“School Shooting in Northern Pakistan Leaves Two Girls Dead and Sparks Concern for Minority Christians”

Munich – Saturday, May 27, 2023, 8:00 a.m.

Two girls were killed and six others injured in a shooting at a Catholic girls’ school in northern Pakistan. According to information available to ACN, the crime happened on May 16 at the school run by the Sisters of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary in Sangota in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi Diocese, about 200 kilometers north of the capital Islamabad .

According to local reports, a security guard opened fire on a group of teachers. The youngest fatality was only nine years old. The alleged perpetrator was arrested; the background to the fact is still unclear.

School has already been attacked and threatened

The convent school in Sangota had already been attacked by Islamist fundamentalists in 2009 and badly damaged. No one was harmed at the time. The school only reopened in 2012. The radical Islamic group “Jan Nisaran-e-Islam” had previously threatened the school and accused the sisters of wanting to convert the majority of Muslim students to Christianity, which they reject.

Following the latest attack, Islamabad-Rawalpindi Archbishop Joseph Arshad said Pakistan’s Christian minority felt increasingly threatened “in the face of increasing terrorism”: “We demand that the guard be punished to prevent similar incidents in the future.” “

Directed against the education of girls

Archbishop Sebastian Francis Shaw from Lahore also denounced the “aggressiveness of groups that are directed against the education of girls” to “Aid to the Church in Need”. He also demanded that the authorities do more for safety in the schools: “This man was responsible for the safety of the girls. But in a moment of madness he did it because it’s an all-girls school.”

The act created an “atmosphere of insecurity,” Archbishop Shaw said. However, that would not diminish the commitment of the Catholic Church in Pakistan in the field of education: “We will continue to work for education. All people have the right to education and to personal growth.”

The number of Catholics in Pakistan is less than two percent. While the church runs many schools and welfare institutions in rural areas in particular, there are repeated attacks by radical Islamist groups, especially against women and girls.