Pakistan: Local journalist claim several Ahmadiyya graves desecrated by police in Punjab

Pakistani journalist Azaz Syed shared a video showing the condition of the graves.

He tweeted: "Reportedly #PunjabPolice / @DHafizabad has desecrated 45 graves of the #Ahmadiyya #community in Premkot,district Hafizabad.#Persecution against any community is in violation of basic human rights and Islamic values.Govt must take action."

Jamaat Ahmadiya Punjab spokesperson Aamir Mahmood told PTI news agency that a group of people in Premkot, district Hafizabad, some 110 kms from Lahore, approached the police complaining that the Islamic verses are inscribed on the tombstones of a number of graves in the Ahmadis graveyard.

The group threatened that the Ahmadis cannot display Islamic verses/symbols on their homes or graves, he said.

“On Sunday, police along with local clerics and lawyers reached the Ahmadi graveyard and demolished the tombstones of 45 graves inscribed with Islamic verses,” Mahmood told PTI.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community or the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at is an Islamic revival or messianic movement originating in Punjab, British India, in the late 19th century.

It was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), who claimed to have been divinely appointed as both the Promised Mahdi (Guided One) and Messiah expected by Muslims to appear towards the end times and bring about, by peaceful means, the final triumph of Islam; as well as to embody, in this capacity, the expected eschatological figure of other major religious traditions.

The Ahmadi movement has faced non-recognition and persecution in many parts of the world.