GENEVA: On 8 September 2025, at the 60th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Global Human Rights Defence (GHRD) hosted a side event titled “Voices from the Margins: Protecting Minority Rights in South Asia.” The room may have held only fifty delegates from civil society and diplomatic missions, but the testimonies carried the weight of millions who live without protection, read a press release from the organization. Stories of systemic exclusion and violence echoed from across the region, yet it was the plight of Pakistan’s Hindus and Sindhis that most starkly exposed a state turning its machinery against its own people.
While Pakistan stumbles through economic collapse and political turmoil, its rulers pour energy into persecuting minorities. Blasphemy laws, forced conversions, and ethnic repression are no longer the exception — they are instruments of governance. What emerged in Geneva was not just an account of individual tragedies, but a portrait of a country where fanaticism is elevated above justice, and the state has abdicated its most basic duty: to protect its citizens.
Blasphemy as a Weapon of Terror
The ruthless abuse of blasphemy laws lies at the heart of Pakistan’s crisis. In 2020, a dozen such prosecutions were recorded. By 2024, nearly 500 cases had been filed. A mere whisper of “blasphemy” can now trigger mobs, lynchings, or extrajudicial executions. In Sindh this year, police officers shot dead a man accused of blasphemy in a staged “encounter.” Instead of outrage, clerics showered the killers with rose petals. Pakistan’s own Human Rights Commission called this “alarming.” Alarming is too weak. It is vigilantism with a police badge.
For Hindus, this system is a loaded gun pointed permanently at their communities. False allegations are used to settle disputes, seize property, or stoke communal hatred. Homes are torched, temples attacked, families driven into hiding. The perpetrators are almost never punished. Instead, police often protect or even join the mobs. In practice, blasphemy laws are an open license to terrorize Pakistan’s most vulnerable citizens.
Conversions and Cultural Erasure
The persecution does not stop at blasphemy. Forced conversions of Hindu girls have become epidemic. Teenagers abducted in Sindh are coerced into marriage and declared to have “willingly” changed faith, with courts rubber-stamping the farce. Each case tears apart families and sends shockwaves of fear through entire communities.
At the same time, Hindu heritage is being erased from public life. A judicial inquiry found that of 365 temples in Pakistan, only 13 are maintained by the state; nearly 300 have been abandoned, vandalized, or illegally occupied. Extremists know they can desecrate shrines without consequence. The message is chillingly clear: Hindu identity has no protected place in Pakistan.
Sindh’s Double Burden
For Sindhis, oppression takes both religious and political forms. Though Sindh produces nearly half of Pakistan’s natural gas, its people live in poverty, deprived of services and representation. Those who dare to demand autonomy or rights often vanish. Enforced disappearances of activists, writers, and students have become routine. Some reappear tortured and lifeless; many are never seen again.
Under General Syed Asim Munir, Pakistan’s hardline army chief, these abuses have only escalated. Munir’s open embrace of Islamist ideology has emboldened both the security services and extremist militias. For Sindhis, this means living under what feels like colonial rule imposed by a Punjabi-dominated state. Dissent equals disappearance. Identity itself has become grounds for repression.
A State Consumed by Fanaticism
Speakers in Geneva were right to stress that these abuses are not isolated incidents but a systemic project. Successive governments and the military have nurtured a climate where minorities are at best neglected and at worst deliberately targeted. International platforms have become the only safe spaces where victims’ representatives can speak.
But moral outrage alone will not change Pakistan’s trajectory. Without decisive international action — targeted sanctions, robust UN monitoring, accountability mechanisms — Islamabad will stay its present course: appeasing extremists, crushing secular dissent, and devouring its minorities.
The future, if unchallenged, is bleak. Pakistan’s Hindus face extinction through forced assimilation or migration abroad. Sindhis risk permanent disenfranchisement in their own land. A country that treats its minorities as expendable cannot hope to build stability or prosperity. It is laying the foundations of its own social and moral collapse.
Beyond Pakistan
The Geneva side event also made clear that Pakistan is not alone in failing its minorities. Mr. Mehmmod ur Rehman Anwar of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community described how Ahmadis in Pakistan are criminalized simply for calling themselves Muslim. Mr. Ravi Kumar, speaking for the Tamil community, detailed Sri Lanka’s continued discrimination and lack of accountability for past atrocities. Mr. Rahman Khalilur Mamun of the International Forum for Secular Bangladesh exposed the communal violence still plaguing Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and indigenous peoples in Bangladesh. Each testimony revealed a different face of exclusion, but together they formed a single message: minority rights are the true test of democracy in South Asia.
Pakistan, however, remains the most glaring violator. Its rulers have chosen fanaticism over development, silence over justice, and persecution over protection. Unless the international community insists on change, the country will continue its descent — toward an abyss where diversity is obliterated and injustice reigns unchecked.
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