Pakistani National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) reported that 767 individuals were incarcerated on blasphemy charges across the country. The trend is exponential: 11 in 2020, 9 in 2021, 64 in 2022, 213 in 2023 and 475 until 22 February 2024.
Over the last 38 years (1987 – 2024), at least 2,793 persons were formally or informally accused of blasphemy in Pakistan according to the 2025 Human Rights Observer of the Pakistani Center for Social Justice (CSJ) . The report stated that at least 104 persons were killed extra-judicially following blasphemy allegations between 1994 and 2024.
It is time for the EU to take sanctions on Pakistan, such as the suspension of its GSP+ status as long as there is no robust progress in practice in the area of human rights. It is in the interest of the EU, the EU taxpayers, the EU enterprises and of course, Pakistani citizens.
A dangerous precedent: what the case of a 14-year-old boy reveals about forced conversions in Pakistan
Christian Today (30.08.2025) – The cries of a mother still echo in Sargodha, even as the Lahore High Court sealed the fate of her 14-year-old son, Shamraiz Masih. Too poor and powerless to be present in court, she watched from a distance as the law took her child away.
On 20 August 2025, the Lahore High Court dismissed a habeas corpus petition filed by Shamraiz’s elder brother Sahil with the support of a Christian NGO and, instead of granting custody to his widowed mother, ordered that the boy be placed in the care of his maternal uncle — a man who had himself converted to Islam years earlier and against whom the family had previously lodged a police complaint.
At first glance, this may appear to be a simple guardianship dispute. In reality, it is anything but. The ruling risks entrenching a system where children from vulnerable Christian families can be taken from their parents, coerced into changing their religion, and then legitimised with a judicial stamp of approval.
Shamraiz is the son of a poor Christian widow. Like many children from disadvantaged backgrounds, he was not in school but working at a motorbike repair shop in Sargodha to help support his family. According to his brother, his employer began to groom and pressure him, promising a better future if he accepted Islam.
One day he went out to buy groceries and never returned home. His brother reported him missing, and the police registered a kidnapping case under Section 365. Soon afterwards, videos circulated on social media showing Shamraiz dressed in Islamic attire, declaring that he had converted of his own free will…
Pakistan decries stigmatisation of Islam, says no non-Muslim name on UN terror lists
GeoNews (21.08.2025) – Envoy Asim Iftikhar highlights “grave and immediate” threat to Pakistan by Afghanistan-based TTP.
Bringing the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) attention to the rise of right-wing extremists and fascist movements, Pakistan has decried the “dangerous stigmatisation of Islam and Muslims”.
“It is not understandable, and is indeed unacceptable, that every name on the Security Council’s terrorism lists is Muslim, while terrorists and violent extremists elsewhere escape scrutiny. There is no non-Muslim in the lists,” Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Asim Iftikhar said during a UNSC meeting on “Threats to international peace & security caused by terrorist acts”.
Urging the need to make adequate changes to the sanctions regimes to incorporate new and emerging threats, envoy Iftikhar called for an “end to the stigmatisation of Islam and Muslims”.
Violence against minorities in Pakistan: Conversions, blasphemy killings on the rise – what human rights panel said
The Times of India (21.08.2025) – The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has raised alarm over violence against minority communities in the country.
HRCP on Thursday released its latest report, Streets of Fear: Freedom of Religion or Belief in 2024/25, documenting violations of freedom of religion or belief (FORB) between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025.
The report painted a picture as grim as in previous years, recording targeted killings, forced conversions, mob lynchings, hate speech, desecration of places of worship and extrajudicial killings. It also warned that religious freedom in Pakistan is facing an unprecedented threat.
The HRCP highlighted several cases where individuals were killed over blasphemy accusations, describing the trend as deeply troubling in a country that has already witnessed the assassination of a provincial governor by his own security guard.
Pakistani bishops slam Muslim cleric’s anti-church remarks
UCA News (18.08.2025) – Jamiat Ulema Islam’s Muhammad Owais Aziz alleged many churches and Shia congregation halls were built on encroached property while he was protesting the demolition of a British-era mosque in the national capital Islamabad.
The government has sent notices to 50 mosques in Islamabad, all of them belonging to Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (a hardline Islamist group), showing its malicious intent, he added.
The Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference (PCBC) has condemned the hate-filled speech against churches by that hardline cleric.
In a joint statement on Aug. 14, the PCBC and Naeem Yusaf Gill, executive director of the bishops’ National Commission for Justice and Peace, decried the “inflammatory remarks by the Muslim cleric targeting the church and its institutions.”
Church leaders say minority groups in the Muslim-majority country face growing religious intolerance, extremism, and social discrimination.
At least 23 churches were attacked in Punjab in 2023, which included 22 in Jaranwala, where Christians were attacked by a mob on Aug. 16 that year, according to Lahore-based Center for Social Justice.
Mob violence erupts against Ahmadi Muslims on Pakistan’s Independence Day
Stop de Persecution (14.08.2025) – On 14 August 2025, what should have been a day of national celebration turned violent for Ahmadi Muslims in District Faisalabad. Under the guise of Independence Day processions, a mob launched a targeted campaign of hate in the jurisdiction of Dijkot Police Station.
The crowd chanted anti-Ahmadi slogans and then escalated attacks from verbal abuse to violence. Stones were thrown at Ahmadi Muslim homes, windows were shattered, and families took shelter in fear. Several individuals were assaulted by the mob including a youth struck in the head with a brick and others beaten with sticks, leaving multiple injured.
The mob then attacked two Ahmadi Muslim mosques in 275 Kartarpur, Faisalabad. Minarets were torn down, and one mosque was set on fire and the destruction continued for two hours with no police intervention.
US report says India acts minimally, Pakistan rarely acts against rights abuses
Reuters (12.08.2025) – The U.S. government noted abuses in India and Pakistan in a shortened human rights report released on Tuesday that said India “took minimal credible steps” to combat the abuses while Pakistan “rarely took credible steps.”
The Trump administration scaled back the annual U.S. government report on human rights worldwide, dramatically softening criticism of some allies and countries that have been President Donald Trump’s partners.
On Pakistan, the report said: “The government rarely took credible steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses.”
In Pakistan, Amnesty International says government authorities fail to protect minorities, including Christians, and use “excessive and unnecessary force” against civil society voices and protesters.
Christians, religious minorities decry Pakistan’s rampant discrimination at national march
Christian Daily International (13.08.2025) – A human rights advocate is calling on Pakistan’s Parliament to address the alarming increase in false blasphemy allegations against Christians and other religious minorities.
While most rallies and seminars for the annual National Minorities Day took place on Sunday to ensure greater participation, Samson Salamat, chairman of the rights group Rwadari Tehreek (Movement for Equality), told a forum at the Lahore Press Club that the parliament should hold a “Grand Dialogue” to discuss the spike in false allegations of blasphemy leading to mob violence.
Change in religion on ID card ordered for Christian in Pakistan
Christian Daily International (05.08.2025) – In a rare development, a high court in Pakistan last month ordered the government to issue a new identity card reflecting a woman’s conversion from Islam to Christianity, her attorney said.
The woman, whose name is withheld for security reasons, renounced Islam and married a Christian man 15 years ago.
Attorney Lazar Allah Rakha said that for years she had repeatedly tried to get her faith designation corrected on her national identity record, but officials at the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) defiantly refused. She converted to Christianity in January 2009 and married the Christian four months later.
“The couple has five children and are settled in a district in South Punjab since the time of their marriage,” he said.
After her efforts to get a new identity card failed, the woman sought help from advocacy organization Christian Solidarity International, which engaged Rakha, a Christian attorney known for taking up sensitive cases pertaining to religious freedom in Pakistan. He filed a petition in the Lahore High Court submitting that she had converted to Christianity of her own free will and married a Christian in a ceremony officiated by a pastor.
Minority children in Pakistan ‘face high levels of discrimination’
UCA News (05.08.2025) – Children from religious minority groups in Pakistan face a high level of discrimination due to systemic bias, social exclusion and institutional neglect, says a report from the state-run National Commission on the Rights of Child (NCRC).
The report: “Situation Analysis of Children from Minority Religions in Pakistan” funded by the UN children’s agency UNICEF and released on Aug. 1, highlights severe challenges faced by minority children, including forced conversions, child labor, and child marriages.
From April 2023 to December 2024, the commission received 27 complaints related to oppression of minority children, including cases of abduction, murder, forced conversion, and underage marriages.
The highest number of case of violence against minority children (40 percent) were reported in Punjab, the most populous province, from January 2022 to September 2024, the report said, citing police data. Among the victims were 547 Christians, 32 Hindus, 2 Ahmadis, 2 Sikhs, and 99 others. (…)
Forced conversion of girls from Hindu and Christian backgrounds was cited as a particularly alarming trend “with few legal options open to victims.”
From January 2021 to December 2024, at least 421 cases of forced conversions were reported, according to the Center for Social Justice, an advocacy group based in Punjab’s provincial capital Lahore. The victims included 282 Hindu girls, 137 Christians, and 2 Sikhs.
