ISLAMABAD: Church leaders and Christian residents of Islamabad on Wednesday called on the Pakistan government to improve the condition of religious minorities as Christmas was celebrated in the federal capital and around the country with prayer services, parties and feasts.
One of the main services in Islamabad was held at the Our Lady of Fatima Church, which was decorated with Christmas ornaments, and had on display a nativity scene, a depiction of the birth of Jesus, often exhibited during the Christmas season around the world. Festivities at the church included a prayer service late on Christmas eve and services in the morning and during the day.
“We want the government to solve the problems of Christians,” Sylvester Joseph, the parish priest at Fatima Church, told Arab News after the morning prayer service. “We are a minority. We have problems with jobs, we have problems with discrimination. We want this to be solved.”
Christianity is the third-largest religion in Pakistan, with results from the 2023 census recording over three million Christians, or 1.3% of the total population in Pakistan. The majority of Christians in Pakistan are members of the Catholic Church or the Church of Pakistan.
Christians face institutionalized discrimination in nearly all walks of life in Pakistan and are often the target of violence by religious hard-liners and militant groups. Christians are also reserved for low-status jobs, such as working in sewers or as cleaners in homes and offices. 
Historical churches in Pakistan are monitored and have been targeted with bomb attacks on multiple occasions.
“There are many challenges here,” Sarfaraz John, a church elder, told Arab News. “We have only one job which is cleaning. We don’t get jobs according to our education.”
He said the community was also “scared” of violence and mob attacks, referring to an incident in August 2023 when vigilantes attacked the Christian community in the city of Jaranwala after falsely accusing two Christian residents of desecrating the Qur’an. 
“We are afraid of what will happen. Our communities are afraid of what will happen,” John added. “There have been incidents like Jaranala. We are scared.”
In May this year, at least 10 members of a minority Christian community were rescued by police after a Muslim crowd attacked their settlement over a blasphemy accusation in eastern Pakistan. 
In 2017, two suicide bombers stormed a packed church in southwestern Pakistan just days before Christmas, killing at least nine people and wounding up to 56. An Easter Day attack in a public park in 2016 killed more than 70 people in the eastern city of Lahore. In 2015, suicide attacks on two churches in Lahore killed at least 16 people, while a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up outside a 130-year-old Anglican church in the northwestern city of Peshawar after Sunday Mass in 2013, killing at least 78 people in the deadliest attack on Christians in the predominantly Muslim country.
Minister for Law, Justice and Human Rights, Azam Nazeer Tarar, announced this month Pakistan would “soon” establish the National Commission for the Rights of Minorities, who constitute about three percent of Pakistan’s estimated population of 240 million people. In October, the chief minister of Pakistan’s Punjab, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, announced cash cards for minorities in the province, where the most number of the country’s Christians live, and vowed to double the amount for uplifting their places of worship and graveyards.
Some Christians at the Islamabad service also said things had improved for the community in recent years. 
“We celebrate Christmas at the government level, it is much better now,” Joseph, the pastor-in-charge, said. “Our Muslim brothers meet us and wish us ‘Merry Christmas’. The situation is improving now.”
John said security arrangements by the government had also improved in recent years. 
“The government gives us security. They work with us,” he said. “There are more than 50 troops on duty at the church today. Traffic police, [paramilitary] Rangers, Islamabad police , they all work with us on Christmas.”
Naveed Arif, a banker, said the situation of minorities had “improved a lot with time.”
“Now minorities are given their rights in a proper way, I am a banker myself,” he said. “In festivals like Christmas and Easter, we are given special holidays. We are given proper provisions at other events as well … there have been a lot of changes and improvements.”

ISLAMABAD: Richard Grenell, president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee as envoy for special missions, has called on the Joe Biden government to use its last days in power to push for the release of jailed Pakistani former premier Imran Khan so he could run for office in the South Asian nation.
There has been a spotlight on Grenell in Pakistan since last month when he started posting on X about Khan. In one post on Nov. 26, Grenell said “Released Imran Khan!” as the jailed leader’s supporters held protests in the Pakistani capital to demand he be freed from prison. In a second post, he said, “Watch Pakistan. Their Trump-like leader is in prison on phony charges … Stop the political prosecutions around the world!” Grenell has posted in support of Khan a number of times since.
Khan has been in jail since August 2023 on charges he says are trumped up by the government and the all-powerful military to keep him away from politics. Both deny the charge.
Speaking to Newsmax TV, an American conservative television channel, Grenell said on Tuesday Khan had a “very good relationship” with Trump during his first term as US president, when the former was prime minister of Pakistan from 2018-22.
“He’s currently in prison, a lot of the same allegations just like President Trump where the ruling party [in Pakistan] put him in prison and created some kind of corruption allegations, false allegations,” Grenell said. 
He urged the President Biden administration, which is in the last legs of its reign before Trump takes over in January, to “make progress” on Pakistan, an issue he said his government had ignored for four years. 
Referring to a recent statement by State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller raising concerning about the trial of civilians in military courts in Pakistan, Grenell said: 
“What Matt Miller … really meant was free Imran Khan. And so I just became adamant, ‘Why don’t you just say this, instead of pretending that you care about all these processes, the judicial processes, just say what you mean,’ which is to let the guy [Khan] out of prison, who actually wants to run for office and let the [Pakistani] people decide.”

Last week, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif downplayed Grenell’s recent posts in support of Khan, saying the government did not expect the remarks to have any “repercussions” once Trump came to power on Jan. 20. 
“I don’t think there is any pressure involved,” Asif said in an interview to Independent Urdu last Monday when asked if the Pakistan government expected pressure from the US on Khan’s release after Grenell’s appointment.
“In American politics, there are different considerations that different people and parties have and according to that they express their views, but as far as government to government relations go, their expression or interpretation through any tweets, or such statements, is far-fetched … I don’t think there will be any repercussions of [Grenell’s tweets] at any level.”
Khan, who was ousted from office after a parliamentary vote in April 2022, has since waged an unprecedented campaign of defiance against the country’s powerful military, which is thought to be aligned with the coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The military denies it interferes in politics.
Khan continues to remain popular among the masses, with his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party’s rallies drawing thousands of people from across the country. The PTI has held several rallies over the past few months to build public pressure to secure his release from prison. 
Four troops and 12 PTI supporters were killed in the latest protest in Islamabad last month after security forces raided the protest site to disperse demonstrators who had gathered at a square that is in the federal capital’s heavily-policed red zone, home to key government and diplomatic buildings as well as the Supreme Court.
Khan’s party was also barred from Pakistan’s general election on Feb. 8 2024, but the would-be candidates stood as independents.
Despite the ban and Khan’s imprisonment for convictions on charges ranging from leaking state secrets to corruption, millions of the former cricketer’s supporters voted for him. Independent candidates from his party won the highest number of seats but not enough to form a government on their own. Khan cannot be part of any government while he remains in prison.