Christian Sanitation Worker Assaulted In Pakistan For Refusing Task Outside Duty

A Christian sanitary worker was brutally beaten by a group of people for refusing to remove the building material belonging to an influential local in Pakistan's Punjab province, police said on Monday.  Police officer Abdur Razaaq Paras told PTI that the suspect, Saqib Rabbani, asked Shahid Masih to remove building material lying on the roadside in Sadiqabad tehsil of Rahim Yar Khan, some 400-km from Lahore.

When Masih told him that removing building material from roads was not his job, Rabbani and 15 others started thrashing him. "Masih got injured when Rabbani threw a brick at him, causing him a head injury," the police officer said.

Masih was shifted to a hospital where his condition was stable.  Police have arrested the main suspect, Rabbani, and registered a case against him and 15 others.  "A Christian man, barely surviving on his daily labour, was struck with a brick to the head, not for wrongdoing, but for daring to say no," the Voice of Pakistan Minority, an NGO, said in a statement.  It said for the Christian community of Sadiqabad, especially the sanitation workers of Suthra Punjab, the attack is a cruel reminder that their lives are still seen as expendable.