At least 72 people died in a suicide bombing in a crowded park in Lahore, Pakistan. A splinter faction of the Pakistani Taliban, Jamaat ul-Ahrar, has claimed responsibility for the attack, which they say was directed as Pakistani Christians who were celebrating Easter in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park.
"It was our people who attacked the Christians in Lahore, celebrating Easter," Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesperson for the group, said. "It's our message to the Government that we will carry out such attacks again until sharia [Islamic law] is imposed in the country."
The bombing, which took place just by an area of the park designated for women and children, is the latest attack in recent years that has targeted the small yet important Christian community in this majority Muslim nation.
Who are Pakistan's Christians?
Pakistan is a country of 190 million people, the vast majority of whom are Muslims. Christians make up around 1.5 per cent of the total population, according to the latest census, although some Christians argue that the Government under-counts their numbers, which they claim should be closer to 5 per cent. Lahore, a city in the eastern province of Punjab, is one of a number of centres for the community in the country. Christians have a long history in the region, with Catholic missionaries first arriving from Europe in the late 1600s. Most of Pakistan's Christians are the descendants of Hindus who had converted during the years of British rule. Often they were from a low caste and many have remained on the poorer edges of Pakistani society. However, the Christian minority has also contributed greatly to Pakistani society. Many of the best schools and colleges in Pakistan were established by Christians and attended by the country's Muslim elite, and Christians have been among the most decorated and celebrated members of Pakistan's military since independence.
Why has there been a growing rift?
Before partition, Pakistan was a more multi-ethnic place and many Christians supported the creation of a Muslim-majority Pakistan. The mass migration of people after 1947 and the split with Bangladesh in 1972 saw many non-Muslims, in particular Hindus, leave the state. However, for decades there was relatively good relations between the Muslim minority and the Christian Minority. Pamela Constable, a former Washington Post correspondent in Pakistan, says that it was only in the 1980s and 1990s that tensions began to fester. Writing last year, Constable pointed towards the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the rise of military dictator, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, and the influence of stricter religious teachings coming from the Gulf states as catalysts for the change. Things grew worse after 2001 with the American response to the 9/11 attacks, "which many Pakistani Muslims saw as a foreign plot to defame their faith," Constable writes. While most Christians and Muslims still coexist without incident, there has been a growing sense of concern among Pakistan's Christian community, with many deciding to emigrate. In particular, Pakistan's strict blasphemy law - which restricts any insults against the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and makes the crime punishable by death - is viewed by many activists as being abused to target religious minorities, including Christians.