JARANWALA, Pakistan—According to police, 129 Muslims were detained after a crowd enraged by an alleged Quran sacrilege stormed a dozen churches and almost two dozen homes of minority Christians. Two Christian males were also detained on suspicion of defacing the Quran.
The alleged sacrilege sparked a violent rampage in Jaranwala on Wednesday, forcing Christians to escape to safer areas in the eastern city as the mob inflicted one of the country's most catastrophic attacks on Christians.
According to the municipal police commander, Bilal Mehmood, authorities detained Raja Amir and a companion after local Muslims accused them of shredding pages off a Quran, writing derogatory words on other pages, and then dumping the book on the ground.
Rizwan Khan, the provincial police head, claimed 129 individuals had been detained as suspected rioters and that the situation was under control. Authorities called in military to restore order, and Christian villagers slowly went home Thursday to face the devastation.
"We were sitting at home when suddenly we heard that a mob is coming and it is burning homes and attacking churches," Shazia Amjad sobbed outside her burnt home.
She said that the mob burned down her house and took some of her belongings while she was living with her relatives in a safer region.
Other Christians voiced confusion and recounted similar ordeals.
Azeem Masih sobbed as he sat outside his home, one of numerous properties on his neighborhood that had burnt down. He said that several rioters came in vans to transport Christians' home possessions after they had burned furniture and other stuff.
“Why did they do it to us? We had not done anything wrong,” he said.
Local priest Khalid Mukhtar claimed that majority of Jaranwala's 17 churches had been assaulted, and that his own home had been destroyed.
Officials from the government stated that all of the damaged churches and residences will be restored within a week and that individuals who sustained losses would be reimbursed.
The rioting garnered widespread criticism, and interim Prime Minister Anwaarul-ul-Haq Kakar directed police to arrest rioters.
According to the regional police head, the crowd assembled immediately and began assaulting churches and Christian houses. Rioters also attacked a city administrator's office, but police intervened, firing into the air, and swinging batons to disperse the rioters with the assistance of Muslim clerics and elders.
Social media videos and photographs show a mob of irate individuals storming a church, throwing bricks at it, and setting it on fire. In another video, four more churches are attacked, their windows shattered as rioters hurl furniture outside and set fire to them.
Another video shows a guy climbing to the roof of a church and removing a steel cross after repeatedly hammering it with a hammer, as a mob cheers him on.
Domestic and international human rights organizations condemned the violence.
Amnesty International demanded that Pakistan's blasphemy laws be repealed.
Anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic holy leaders can be punished to death under Pakistan's blasphemy laws. While authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy, mere accusations may often spark mob violence, lynchings, and deaths.
According to human rights organizations, blasphemy accusations have been used to intimidate religious minorities and settle personal grudges.
Vedant Patel, a representative for the U.S. The US State Department has encouraged Pakistan to undertake a thorough probe. "We support peaceful freedom of expression and the right to freedom of religion and belief for all," he declared on Wednesday in Washington.
