Christians under siege in Pakistan after riot

More from that religion of peace.

Sangla Hill, Pakistan (Telegraph News) -- The Christians of Sangla Hill in Pakistan were a community under siege last night after a Muslim mob rampaged through the town, burning churches and a Roman Catholic compound.

Father Samson Dilawar, parish priest of the Roman Catholic Church of Nazooli-i-Rooh, the Blessing of the Sacred Spirit, was still dressed in the cassock in which he fled when the mob knocked down the gate to the church compound on Saturday.

"I heard the mullahs had been telling people over loudspeakers, 'We are guardians of the Koran and it is our foremost duty to teach a lesson to those kafirs'," he said. "Then they came to my door."

Werner Scherhaufer, an Austrian on holiday in the Punjabi town with his Pakistani wife, said the crowd was "like a football match".

He saw several thousand people streaming towards the Christian quarter. "We locked ourselves in as we feared they were coming for us," he said.

They shouted insults at the Christians, calling them "kafirs" and "chucha", the abusive term for non-Muslims and untouchables, and "kuta", which means dogs.

Local police and the Christian community agreed on how the violence began: a Christian man had spent several days gambling with Muslim men and had won a small fortune.

Embittered, his opponents spread the rumour that he had set fire to the koran mahal, a box for preserving torn pages of the Koran. Soon the alleged deed was broadcast by mullahs from mosques.

Fr Dilawar fled to the nearby convent where he hid with a group of nuns. "Ours was the only door that they did not try," he said. "It was luck. That is how our lives were saved."

His residence was doused in chemicals and set alight, gutting the building and destroying century-old documents.

In the same compound, St Anthony's Primary School, which has 1,500 Muslim and Christian pupils, was ransacked and burnt.

The same treatment was meted out to the church, convent, boarding house and medical centre. The feet were snapped off statues of Jesus, metal crucifixes were buckled and nuns' habits torched.

"I will try to carry on as before," said Sister Anthony, the principal of the primary school. "But surely the government must help us."

Standing outside the smouldering shell of his Union Presbyterian church, the Rev Tajmal Pervez said: "Christians have been in the area for over a century. There has never been any problem."

The beams of his parsonage were open to daylight yesterday. "Religious fanatics have stirred this up," said Mr Pervez, who has been in the area for 15 years.

The rampage extended to three other churches on the outskirts of Sanga Hill. "We told the authorities that there was going to be trouble," said Mr Pervez. "So they sent four policemen who did nothing to stop the mayhem."

Yesterday a 1,000-strong congregation wearing black armbands knelt in the street opposite the burnt out church and Mr Pervez said a mass "for peace and love".

Sanga Hill, 50 miles west of Lahore, is a town in the heartland of Punjab's ethnic jigsaw where violence between Shia and Sunni, and Christian and Muslim has grown more frequent.

A 10th of the town's 10,000 population is Christian. Dr S F Martin recalled only one other incident of violence against Christians before partition in 1947. This weekend his possessions were thrown out of his house and it was burnt down.